Abstract:
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has been providing us with a wealth of information for cosmology. Can we learn more from the CMB apart from its primary anisotropies? I shall present the next frontiers of CMB research: the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect, Weak Lensing of the CMB (WL of CMB) and Kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect. In order to understand the gravitational potential (and thus cosmological parameters such as dark energy and curvature) of the Universe, we study the ISW effect and weak lensing of the CMB using the following datasets: WMAP, 2MASS, SDSS LRGs and Quasars, and NVSS. We perform a joint analysis of all samples, allowing a reliable covariance matrix to be constructed - including all the cross-correlations of different samples, which is necessary for joint cosmological parameter fitting. I present results from the first likelihood analysis of ISW and WL of CMB, that allows all cosmological parameters to vary. This also places cosmological constraints on parameters of the Universe such as curvature and dark energy equation of state. I will also discuss the prospects of using the kSZ effect as the first tool for systematically mapping the baryon density of the Universe. More specifically, I will present predictions for various on-going and upcoming surveys such as ADEPT with ACT/SPT/APEX and SDSS with PLANCK.
Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the seminar.