Video From APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM: Chao-Lin Kuo, Stanford University - “Knowing the Unknowable — The Experimental Study of Inflation”
APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
3:30 p.m. on campus in Hewlett Teaching Center, Rm. 200
Light refreshments served in Varian lobby at 3:15 p.m. Please register to attend: https://forms.gle/RLLL4PXPhhkMKt326
Please wear face coverings and practice social distancing
In-person attendance limited to Stanford affiliates
Zoom webinar link: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/99271377983
Password: email dmoreau@stanford for password
Chao-Lin Kuo Stanford University
“Knowing the Unknowable — The Experimental Study of Inflation”
Inflation as the physical process of Big Bang explains many properties of the observable universe, including the density fluctuations and the large-scale geometry. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss how measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization can provide a crucial piece of information on inflation – its energy scale. I will discuss the status of the South Pole-based BICEP experiment and its recent results that limit the tensor-to-scalar ratio r to <0.036 (sigma=0.009). This direct measurement of inflationary energy scale rules out many once-promising models. I will describe the future of the project, which looks to improve this measurement by a factor of 3 in the next few years.