Research Interest of Sarah Shandera
Publication 1: Comparing brane inflation to WMAP (URL)
Publication 2: Cosmology of the Tachyon in Brane Inflation (URL)
Publication 3: Observing brane inflation (URL)
URL of Research:
Statement of Interest:
I am interested in the connection between string theory, cosmology,
and particle phenomenology. In particular, string theory-motivated
models are providing cosmologists with observationally
distinguishable scenarios not previously considered. The joint
constraints on these models coming from consistency of the
underlying string theory model and consistency with predicted
particle phenomenology are quite stringent and remain to be well
understood. Perhaps one of the most interesting observational
constraints may come from non-gaussianity, where the potential
wealth of (scale-dependent) data from future measurements could
differentiate many competing scenarios.