Probing the Primordial Universe with Galaxy Clustering and Shapes
One of the primary goals of cosmology is to elucidate the origin of structure in the Universe. The currently most widely accepted paradigm is the theory of inflation, an epoch of extremely rapid expansion at a very early phase in the history of the Universe. A significant effort in cosmology is directed toward testing this hypothesis, culminating recently in the claimed detection of primordial gravitational waves by the BICEP2 team. I will show how we can use the clustering of galaxies, as well as statistics of their observed shapes, to learn about the physics of inflation and to potentially confirm the BICEP2 detection by completely independent means. These results point to a fascinating connection between the largest observable scales in the cosmos and physics at energies far beyond the reach of accelerators on Earth.