Cosmological Polytopes and Beyond - From Bunch-Davies Wavefunctions to Optical Polytopes

Explore fundamental physics and cosmology in this one-hour conference talk from the Amplituhedra, Cluster Algebras, and Positive Geometry Conference at Harvard CMSA. Delve into a gentle introduction to cosmological polytopes as presented by Paolo Benincasa from MPI, examining how they describe the Bunch-Davies wavefunction for scalar theories. Learn about emerging combinatorial structures in cosmology, including optical polytopes and weighted cosmological polytopes, which demonstrate non-convex and weighted geometries. Gain insights into how these mathematical structures contribute to our understanding of fundamental questions in physics and their applications in describing cosmological phenomena.