Simulations of the Dark Ages of Inflation

Friday 29 Aug 2025, 10:30 → 12:30 Asia/Shanghai

6620 (ITP South Building)

Speaker: Sebastien Renaux-Petel (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris)

Abstract: Models of inflation relevant for small-scale gravitational-wave cosmology are often characterized by a high degree of inhomogeneity that requires going beyond perturbation theory. In this context, I will describe the simulations we have developed and applied to resonant inflation and ultra-slow-roll inflation, highlighting backreaction and non-Gaussian effects as well as consequences for primordial black holes.

Biography: Sebastien Renaux-Petel is a theoretical physicist specialized in primordial cosmology. He is a senior CNRS researcher at the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris and a professor at Ecole polytechnique. He held postdoctoral positions at Cambridge and Sorbonne University and he is the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant and of the CNRS bronze medal.