Theoretical Cosmology meetings
To actively encourage the field of theoretical cosmology and to set an informal stage for the exchange of ideas, the Dutch theoretical cosmology community organizes Friday afternoon meetings approximately 6 times a year — usually on the first Friday of the month. The meetings typically start in the afternoon with a main speaker, followed by a short break to continue with another seminar or journal club discussion on some topic of current interest. We end the afternoon with drinks. The supporting institutes in Leiden, Amsterdam, Groningen, Utrecht where recently joined by the strings and cosmology group in Leuven and take turns in hosting the event.
- This event has passed.
Utrecht Winter 2019
01/03/2019 @ 12:00 - 17:00
Utrecht, March 1st 2019
The second THC meeting of the solar year will take place in Utrecht. The venue is located at Buys Ballot Building, Princetonplein 5, Utrecht, seminar room 7.12.
Program
13:00 – 14:00: Coffee/Tea
14:00 – 15:00: Talk by Kyohei Mukaida (DESY)
Title: Primordial black holes from inflation and their implications
Abstract:
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are one of the candidates to constitute the whole dark matter.
Recently, they have been gathering additional attention because they can explain the observed gravitational waves (GWs) detected by LIGO. In this talk, I assume that PBHs are generated from inflation, and discuss observational probes specific to PBHs from inflation. After that, I also discuss classes of inflation models that could be an origin of PBHs for all DM or LIGO GWs while evading the current constraints.
15:00 – 15:30: Coffee Break
15:30 – 16:30: Talk by John Stout (UvA)
Title: Instantons away from equilibrium
Abstract:
Non-perturbatively generated effective potentials play an extremely useful, often critical, role in string and inflationary model building. These potentials are typically computed by Euclidean methods (i.e. instantons) which assume the system is in equilibrium. For systems out of equilibrium—for instance, an inflaton rolling down its potential— we expect there are corrections to the semi-classical evolution due to transient phenomena. How do we determine these corrections, and when do they become large? I will introduce a picture of non-perturbative effects that does not rely on the Euclidean path integral and answer these questions for a wide class of toy quantum mechanical models.
16:30: Snacks/drinks in ITP coffee room, 7th floor, Buys Ballot Building, Princetonplein 5, Utrecht