Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology) |
Events During the Week of April 12th through April 19th, 2015
Monday, April 13th, 2015
- No events scheduled
Tuesday, April 14th, 2015
- Natural Inflation and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
- Time: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: William Cottrell, University of Wisconsin
- Abstract: Attempts to provide a UV complete model for inflation generically encounter large quantum corrections which spoil the flatness of the inflaton potential. A standard method to work around this, known as 'natural inflation' attempts to use axions as inflatons since they enjoy a perturbative shift symmetry and thus can naturally have very flat potentials. However, we will argue that such theories of inflation are ruled out by the weak gravity conjecture. More precisely, we will show that models with natural inflation are analogous to theories which allow black hole remnants and are thus highly disfavored.
- Host: Ran Lu
Wednesday, April 15th, 2015
- No events scheduled
Thursday, April 16th, 2015
- No events scheduled
Friday, April 17th, 2015
- No events scheduled