This project produced a new set of tools to understand the physics of inflation. Its main result so far has been to make the connection between early universe physics and particle physics very sharp. I developed a formalism that connects, quantitatively, the study of particle collisions in detectors on earth - like the LHC at CERN - to the physics of inflationary cosmology. Given the advance of methods and results in particle physics, this connection will provide us many new, deep insights into the formation of primordial seeds in the universe.
In more detail, I produced a new set of templates of primordial correlations that can only be explained by inflationary cosmology. This menu, under certain technical assumptions, is unique. Thus, seeing these correlations in the sky would give us very strong evidence for the existence of an early inflationary era. It would also tell us about the existence of new particles and forces, perhaps inaccessible by current particle physics detectors. The figure of this project shows an example of such a non-trivial correlation, which would only be sourced by an (otherwise unobservable) new particle.
I have also produced a new set of tools to calculate what happens during inflation, adapting standard tools of particle physics. A key difference between particle physics and cosmology is the non-trivial time evolution of the universe, unlike the static nature of particle physics. The tools I derived were adapted from the framework of particle physics to the setting of cosmology.
