Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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PV: Plenarvorträge

PV XVIII

PV XVIII: Plenary Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 14:00–14:45, H 0105

Cosmological Inflation - A Confrontation with Data — •Dominik Schwarz — Bielefeld University

The idea of cosmological inflation refers to an epoch of accelerated expansion of the very early Universe. Besides solving some of the problems of the old hot big bang model, it provides a mechanism to seed cosmic structures (e.g. galaxies) and predicts the statistical properties of the large scale structure of the Universe.

Highest quality observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation (both in intensity and polarization), most recently by the Planck collaboration, allow us to test the predictions of cosmological inflation. Controversial claims have been put forward by the BICEP collaboration and some anomalous features have been identifies at the largest observable scales. Nevertheless, almost perfect agreement between theory and observation has been found, leaving us with a standard model of cosmology that poses several new, fundamental questions.