Cosmology and Astrophysics with the Once and Future Microwave Background

Andrew Jaffe (University of California, Berkeley)

2.30 pm Monday March 26

In the past decade, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has become an observational tool for studying the early universe in great detail. I outline the physics that make it well-suited for this task, and the impact of recent data from the MAXIMA and BOOMERANG experiments. I will highlight the data analysis issues that make the task especially challenging, and the scientific results that make the challenges worthwhile. In particular, I will show how these results measure the geometry of the Universe, and, when combined with other cosmological observations, begin to pin down the constituents of the Universe: baryons, dark matter, and, to the chagrin of theorists, something very like a cosmological constant. Finally, I will talk about what else the CMB can teach us, as we finally measure its polarization, and as we peer at it with ever-higher resolution and sensitivity, opening windows on both the very early universe and the epoch of galaxy formation.