BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:UW-Madison-Physics-Events BEGIN:VEVENT SEQUENCE:0 UID:UW-Physics-Event-2229 DTSTART:20111006T193000Z DTEND:20111006T203000Z DTSTAMP:20260313T110611Z LAST-MODIFIED:20110903T131027Z LOCATION:4274 Chamberlin Hall SUMMARY:Going to the ends of the earth to glimpse the beginnings of ti me: Observing the Big Bang with the BICEP Telescope at the South Pole\ , NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum\, Brian Keating\, UCSD Dep artment of Physics DESCRIPTION:The Background Imager of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) experiment is the first cosmic microwave background (CMB) pol arimeter designed to measure the "B-mode" polarization of the CMB\, hy pothesized to originate during the Inflationary epoch. Beginning in 20 06 BICEP observed 3% of the sky from our observatory at the Amundsen-S cott South Pole Research Station in Antarctica. In this colloquium I w ill present our initial results and discuss the unique design features of BICEP which led to the first meaningful limits on the energy scale of Inflation to come from CMB polarization. Soon after BICEP's initia l results were released\, a publication (Xia\, Li & Zhang\, 2009)\, c laimed a first-detection of parity-violating "cosmic birefringence" ef fects using publicly available BICEP data. I will discuss the challeng es of polarimetry at the few parts per billion level and explain why s ystematic effects are particularly pernicious for probes of cosmic par ity violation. I will conclude by discussing how BICEP and its success or\, BICEP2\, currently in its second observing season at the South Po le will constrain Inflationary cosmology and future measurements of co smic birefringence.
\n URL:https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=2229 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR