Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the knowledge of what the universe is made of, to why the universe is the way it is. In my talk I will focus on what we can expect to learn about the dynamics of the universe at the very earliest moments. I will discuss theoretical predictions from inflationary models and their observational consequences in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. In particular I will focus on two observational signatures, primordial non-Gaussianity and gravitational waves, as probes for the physics of the beginning.