25–29 May 2026
Sofia, Bulgaria
Europe/Sofia timezone

The quest for primordial non-Gaussianity: Opportunities and Challenges

28 May 2026, 15:10
4m
Sofia, Bulgaria

Sofia, Bulgaria

Institute of Mechanics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMech-BAS), Acad. Georgi Bonchev St. 4, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria

Speaker

Toka Alokda (Argelander-Institute for Astronomy, University of Bonn)

Description

Primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) is the smoking gun for non-canonical inflationary scenarios. While measurements from the CMB has hit the cosmic variance limit, the large-scale structure (LSS) holds great potential for improvement and the possibility for a verdict on our early universe. with the massive amount of data from up-and-coming surveys of the LSS, alongside higher-order statistics and new inference paradigms such as neural simulation-based inference, the future looks bright. However, these tools are still not perfect and require great attention to further develop the diagnostics, models, and summary statistics. In this lightning talk I will give an overview of the opportunities and challenges we are facing on our quest to hunt for PNG through the LSS.

Author

Toka Alokda (Argelander-Institute for Astronomy, University of Bonn)

Presentation materials