Speaker
James Cline
(McGill University, (CA))
Description
Recent papers have claimed that scalar fields with 4th-order Lagrangians can cancel the cosmological constant of the Standard Model, and that their primordial fluctuations can provide the scale-invariant perturbations needed for the CMB and structure formation, circumventing the need for inflation. We dispute these claims, and point out a number of pathologies associated with such fields.
Authors
Anamaria Hell
(IPMU)
James Cline
(McGill University, (CA))