For online events, details are sent out the week of the event. Join our community to receive them!
Quantum Information Theoretic Methods in Inflationary Cosmology
Kempf, Achim - University of Waterloo
Presentation on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, noon
Location: MIT Room 6C-442
At the Planck scale, and in the very early universe, the very notions of space-time and of matter are expected to reach the limit of their range of applicability. For this reason, the use of quantum information-theoretic tools could be useful in these circumstances: no matter how counterintuitive the phenomena at the Planck scale are, it should always make sense to quantify how much information processing is involved. I will first review related information-theoretic concepts such as covariant bandlimitation. I will then focus on the prospect that information-theoretically described features of Planck scale physics have left an imprint in inflation and that Planck scale physics has, therefore, left a possibly observable imprint in the cosmic microwave background.