Brian Powell

Recovering the Inflationary Potential: an Analysis Using Flow Methods and Markov Chain Monte Carlo Brian Powell

Since its inception in 1981, inflation has emerged as the dominant paradigm for describing the physics of the early universe. While inflation has matured theoretically over two decades, it has only recently begun to be rigorously tested observationally. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure surveys have begun to unravel the mysteries of the inflationary epoch with exquisite and unprecedented accuracy. This work is a contribution to the effort of reconstructing the physics of inflation. This information is largely encoded in the potential energy function of the inflaton, the field that drives the inflationary expansion. With little theoretical guidance as to the probable form of this potential, reconstruction is a predominantly data-driven endeavor. This work presents an investigation and appraisal of the current constraints that can be imposed on different inflationary theories of the early universe.