Newton International Fellowship Scheme 2022

Understanding the formation and evolution of our Universe since the very beginning of time has been the dream of mankind, and it has been the obsession of theoretical physicists from the dawn of the current century. Mysteries about the origins of our Universe can be unraveled by knowing how gravity and matter interact at fundamental energies and length scales. This is often called the regime of quantum gravity and the ultraviolet completion of all fundamental forces of nature. A paradigm called cosmic inflation remarkably explains the homogeneity and isotropy of our Universe by introducing an early exponential expansion in a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The physics of our Universe at the energy scales of cosmic inflation can be measured through temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, Primordial Gravitational Waves, and primordial imprints in the Large Scale Structure of our Universe. Theoretical and observational cosmology are fields of research that require indelible input from each other, and this is exactly the theme of this research proposal. The exciting aspects of this research are that we will map uncharted territories of research in theoretical cosmology; we target the understanding of how gravitational and matter degrees of freedom are fundamentally non-local in nature (a vital feature for quantum gravity) can leave non-trivial imprints in the cosmological, gravitational wave and astrophysical observations. A novel aspect of this proposal is that we consistently bring together quantum gravity, particle physics, and both theoretical and observational cosmology.