CAREER: Probing Fundamental Physics and Cosmic Structure by Maximizing the Impact of Next Generation Microwave Surveys

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The researcher will build a new instrument to study the most distant signals arriving on Earth, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). These faint radio signals are thought to originate from the Hot Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe. The expansion of the Universe has shifted these signals from the very hot initial conditions down the faint and cold signal we observe today. The researcher plans to design and construct a new, much more sensitive, instrument for investigation of the CMB. With students, the investigator will mount this instrument on a radio telescope and address the most important questions in cosmology and physics, measuring special features of the radio signals and comparing the data to predictions of quantum gravity and general relativity. The investigator's plan also includes activities aimed at educating the public, with activities for community members with diverse backgrounds and education levels. The outreach effort includes adding experiments to a high-school level lending library and creating videos showing their instrument under construction and in use. Because of the high sensitivity instrument to be built, the efforts funded by this award may also eventually have application to a number of technological areas, including manufacturing, remote sensing and medicine. The instrument will help answer a number of critical questions: 1) probing modified gravity via galaxy cluster velocities that could dramatically alter our view of general relativity; 2) probing the early universe inflation in new regimes, which have the potential to transform our understanding of high-energy physics and quantum gravity; 3) make high signal-to-noise measurements of the neutrino mass sum and cosmological parameters via CMB polarization, gravitational lensing, and galaxy clusters; and 4) stronger constraints on dark energy via cross-correlations with next generation optical surveys (such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope).