Dr. Gaurav Goswami

One question which has received a lot of attention recently is the following: “Are there any constraints on low energy effective theories which arise from the consideration that they in fact originate in a theory of quantum gravity?” If such constraints do exist, then it is conceivable that large field inflation, which is expected to be observationally tested in the near future, might be susceptible to them. In this talk, I’ll begin by presenting evidence in favour of this and argue that, even though it is straightforward to write down models of large field inflation which fit the observational data, any such model inexorably suffers from other problems. Next, with the help of a concrete example, I will describe how certain possibilities which arise routinely in arbitrary quantum field theories do not seem to occur in those low energy effective theories which originate from trustworthy solutions of theories valid at Planck scale. Finally, I shall present possible implications of this prospect for cosmology.