Related papers: The decisive future of inflation
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
We present the first calculation of the Bayesian evidence for different prototypical single field inflationary scenarios, including representative classes of small field and large field models. This approach allows us to compare…
In this paper we consider the issue of paradigm evaluation by applying Bayes' theorem along the following nested hierarchy of progressively more complex structures: i) parameter estimation (within a model), ii) model selection and…
Bayesian inference techniques are used to investigate situations where an additional light scalar field is present during inflation and reheating. This includes (but is not limited to) curvaton-type models. We design a numerical pipeline…
There has been much recent discussion, and some confusion, regarding the use of existing observational data to estimate the likelihood that next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments might detect a nonzero…
Bayesian evidence is a standard tool used for comparing the ability of different models to fit available data and is used extensively in cosmology. However, since the evidence calculation involves performing an integral of the likelihood…
Even simple inflationary scenarios have many free parameters. Beyond the variables appearing in the inflationary action, these include dynamical initial conditions, the number of fields, and couplings to other sectors. These quantities are…
We discuss the model selection problem for inflationary cosmology. We couple ModeCode, a publicly-available numerical solver for the primordial perturbation spectra, to the nested sampler MultiNest, in order to efficiently compute Bayesian…
We are often interested in identifying the feasible subset of a decision space under multiple constraints to permit effective design exploration. If determining feasibility required computationally expensive simulations, the cost of…
Experimental design is crucial for inference where limitations in the data collection procedure are present due to cost or other restrictions. Optimal experimental designs determine parameters that in some appropriate sense make the data…
We present and discuss a new approach increasing by orders of magnitude the speed of performing Bayesian inference and parameter estimation within the framework of slow-roll inflation. The method relies on the determination of an effective…
The conventional approach to Bayesian decision-theoretic experiment design involves searching over possible experiments to select a design that maximizes the expected value of a specified utility function. The expectation is over the joint…
We present a framework for the efficient computation of optimal Bayesian decisions under intractable likelihoods, by learning a surrogate model for the expected utility (or its distribution) as a function of the action and data spaces. We…
Bayesian model comparison penalizes models with more free parameters that are allowed to vary over a wide range, and thus offers the most robust method to decide whether some given data require new parameters. In this paper, we ask a simple…
We consider the running of the spectral index as a probe of both inflation itself, and of the overall evolution of the very early universe. Surveying a collection of simple single field inflationary models, we confirm that the magnitude of…
We compute the Bayesian evidence and complexity of 193 slow-roll single-field models of inflation using the Planck 2013 Cosmic Microwave Background data, with the aim of establishing which models are favoured from a Bayesian perspective.…
Taking field theory seriously, inflation model-building is difficult but not impossible. The observed value of the spectral index of the adiabatic density perturbation is starting to discriminate between models, and may well pick out a…
Probabilities in eternal inflation are traditionally defined as limiting frequency distributions, but a unique and unambiguous probability measure remains elusive. In this paper, we present a different approach, based on Bayesian reasoning.…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
This paper develops a mathematical and computational framework for analyzing the expected performance of Bayesian data fusion, or joint statistical inference, within a sensor network. We use variational techniques to obtain the posterior…