Inflation after Planck and BICEP2

Abstract

We discuss the inflationary paradigm, how it can be tested, and how various models of inflation fare in the light of data from Planck and BICEP2. We introduce inflation and reheating, and discuss temperature and polarisation anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation due to quantum fluctuations during inflation. Fitting observations of the anisotropies with theoretical realisations obtained by varying various parameters of the curvature power spectrum and cosmological parameters enables one to obtain the allowed ranges of these parameters. We discuss how to relate these parameters to inflation models which allows one to rule in or out specific models of inflation.

Slightly longer version of a plenary review talk at the XXI DAE-BRNS High Energy Physics Symposium at IIT Guwahati, Dec.8-12, 2014. 14 pages, 7 figs

References in corpus (9)

• A Joint Analysis of BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck Data
• Toward an Understanding of Foreground Emission in the BICEP2 Region
• Neutrinos help reconcile Planck measurements with both Early and Local Universe
• Relic Neutrinos, thermal axions and cosmology in early 2014
• Higgs Dynamics during Inflation
• Measure and Probability in Cosmology
• The Higgs vacuum is unstable
• Blue Gravity Waves from BICEP2 ?
• Reducing the Tension Between the BICEP2 and the Planck Measurements: A Complete Exploration of the Parameter Space