Abstract:
Cosmological probes of primordial non-Gaussianity have recently attracted much attention due to its ability to discriminate between different inflationary models. In this talk I will present the signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity on large scale structure. I will first describe its effect on the distribution of the underlying dark matter field. I will show how to generalize Doroshkevich's celebrated formulae for the eigenvalues of the initial shear field associated with Gaussian statistics to the local non-Gaussian fnl model. Then I will discuss how to extend the excursion set approach to compute the halo mass function when the primordial perturbation is non-Gaussian. The result will then compare with measurements from N-body simulations.
Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the seminar.