Daniel Green, University of California San Diego
Monday, May 22, 2023 - 4:00pm
PAA A-102
The idea that structure in the Universe was created from quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuations during inflation is very compelling, but unproven. Finding a test of this proposal has been challenging because the universe we observe is effectively classical. I will explain how quantum fluctuations can give rise to the density fluctuations we observe and will show that we can test this hypothesis using the statistical properties of maps of the universe.