HEP/Astro Journal Club -- Wednesday, 31 May 2000

Measuring the Anisotropy in the CMB: Current Status and Future Prospects

Lyman Page, (Princeton)

Abstract

The anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is arguably our best cosmological observable. If one of the currently favored cosmologies proves correct, then the cosmological parameters may be straightforwardly determined from the CMB angular spectrum. Last millennium, a feature in the angular spectrum was identified, by combinations of experiments and the TOCO experiment alone, that showed that the universe is spatially flat. This result has been beautifully confirmed and expanded upon by the recent Boomerang and Maxima experiments. The flatness, coupled with measurements of clusters of galaxies which imply a subcritical matter density, suggests the need for some sort of "cosmological constant." This conclusion is independent of the supernovae results. The talk will focus on recent experiments and NASA's MAP satellite.

3:30pm, Smith Lab 4079

George T. Fleming ( gfleming@mps.ohio-state.edu ), last updated 31 May 2000.