Monday

The amplitude of gravitational waves from inflation depends on how long inflation lasts. This is commonly measured by the number of e-folds N.

In this talk, I will explain how the industry-standard notion of N is inaccurate, and present new models of inflation that are sensitive to this inaccuracy. In particular, I will show that the tensor-to-scalar ratio (measured in the CMB anisotropies) can be significantly underpredicted using the inaccurate notion of e-folding. I will also show that this inaccuracy can translate to order-of-magnitude underestimates in the amplitude of gravitational waves predicted for interferometry experiments (e.g. LIGO and LISA).