Conference

I review the contentious question, "Does a uniformly accelerated detector radiate?" As Audretsch and Muller pointed out long ago, this is partly a semantic dispute. The talk draws on recent discussions with Alex Calogeracos and George Matsas.

Presented is a discussion of quantum field theory on curved spacetime and of microlocal analysis, with an emphasis on the way that these two areas connected for me personally through a specific problem, namely that of resolving Kay's singularity conjecture for two point functions of a linear scalar field on a globally hyperbolic spacetime. A particular case of this conjecture is presented, namely the translation invariant case on flat Minkowski spacetime, which does not require microlocal analysis. Next, the results of Duistermaat and Hoermander concerning distinguished parametrices of the Klein Gordon equation on a curved spacetime are described, since they lead to the notion of a wave front set (or microlocal) spectral condition, which could be viewed as a remnant of the spectral condition on flat spacetime. This condition on the wavefront set of the two point function has been employed by Brunetti, Koehler and Fredenhagen to develop a method of renormalization on a general curved spacetime, which has been developed further by Hollands and Wald. Other QFT-related topics to which microlocal methods may apply are: Lorentz symmetry breaking models and many body QM models (e.g., the free electron gas in a metal). In the case of vector or spinor models, the polarization set may be used to refine information about the singularities. Similarly, the principal symbol of the two point function, viewed as a Fourier integral operator, is a constant times a canonical half density on the natural Lagrangian submanifold associated with the Klein-Gordon operator, suggesting a tangent space Lorentz invariance property for the free model.

After the completion of the Planck satellite, the next most important experiments in cosmology will be about mapping the Large Scale Structures of the Universe. In order to continue to make progress in our understanding of the early universe, it is essential to develop a precise understanding of this system. The Effective Filed Theory of Large Scale Structures provides a novel framework to analytically compute the clustering of the Large Scale Structures in the weakly non-linear regime in a consistent and reliable way. The theory that describes the long wavelength fluctuations is obtained after integrating out the strongly-coupled, short-distance modes, and adding suitable operators that allow us to correctly reconstruct the effect of short distance fluctuations at long distances. By using techniques that originate in the particle physics context, a few observables have been computed so far, and the results are extremely promising. I will discuss the formalism, the main results so far, and the potential implications for next generation experiments.

The spin-flip transition in neutral hydrogen may be used to probe large-scale structure at high redshifts, before the first luminous objects formed. The huge number of modes potentially accessible make this a very promising avenue. I will discuss several key unknowns that could be measured with high-redshift 21cm surveys: primordial non-gaussianity, the primordial small-scale power spectrum, and dark-matter-baryon interactions. I will close by discussing CMB spectral distortions, another promising probe of early Universe physics, and illustrate how they can be used to test dark-matter interactions with standard model particles.

CHIME will use the 21cm emission line of neutral hydrogen to map large-scale structure between redshifts of 0.8 and 2.5. By measuring BAO we will place constraints on the dark energy equation of state as it begins to dominate the expansion of the Universe, particularly at redshifts poorly probed by current BAO surveys. In this talk I will introduce CHIME, a transit radio interferometer designed specifically for this purpose. I will discuss its goals and describe the powerful new analysis techniques we have developed to confront the many challenges of such observations, in particular removal of astrophysical foregrounds which are six orders of magnitude larger than the 21cm signal. A smaller 40m x 37m pathfinder telescope is currently operating at the DRAO in Penticton, BC, and the construction of the full-sized 80m x 100m instrument commenced in early 2015. I will report on current progress, and the lessons already learned.

I will present results from the SDSS-III BOSS-DR11 analysis. In this talk I will focus on the analysis of the power spectrum multipoles, which allows to constrain the growth of structure through redshift-space distortions. Such measurements can be used to test GR and measure the sum of the neutrino masses. Beside RSD we also constrain the geometry of the Universe through the Alcock-Paczynski effect and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations.

New results on the observational signatures of large-scale flows during reionization, using new simulations and analytical methods, will be presented. A preliminary analysis will be described, indicating that cross-correlation of diffuse radiation with tracers of the large scale matter fluctuations can in principle provide new constraints on the timing and duration of reionization, via peculiar velocities.

I'll present a series of numerical experiments to test simple analytical predictions for large-scale Lyman-alpha forest bias parameters. Despite relying on second-order SPT, some of the predictions are surprisingly accurate, especially if thermal broadening is not taken into account. I'll also discuss details of using filtered and squared small-scale fields as robust tracers of large-scale structure that might be useful for non-Gaussianity measurements.