Speaker: Steen Hannestad, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies

When: Wednesday, 26 March

Where: PhysAud

Title: Primordial gravitational waves and the BICEP-2 measurements

Abstract:
The BICEP collaboration recently announced the first detection of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background on large angular scales. Such polarization can only come from primordial gravitational waves which were presumably produced during the inflationary epoch in the early universe. The amplitude of the gravitational wave signal points to a high energy scale associated with inflation and severely constrains viable models of inflation. In the talk I will briefly review how gravitational waves are produced during inflation. I will then discuss the BICEP experiment and other similar experiments currently running.