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Caltech

▶︎ CANCELED: High Energy Physics Seminar

Monday, April 13, 2020
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Lauritsen 469
Learning Cosmology from the First Starts
Julian Muñoz, Harvard University,

I will describe how, over the next few years, early-universe measurements of the 21-cm line of hydrogen will provide a trove of new cosmological information. I will focus on the cosmic-dawn era, which saw the formation of the first stars. The radiation from these stars excited neutral hydrogen and allowed it to absorb 21-cm photons from the cosmic microwave background (CMB). I will begin by showing how to use the 21-cm signal to search for dark-matter interactions with our sector. Then, I will illustrate how the timing of the 21-cm signal, which is dictated by the formation of the small minihalos that hosted the first stars, can be used to tightly constrain whether dark matter is cold and collisionless. Finally, I will explain how the acoustic physics of recombination become imprinted onto the 21-cm fluctuations, resulting in robust velocity-induced acoustic oscillations (VAOs) in the expected signal. These act as a new standard ruler during cosmic dawn, bridging the gap in measurements of the expansion rate of our universe between us and the CMB.

For more information, please visit http://theory.caltech.edu/people/carol/seminar.html.