NPA Seminar: Sasha Rahlin, Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics, “SPT-3G: Constraining High Energy Physics from the Cosmic Microwave Background”

Event time: 
Thursday, April 19, 2018 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Wright Lab (WL), 216 See map
272 Whitney Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

The South Pole Telescope is designed to study the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at high resolution over a wide range of angular scales. The statistics of the CMB anisotropies are quite consistent with a simple model of a universe whose energy content is made up of cold dark matter and a cosmological constant. However, the CMB also has the power to place constraints on physics beyond this standard cosmological model, such as gravitational signatures from the very early universe, the sum of neutrino masses, and the effective number of relativistic species. SPT-3G, the most recent camera installed on the telescope, saw first light in January 2017, and began a 1500 square-degree survey of the microwave sky in early 2018. The instrument employs over 15,000 trichroic polarization-sensitive cryogenic detectors with a resolution of 1.5 arcminutes across a 2-degree field of view for unprecedented sensitivity toward characterizing the CMB. I will provide an overview of the instrument and the science goals we plan to achieve over the coming years, as well as how SPT-3G fits into the broader cosmology community.