What can we learn from the polarization of the cosmic microwave background? скачать в хорошем качестве

What can we learn from the polarization of the cosmic microwave background?

The Compass Lectures, Fall 2025 Lecture 2: What can we learn from the polarization of the cosmic microwave background? Speaker: Nicole Farias, PhD Candidate in Physics Date: Friday, September 26, 2025 Talk Description: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a radiation that has been travelling through the entire universe since approximately the time of the Big Bang. While the CMB is mostly uniform across the sky, small variations (anisotropies) tell us a lot about what the universe looked like at its infancy. Measurements of the temperature anisotropies have been paramount to the development of lambda CDM, the standard model of cosmology. Current CMB telescopes are dedicated to measurements of polarization anisotropies, which could confirm the leading theory of cosmic inflation. In this talk I will discuss how polarization measurements help search for inflation and reveal other physics from our cosmological history. Speaker Bio: Nicole is a 6th-year PhD student working on experimental cosmology with Prof. Adrian Lee. She is part of two international collaborations, Simons Array and LiteBIRD, which aim to make sensitive polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background. Her work has been focused on instrument development and characterization for the two experiments. ==================================================== The Compass Lecture Series is a collection of research talks given by UC Berkeley Math and Physical Sciences (MPS) faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduates. These talks are unique among UC Berkeley MPS lectures in that they are designed for an undergraduate audience. The goal of the lecture series is to introduce undergrads to as many areas of research as possible using language and concepts they can understand without having advanced prior knowledge of any particular field. The Fall 2025 lectures took place in a hybrid format on Fridays at 3:10 PM in 375 Physics North / 325 Physics South, UC Berkeley and via Zoom. ==================================================== Visit our website: https://compass.studentorg.berkeley.edu