Probing Fundamental Physics with Cosmology

拟议研究项目的主要重点是利用宇宙学作为一种工具来理解基本物理元素，如量子重力和真空的性质。与此同时，拟议的项目将与新的精密宇宙学观测紧密相连，特别是开发约束早期宇宙宇宙学的技术，这些技术将立即适用于未来的高精度宇宙学测量。将开展的两项主要任务是研究膨胀现象及其与令人兴奋的新观测数据的联系，以及非真空基于能量的机制/方案如何解释观测到的宇宙膨胀速度的加速。拟议的研究计划的一个核心要素是扩展和更新之前的工作，这些工作将宇宙学观测与早期宇宙的物理，特别是膨胀联系在一起。这将包括分析在赠款涵盖的期间发布的新数据集，以及为未来的实验进行误差预测。这一提议的项目包括：利用观测结果更新和扩大限制膨胀物理学的努力；开发和分发新的数字代码，用于搜索或表征膨胀参数空间；调查进一步的超普朗克效应；以及研究替代的、非膨胀的早期宇宙模型。

The primary focus of the proposed research project is to use cosmology as a tool for understanding elements of fundamental physics such as quantum gravity and the nature of the vacuum. At the same time, the proposed project will be firmly connected to new precision cosmological observations, in particular developing techniques for constraining early universe cosmology which will be immediately applicable to future high-precision cosmological measurements. The two major tasks to be undertaken are the phenomenology of inflation and its connection to the exciting new observational data and how non vacuum energy-based mechanisms/schemes could account for the observed acceleration of the expansion rate of the universe. A central element of the proposed research program is to extend and update previous work relating cosmological observations to the physics of the early universe, especially inflation. This will involve analysis of new data sets released during the period covered by the grant, and error forecasting for future experiments. The projects of this proposal include: updating and expanding efforts to constrain inflationary physics using observational results; developing and distributing new numerical codes for searching or characterizing inflation parameter space; investigating further transplanckian effects; and investigating alternate, non-inflationary early universe models.