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Events on Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

Department Meeting
Time: 12:15 pm
Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
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Faculty Candidate Seminar
Exploring Fundamental Physics through Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Time: 4:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Bradford Benson, University of Chicago
Abstract: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a unique window into the early universe and cosmology. The CMB is generated by well-understood dynamics, only ~400,000 years after the Big Bang, that enables precise calculation of its observable features and which directly connects new measurements to fundamental physics. I will discuss the latest measurements of the CMB by the South Pole Telescope (SPT), including the first detection of a curl-only component (B-modes) in the polarization of the CMB by SPTpol. I will describe the instrumentation and detector technology in development for next-generation experiments, including SPT's next camera, SPT-3G, and a future ground-based CMB experiment, CMB-S4. The science goals of these experiments aim to answer some of the most exciting questions in cosmology: to differentiate between dark energy and modified gravity to explain the origin of cosmic acceleration, to test and constrain physics at grand-unified theory energy scales (~1e16 GeV), to measure the sum of the neutrino masses at a sensitivity below the minimum mass expected from neutrino oscillations (<0.06 eV), and to precisely constrain the relativistic energy density of the universe and any "dark radiation" component.
Host: Albrecht Karle/Peter Timbie
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