String Theory seminar - Harry Goodhew Seminar

Abstract: The initial conditions of our universe appear to us in the form of a classical probability distribution that we probe with cosmological observations. In the current leading paradigm, this probability distribution arises from a quantum mechanical wavefunction of the universe. In this talk I will discuss how quantum mechanics imprints on the late time observables, in particular showing that the requirement of unitary time evolution, colloquially the conservation of probabilities, fixes the analytic structure of the wavefunction and of all the cosmological correlators it encodes.