Measuring Rayleigh Scattering of the Cosmic Microwave Background with CCAT-prime

Steve Choi被授予美国国家科学基金会天文学和天体物理学博士后奖学金，负责康奈尔大学的研究和教育项目。他将在开发和部署一种仪器以测量太空中氢原子对宇宙微波背景(CMB)光子的散射方面发挥主导作用。这些测量将促进我们对早期宇宙物理学的理解。除了这项研究，他还将为服务不足的小学生开展物理丰富活动。该项目将在阿塔卡马沙漠正在建设的CCAT-PRIME望远镜上测试和集成动感探测器阵列。该阵列将允许测量CMB光子的瑞利散射，这取决于光子的频率，因此可能是比汤姆森散射更敏感的CMB各向异性探测器。这些测量可以显著改善对宇宙学观测数据的限制，包括相对论物种的数量、宇宙当前的膨胀率和中微子的质量总和。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Steve Choi is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct a program of research and education at Cornell University. He will play a lead role in developing and deploying an instrument to measure the scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons by hydrogen atoms in space. The measurements will advance our understanding of the physics of the early universe. Along with this research, he will conduct physics enrichment activities for underserved elementary school kids.This project will test and integrate arrays of kinetic inductance detectors on the CCAT-prime telescope under construction in the Atacama Desert. The arrays will allow measurements of Rayleigh scattering of CMB photons, which depends on the frequency of the photons, and is thus a potentially more sensitive probe of CMB anisotropies than Thomson scattering. The measurements could significantly improve constraints on cosmological observables including the number of relativistic species, the current expansion rate of the universe, and the mass sum of neutrinos.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.