Kirit Karkare is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct a program of research and education at the University of Chicago. He will play a lead role in developing instrumentation and conducting observations to study the large-scale structure of the distant universe. Results from this project will advance our understanding of the physics of the early universe. Along with this research, he will develop a program of public outreach that connects artists from underserved Chicago communities to scientists at the University of Chicago.
This project will advance the instrumentation and analysis necessary to develop line intensity mapping (IM) as a probe of large-scale structure. It will test the performance of the millimeter-wave spectrometer and kinetic inductance detectors on the SuperSpec instrument and analyze IM observations of singly ionized carbon and carbon monoxide. It will also develop a software pipeline to assess scan and noise reduction, and it will test a novel foreground cleaning algorithm to isolate the cosmological signal.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
