Probing Fundamental Physics with Cosmology

拟议研究项目的主要重点是使用宇宙学作为理解基础物理学要素的工具，如量子引力和真空的性质。与此同时，拟议的项目将与新的精确宇宙学观测密切相关，特别是开发限制早期宇宙学的技术，这些技术将立即适用于未来的高精度宇宙学测量。两个主要的任务是：暴胀现象及其与令人兴奋的新观测数据的联系，以及基于非真空能量的机制/方案如何解释观测到的宇宙膨胀率的加速。拟议研究计划的一个核心内容是扩展和更新以前的工作，将宇宙学观测与早期宇宙的物理学，特别是通货膨胀联系起来。这将涉及分析在资助期间发布的新数据集，并为未来的实验进行误差预测。该提案的项目包括：更新和扩大利用观测结果约束暴胀物理学的努力;开发和分发用于搜索或表征暴胀参数空间的新数字代码;进一步研究transplanckian效应;以及研究替代的非暴胀早期宇宙模型。

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.