[astroseminar at Sapienza] 24/05/2017 at 14:00: Joao Magueijo

[Elia Battistelli]

Title: The most predictive cosmological theory
Speaker:   Prof. Joao Magueijo
Institute: Imperial College London
Date: Wednesday, 24 May 2017
Time: 2:00pm
Location: Sala Lauree, Marconi Building, Dept. of Physics, Sapienza 
University

Abstract:
Although inflation has been paraded as an observational success, the 
lack of a firm prediction applicable to the whole of the paradigm should 
be seen as a major drawback, at least until information external to 
cosmology selects a priori one of its many models. In contrast I present 
a theory with two disformal metrics, one for matter fields, another for 
gravity, which has the benefit of making a sharp prediction for the 
spectral index of the scalar fluctuations, and the amount of tensor 
modes. The origin of the fluctuations in this theory is thermal rather 
than quantum, and the model is a critical boundary in the space of all 
theories, associated in at least two ways with a phase transition. I 
discuss other implications of the model, namely non-Gaussianty. I also 
review similar models loosely based on the Horava Lifshtz theory, with a 
far less developed cosmology, but closer connections with quantum 
gravity.

web: https://agenda.infn.it/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=13515