International steering committee

Abstract

s for Plenary Talks Monday, August 8, 2016 9:25 am Eiichiro Komatsu, MPA, Garching. From initial conditions to structure formation, and back Precise measurements of temperature and polarisation anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) taught us a remarkable story. We now think that all the structures in our observable universe, such as galaxies, stars, planets, and eventually ourselves, originated from tiny quantum fluctuations generated during cosmic inflation. This remarkable hypothesis has passed all the observational tests to date, and we have learned a great deal about the physics of inflation. The current model for the subsequent evolution of initial fluctuations due to gravity and baryonic physics on large scales also agrees with the observational data. Turning this around, we can learn more about inflation and the late-time evolution of the universe using the large-scale structure of the universe. In this presentation I review the recent progress in this area of cosmology, and present three new results from our group over the last few years: testing symmetry of space-time during inflation, state-of-the-art calculation of the thermal gas pressure distribution in the universe and comparison to observations, and a new way to look at the large-scale structure of the universe using the â position-dependent power spectrumâ . But, are we totally convinced that inflation did occur? Not yet, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The CMB community agrees that the next big step is to find a signature of primordial gravitational waves (GW) from inflation in the so-called B-mode polarisation of the CMB. Unlike the GW detected by LIGO recently, which has a wavelength of thousands of kilometres, the wavelength of the primordial GW from inflation a ecting CMB is on the order of billions of light years. To this end, I will describe our proposal for the next-generation CMB polarisation mission called “LiteBIRD”, a proposed JAXA mission with a target launch date in mid 2020. 10:10 am Rachel Rosen, Columbia University. A Massive Gravity Status Report The predictions of General Relativity (GR) have been confirmed to a remarkable precision in a wide variety of tests. From the theoretical viewpoint, consistent and well-motivated modifications of GR have been notoriously di cult to obtain. However, in recent years a conceptually simple modification has been shown to be free of the traditional pathologies. This is the theory of massive gravity, in which the graviton has a small mass. In this talk I will give a general review of massive gravity, discuss potential observational signatures and present the current challenges facing this theory. 11:20 am Enrico Sessolo, Nat. Centre for Nuclear Res., Warsaw. Dark matter — What it is and how to determine its properties I will review the present status of particle dark matter, with some attention to the case of supersymmetry. I will focus on the interplay of collider, direct, and indirect detection searches, with prospects and challenges for detection in a reasonable time scale.