Speaker
Prof.
John Carlstrom
(University of Chicago)
Description
Cosmic Microwave Background measurements play a key role in the exploration of the cosmic frontier. The remarkably high degree of isotropy in the CMB led to the inflation theory for the origin of our universe, through exponential expansion of quantum fluctuations at the GUT energy scales. Further CMB measurements showed the curvature of the universe is flat and that the distribution of the primordial scalar fluctuations are nearly, but not exactly, scale invariant, again consistent with inflation. CMB measurements have also provided a full inventory of the components of the energy-density of the universe, showing that dark matter is non-baryonic and confirming that the universe is dominated today by dark energy. The current goal of ongoing and future CMB measurements is to explore the nature of the dark energy and to determine the energy of inflation. The field continues to be driven by advances in detectors and measurement techniques. In particular, the goal of the pola
rization measurements to search for the inflationary gravitation waves, is to obtain sensitivities of order tens of nanoKelvins. This talk will review the current status of CMB measurements and the new developments being pursued to probe the inflationary epoch.
Author
Prof.
John Carlstrom
(University of Chicago)
