Information field theory for cosmological perturbation reconstruction and non-linear signal analysis

by Dr Enßlin Torsten (MPA Garching)

Tuesday 27 Oct 2009, 16:45 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

Imager reconstruction, large-scale-structure mapping and investigations of the cosmic microwave background have ot deal with complex inverse problems for spatial distributed quantities. To tackle such problems in a systematic way, I present information field theory (IFT) as a means of Bayesian, data based inference on spatially distributed signals, the information fields. IFT is a statistical field theory, which permits the construction of optimal signal recovery algorithms. Free IFT reproduces the well known Wiener-filter theory. Interacting IFT can be diagrammatically expanded, approached with renormalisation schemes, and examined in the classical limit, which is known in signal processing as maximum-a-posteriori. The theory should be applicable to many fields. However, here, cosmological signal recovery problems are discussed in detail in their IFT-formulation: The reconstruction of the cosmic large-scale structure from galaxy surveys and the investigations of the cosmic microwave background radiation for non-Gaussianities from inflation and other peculiarities.