Juan Maldacena

We discuss the possibility of devising cosmological observables which violate Bell's inequalities. Such observables could be used to argue that cosmic scale features were produced by quantum mechanical effects in the very early universe. As a proof of principle, we propose a somewhat elaborate inflationary model where a Bell inequality violating observable can be constructed.

Stefano Anselmi, Glenn D. Starkman, Ravi K. Sheth

We propose a new way of looking at the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Large Scale Structure clustering correlation function. We identify a scale s_LP that has two fundamental features: its position is insensitive to non-linear gravity, redshift space distortions, and scale-dependent bias at the 0.5% level; it is geometrical, i.e. independent of the power spectrum of the primordial density fluctuation parameters. These two properties together make s_LP, called the "linear point", an excellent cosmological standard ruler. The linear point is also appealing because it is easily identified irrespectively of how non-linearities distort the correlation function. Finally, the correlation function amplitude at s_LP is similarly insensitive to non-linear corrections to within a few percent. Hence, exploiting the particular Baryon features in the correlation function, we propose three new estimators for growth measurements. A preliminary analysis of s_LP in current data is encouraging.