Searching for New Physics at Small and Large Scales TASI 2012 by Pierpaoli Elena Schmaltz Martin

Author:Pierpaoli, Elena,Schmaltz, Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company

3.5. Energy scale of inflation

We can at this point begin to learn something about inflation. Remember that the power spectrum and its tilt are of order

with, for slow roll inflation

From observations of the CMB, we know that

Knowledge of these two numbers is not enough to reconstruct the energy scale of inflation. However, if we assume for the moment that η ~ , a reasonable assumption that however it is sometimes violated (we could have η), then we get

These are remarkably large energy scales. This is the energy scale of GUT, not very distance from the Plank scale. Inflation is really beautiful. Not only it has made quantum fluctuations the origin of all the structures of the universe, but it is likely that these are generated by physics at very high energy scales. These are energy scales that unfortunately we will probably never be able to explore at particle accelerators. But these are energy scales that we really would like to be able to explore. We expect very interesting new physics to lie there: new particles, possibly GUT theories, and even maybe string theory. We now can explore them with cosmological observations!

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