Gravitational Waves From Inflation

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This project, funded under the Small Grants for Exploratory Research mechanism, is an exploratory study of the polarization pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation at South Pole station in the 1999-2000 austral summer season and the following austral winter. The project involves the installation of a new sensor system in an existing telescope, and the development of an observing protocol. The cosmic microwave background radiation is the remnant of a cosmological event that occurred approximately 300,000 years after the big bang when the expanding and cooling universe could no longer sustain undifferentiated plasma. The on-going, and successful, search for small temperature differences in the background radiation (anisotropies) implies that the primordial plasma was in fact not totally homogenous, but that differences existed, which would have induced gravitational waves whose expression (today) exists in the curl of the polarization field of the background radiation. It appears that the analysis of this field is currently the only way of obtaining any information about the state of the universe prior to the 300,000-year event.The polarization of the microwave background is an extremely active area at the forefront of cosmology with several major investigations under way, and has great significance since the results should better constrain the fundamental cosmological constants, and define our thinking about the evolutionary state of the universe.