Speaker: Vincent Vennin 

Affiliation: Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris

Title: Can we prove that cosmic structures are of quantum mechanical origin?

Date: May 30th, at 3 PM

Where: Aula Rostagni and Youtube streaming

Abstract: In the early universe, quantum vacuum fluctuations are amplified and stretched to large distances, giving rise to all cosmological structures observed in the universe (from planets and stars to galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc). However, astronomers usually analyse the data with purely classical techniques and apparently never need to rely on the quantum formalism to understand them. So are there observational signatures of the quantum origins of primordial perturbations? If confirmed, what would we learn about quantum physics in gravitational contexts?

Vincent Vennin is a CNRS researcher working on early-universe cosmology at the Physics department of Ecole Normale Supérieure  (LPENS, Paris).

He did his PhD at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris between 2011 and 2014, and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in England. In 2017, he was hired by CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) on a permanent position, and joined the Laboratoire Astroparticules et Cosmologie in Paris. In 2022, he moved to Ecole Normale Supérieure to create a new research group centred on theoretical cosmology and gravitation.

His research focuses on understanding how cosmological structures arose from quantum fluctuations in the very early universe, and what cosmology can tell us about high-energy physics beyond the standard model, foundations of quantum mechanics and the nature of gravity.

Youtube streaming: https://www.youtube.com/@UniPadovaAulaRostagni