Here are a selection of talks I have given in the last few years:
Current and future probes of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) aim to measure the CMB intensity and polarisation with ever increasing precision. An exciting prospect is that polarisation data could contain evidence for cosmic birefringence – the rotation of the plane of polarisation of CMB photons. Observing anisotropic birefringence is a smoking gun signal of “hyperlight” axion string networks. We explore how cosmic birefringence can be studied using Planck T, Q, and U maps and report upper limits on axion string parameters in simplified models.
A presentation I gave when I was a senior undergrad on the topic of Spooky Inflation. The main takeaway here is that existing CMB data might show hints of nonlocal coherence effects from quantum gravity.