Dr. Brian Keating, at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), will use the microwave Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) experiment to study cosmic inflation, and to test alternative models. The critical observational test of inflation is detection of the gravitational-wave background (GWB) that inflation generically produces. A promising way to detect this GWB is by its imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). BICEP employs polarimeter technology invented by the PI to investigate cosmic reionization, interstellar dust, and the inflationary GWB from CMB polarization measurements. Specific aspects of this study include; 1) constraining inflations energy scale to within three times the ultimate cosmic limit; 2) detecting cosmic reionization; and 3) probing large-scale galactic magnetic fields and interstellar dust polarization.
Dr Keatings education and public outreach (E/PO) plan is modeled on the program he initiated as an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow (AAPF). The first project uses the radio telescope he constructed as an AAPF, to initiate a UCSD physics course in astronomical instrumentation and to measure polarized radio emission and the CMB itself. The PI will work to broaden the impact of his project as an upgrade to the NSF-funded Small Radio Telescope (SRT) project. The second E/PO effort is a project-based learning program with a new local high school. The project explores the challenges that face satellite mission designers and builds upon his experience and resources as a co-I for a NASA future mission concept study.
The NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences and the Office of Polar Programs jointly fund this award.
telescope observed at the South Pole from 2005 to 2008. In three observing seasons, BICEP detected polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation and the Milky Way galaxy in three frequency bands, 100, 150, and 220 GHz. The BICEP receiver is based on a refracting telescope design with lenses cooled to 4 Kelvin and a 49 pixel (98 bolometer) focal plane cooled to 0.25 Kelvin. If the inflationary scenario is correct, at an extremely early epoch after the Big Bang, a stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves was produced. These gravitational waves persisted until the epoch of recombination and imprinted the CMB with a distinct polarization pattern called "B-mode" polarization. In 2009 BICEP set the first limit on the energy scale of inflation using the B-mode polarization of the CMB. BICEP has paved the way for high sensitivity, low systematic observations of the polarization of the CMB which may offer the only glimpse of physics at the GUT-scale. In addition, the BICEP team has made the first observations of polarized galactic emission from the Milky Way's dust at 220 GHz. This emission represents a foreground with the potential to limit the ability of CMB polarimetry to detect the B-mode signature of inflation. BICEP's observations have helped to refine our knowledge of potential contaminants over a wide range of millimeter wave frequencies -- where the CMB B-mode signature is maximized. In 2007 Prof. Brian Keating was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers at the White House for his design and development of BICEP.
