CENTRA Seminar - 3-form Cosmology - 6 junho 2013

3-form Cosmology

Nelson Nunes

CAAUL, Univ. de Lisboa

Abstract / Resumo 

Three-forms can give rise to viable cosmological scenarios of inflation and dark energy with potentially observable signatures distinct from standard single scalar field models.

I will first present an intuitive picture of the background evolution of the minimally coupled three-form in terms of an effective potential and show that it can naturally generate a variety of isotropic background dynamics, including scaling, possibly transient acceleration and phantom crossing.

When applied to primordial inflation, a three-form can have a scale invariant scalar perturbations power spectrum and the consistency relation between the tensor and scalar amplitudes has a dependence on the speed of sound.  Finally, I will demonstrate that a single three-form can have large non-Gaussian signatures.

Meeting room on the 2nd floor of the Physics Department building

Watch it live on:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/centra---ist-seminars (also available on CENTRA TV webpage)
Talks' slides:  http://centra.ist.utl.pt/~blackholes/seminars/nunes.pdf (available right before the seminar) 

CENTRA Seminars