Ultra-light axions with masses $10^{-33} < m_\phi/{\rm eV} < 10^{-22}$ are allowed to constitute only a small fraction of the observed dark matter abundance. Nevertheless, they may yet produce a visible impact on the cosmology due to their macroscopic quantum scale. Next generation galaxy survey data are poised to challenge this possibility, but in order to do so, all aspects of structure...
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) may form in the early universe, from the gravitational collapse of large density perturbations, generated by large quantum fluctuations during inflation. Since PBHs form from rare over-densities, their abundance is sensitive to the tail of the primordial probability distribution function (PDF) of the perturbations. It is therefore important to calculate the full...
Restoration of left-right symmetry at high energy scales provides a well-motivated extension of the Standard Model, which has been scrutinized over the past few decades and that can be viewed as the intermediate step towards grand unification. In my talk, I will investigate whether these models can be probed via the search for a stochastic gravitational wave background induced by the...
If the PQ symmetry is broken after inflation then the QCD axion mass that gives rise to the observed dark matter (DM) abundance can in principle be calculated precisely. In practice it remains a computational challenge to accurately predict the DM contribution from nonlinear features of the PQ field such as axion strings, which introduce a large hierarchy of scales between their width and the...
