Donough Regan
University of Cambridge, UK

Abstract
Since the detection of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background in 1992 we have entered the era of precision cosmology.
While observations agree well with the standard paradigm of inflation, it is clearly important to constrain and potentially rule out any model that agrees with these observations. The Planck satellite offers this opportunity. In this talk methods are described to efficiently test higher order statistics such as the bispectrum and trispectrum. Previous analysis ruled that all but a small subset of such models were numerically tractable. The methods described here are applicable to all models.

In the past few years the possibility of using galaxy distributions to test the conditions present in the very early universe has been elucidated. Here it is shown that the application of our method greatly improves the scope and accuracy of this approach.

2010 September 15, 13:30

IA/U.Porto
Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (Auditorium)
Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto