Statistical Techniques for the Analysis of High Resolution CMB Data

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

AST-0707731 Spergel This project is an international collaboration between Princeton University and Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) to develop statistical tools to analyze data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), an NSF-funded telescope in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The techniques, although tuned to the ACT data, will be useful for analyzing any high-resolution Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment. The first measurements made with these tools will be the power spectrum of temperature fluctuations in the microwave background, and mass fluctuations along the line-of-sight. By combining simulations and analytical theory, the research group will compute the full covariance matrix and its inverse, and compute the likelihood of the observed values for diverse cosmological models. Applying these techniques to the ACT data will improve measurements of the mass density of the Universe, the density of atoms, the properties of the dark energy, and the properties of the neutrino. Measuring dark energy and dark matter provides insight into fundamental physics and the fate of the universe. Measuring CMB fluctuations and the growth of structure opens a window to the earliest moments of the big bang. These results will likely be of broad popular interest, even as this research trains undergraduate and graduate students in widely applicable statistical techniques, and engages them in a substantive international collaboration. Releasing the user friendly likelihood software along with the data will help a broad group of cosmologists, astrophysicists, and particle physicists.