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Organized by: Prof. Lu Lu


Cosmology with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array
Date: Tuesday, February 7th
Time: 4:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Daniel Jacobs, Arizona State
Abstract: Measurements of the distribution of matter on cosmological scales have played a transformational role in our understanding of the standard model revealing that most of the energy of the universe remains unaccounted for by the standard model. Observations of Hydrogen via the highly redshifted 21 cm line trace out the matter distribution on large scales at epochs of cosmic time unreachable by most other methods to give us another cosmological matter tracer. The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array, which is currently under construction will be the first instrument to bring sufficient sensitivity to characterize the 21cm signal and break degeneracies in cosmological measurements to improve several parameters including the sum of the neutrino masses. Much can also be learned about the formation of structure and the very first stars and black holes. Applying the same techniques to nearby frequency bands, arrays like Tienlai in China and CHIME in Canada are working towards better constraints on the dark energy equation of state. The experimental challenge for all is in discriminating faint background from bright foregrounds. To meet this challenge I am building new methods of precision instrument construction, calibration, and analysis methods. In this talk we’ll learn about a couple of these efforts including the development of drone-based calibration and scalable cloud analysis for PB-scale data sets. Finally we'll look briefly to the future where large instruments are being built by the international community and even larger are considered by the US high energy/cosmology community for the next decade.
Host: Sridhara Dasu
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