Learning physics from the cosmic microwave background

✍ Scribed by J. Ellis

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 838 KB
• Volume: 78
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0920-5632
• DOI: 10.1016/s0920-5632(99)00515-0

✦ Synopsis

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a precious window on fundamental physics at very high energy scales, possibly including quantum gravity, GUTs and supersymmetry. The CMB has already enabled defect-based rivals to inflation to be discarded, and will be able to falsify many inflationary models. In combination with other cosmological observations, including those of high-redshift supernovae and large-scale structure, the CMB is on the way to providing a detailed budget for the density of the Universe, to be compared with particlephysics calculations for neutrinos and cold dark matter. Thus CMB measurements complement experiments with the LHC and long-baseline neutrino beams.