- March 14, 2022, 2:00 pm US/Central
- Erminia Calabrese, Cardiff University
Abstract: During the last two decades the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has provided a unique window into the early Universe and established the Standard Cosmological Model. However, despite constraining cosmological parameters with sub-percent precision, many fundamental questions about the Universe are still unanswered and to advance the field new, more powerful CMB data are being collected, analysed and planned for. In particular, high-resolution CMB observations from ground-based experiments provide constraints on a large number of extensions to the standard cosmological model, and will play a key role in future cosmological results. Assuming that contamination from Galactic and extra-galactic emission can be kept under control, damping tail data from ground-based CMB experiments inform us on the properties of the primordial scalar fluctuations, on the particle and dark matter content of the Universe, on the Universe evolution and on the epoch of reionization. The Atacama desert in Chile is a prime location for these observations, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) is one of the leading experiments currently operating and will be superseded by the new Simons Observatory (SO) from 2023.