Fundamental Physics and the Early Universe

我们生活在高精度宇宙学的时代。在接下来的十年里，一些测量宇宙微波背景(CMB)和星系分布的独立团队将为我们提供宇宙中前所未有的大小和细节的物质地图。到目前为止，这样的地图已经被膨胀范式很好地解释了，该范式假设宇宙在其最早的时刻经历了一段接近指数级的膨胀时期。在这个过程中，膨胀自然地孕育了我们宇宙中量子涨落结构的形成，这些涨落被膨胀拉伸到宇宙尺度。到目前为止，这个想法在解释观测到的宇宙学数据方面非常成功，但随着我们扩大对宇宙的看法，它将面临新的挑战。在这些最早的时刻，能量密度可能比直接观测到的要大好几个数量级。对膨胀的预测，以及最终结构的形成，对粒子的光谱和在这些令人难以置信的能量下的相互作用很敏感。从这个意义上说，对CMB和大尺度结构的测量是了解基础物理的独特窗口。然而，现有数据不足以确定通胀本身的原因。许多截然不同的机制导致了与当前测量结果相容的预测。此外，随着大规模的结构调查成为我们主要的宇宙学信息来源，这种情况在未来将如何改变尚不清楚。这项研究将解决这些问题，方法包括确定区分通胀机制的明确实验目标，以及预测我们宇宙中结构的演变，以达到足够的精度来测试通胀到所需的精度。从表面上看，暴涨和大尺度结构的物理学可能看起来非常不同，但理论技术非常相似。事实上，最近两人都通过粒子物理学的想法涌入看到了巨大的进步。这项研究将进一步开发这些工具，并扩大它们对整个宇宙学领域的影响。

We live in the era of high precision cosmology. Over the next decade, a number of independent teams measuring the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and distribution of galaxies will give us a map of the matter in the universe of unprecedented size and detail. To date, such maps have been well explained by the inflationary paradigm, which postulates that the universe underwent a period of nearly exponential expansion during its earliest moments. In the process, inflation naturally seeded the formation of structures in our universe from quantum fluctuations that were stretched to cosmological scales by the expansion. This idea has been extraordinarily successful in explaining the observed cosmological data to date, but will face new challenges as we expand our view of the universe. The energy densities at these earliest moments were likely many orders of magnitude larger than have ever been observed directly. The predictions of inflation, and ultimately the formation of structure, are sensitive to the spectrum of particles and interactions at these incredible energies. In this sense, measurements of the CMB and large scale structures are a unique window into fundamental physics. However, existing data is not sufficient to determine the cause of inflation itself. Many drastically different mechanisms give rise to predictions compatible with current measurements. Furthermore, it is unclear how this situation will change in the future, as large scale structure surveys become our dominant source of cosmological information. This research will address these problems, both by identifying clear experimental targets that discriminate between inflationary mechanisms and by predicting the evolution of structure in our universe to sufficient accuracy to test inflation to the required precision. On the surface, the physics of inflation and large scale structure may seem are very different, but the theoretical techniques are very similar. In fact, recently both have seen great advances through the influx of ideas from particle physics. This research will further develop these tools and broaden their impact on the field of cosmology as a whole.