Enabling a New Era of Cosmic Microwave Background Measurements

Vavagiakis, Eve Marie, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Eve Vavagiakis is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at Cornell and Princeton universities. Vavagiakis will undertake a program of data analysis and instrumentation development to advance the use of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies such as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect for cosmological measurements. Results from the project will allow astronomers to understand properties of galaxy clusters and shed light on galaxy evolution and cosmology. For the education component of this project, Vavagiakis will conduct astronomy outreach to local high schools, develop educational materials to accompany a children’s book series featuring modern NSF-funded experiments, and provide research mentoring for underserved and underrepresented students. This research project will enable the highest significance measurement of the pairwise kinetic SZ effect and advance future SZ measurements to constrain fundamental physics. To achieve this goal, Vavagiakis will: analyze CMB maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope combined with data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument; deploy a cryogenic array camera based on kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) that she designed for early science with a new submillimeter telescope; and develop an extended multifrequency pipeline for SZ analyses for existing and planned CMB telescopes. By demonstrating the background-limited sensitivity of KIDs, this project might help establish them as detectors of choice for future millimeter and submillimeter telescopes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.