报告题目：On the importance of heavy fields in pseudo-scalar inflation

报告时间：2023年11月12日 16:00

报告地点：成龙校区第一教学楼B214

报告摘要：

  Pseudo-scalar inflation coupled with U(1) gauge fields through the Chern-Simons term has been extensively studied. However, new physics arising from UV theories may still influence the pseudo-scalar field at low-energy scales, potentially impacting predictions of inflation. In the realm of effective field theory (EFT), we investigated axion inflation, where operators from heavy fields are also present, in addition to the axion and gauge fields.

 The integrated out fields have two significant effects: the non-linear dispersion regime and coupling heavy modes to the Chern-Simons term. The first effect changes the propagation of the curvature fluctuation, while the second one results in additional operators that contribute to curvature fluctuation via inverse decay. We derived the power spectrum and magnitude of equilateral non-Gaussianity in this low-energy EFT. We found that the second effect could become significant as the mass of heavy fields approaches Hubble scale.

报告人简介：

  周思益毕业于中国科学技术大学、香港科技大学，目前是重庆大学副教授，研究方向为宇宙学、弦理论和场论。周思益自2021年7月开始在短视频平台发布科普视频后，至今已收获一百多万粉丝人称“弦论小女孩”