Abstract: Measurements of the “fossil” light known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provide a spectacular snapshot of the very early Universe, reflecting small non-uniformities in the primordial “soup" of particles and radiation that went on to seed the galaxies. I will review how Cosmic Inflation, a powerful combination of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity operating at the Big Bang, can account for these fractal-like non-uniformities. I will then describe how upcoming precision measurements of galaxy distributions, as well as proposed cosmic “maps" observable in electromagnetic and gravitational waves, may provide deeper insights into formative stages of the Universe, including the birth of the modern forces of Nature from their primeval, possibly higher-dimensional, ancestors.
About the speaker: Raman Sundrum is the John S. Toll Chair and Distinguished University Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also the Director of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics. Professor Sundrum works on theoretical particle physics, focusing on the fundamental forces of nature and uncovering new mechanisms at the intersection of quantum mechanics and relativity. He frequently consults for the science media and has presented his work widely to the public, from speaking at high schools to appearing on BBC Television’s Horizon Special “Inside CERN”.
Among many other awards, he is a Fellow of the American Physical Soceity, Distinguished Visiting Chair at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, and was a Moore Fellow at CalTech. Professor Sundrum was awarded the 2019 Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics by the American Physical Society, along with his former collaborator Lisa Randall of Harvard University, for their pioneering work on “Randall-Sundrum” models of higher-dimensional spacetime, and for motivating a host of experimental searches.