Models for Inflation

Inflation and Inhomogeneity

• Classical flatness
• Quantum perturbations
• perturbation freeze-in at horizon crossing (Carlstrom, Crawford, Knox 2015)
• modes leaving and re-entering Hubble sphere
• tensor pertubations: primordial gravitational waves, spectrum in context

Inflation Scorecard

• sketch of tests so far: CMB

The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe

Overview

Quantifying Cosmic Density Fields

• density contrast
• Fourier expansion
• power spectrum defined
• power spectrum observed
  SDSS galaxies: pretty pictures and illustrated density fluctuation spectrum; paper and plots of power spectrum and rms amplitude
• correlation function: SDSS galaxies plot, clusters plot
• Gaussian fluctuations