Chasing Inflation – John Ruhl
Date: Thu. April 17th, 2014, 4:15 pm-5:15 pmLocation: Rockefeller 301
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has provided one of our most robust and powerful tools for learning about the contents and history of the universe. Temperature anisotropies mapped over a wide range of angular scales have given strong support to the basic 6-parameter “Inflationary Lambda Cold Dark Matter” cosmological model, and allowed us to measure those parameters exquisitely. For the past decade, several teams have been building instruments to search for a potential new signal from Inflation in the polarization of the CMB, of which the Bicep2 collaboration recently reported a detection. In this talk I will describe that signal, provide an overview of the SPIDER and SPTpol programs, and look to the future of CMB cosmology.