Enabling a New Era of Cosmic Microwave Background Measurements

Eve Vavagiakis被授予NSF天文学和天体物理奖学金，以在康奈尔和普林斯顿大学开展一项研究和教育计划。Vavagiakis将开展一项数据分析和仪器开发计划，以促进利用宇宙微波背景(CMB)各向异性，如Sunyaev-Zel‘dovich(SZ)效应进行宇宙学测量。该项目的结果将使天文学家能够了解星系团的性质，并为星系演化和宇宙学提供线索。对于该项目的教育部分，Vavagiakis将对当地高中进行天文学推广，开发教材来配合一系列儿童书籍，介绍NSF资助的现代实验，并为服务不足和代表性不足的学生提供研究指导。该研究项目将使成对动力学SZ效应的最高重要性测量成为可能，并推进未来的SZ测量，以约束基础物理。为了实现这一目标，Vavagiakis将：分析来自阿塔卡马宇宙望远镜的CMB地图并结合来自暗能量光谱仪的数据；利用她为早期科学设计的动感探测器(KILD)来安装低温阵列相机；以及开发一个新的亚毫米望远镜平台；以及开发一个扩展的多频管道，用于对现有和计划中的CMB望远镜进行SZ分析。通过展示儿童对背景有限的敏感性，该项目可能有助于将他们确立为未来毫米和亚毫米望远镜的探测器选择。该奖项反映了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。

Eve Vavagiakis is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at Cornell and Princeton universities. Vavagiakis will undertake a program of data analysis and instrumentation development to advance the use of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies such as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect for cosmological measurements. Results from the project will allow astronomers to understand properties of galaxy clusters and shed light on galaxy evolution and cosmology. For the education component of this project, Vavagiakis will conduct astronomy outreach to local high schools, develop educational materials to accompany a children’s book series featuring modern NSF-funded experiments, and provide research mentoring for underserved and underrepresented students.This research project will enable the highest significance measurement of the pairwise kinetic SZ effect and advance future SZ measurements to constrain fundamental physics. To achieve this goal, Vavagiakis will: analyze CMB maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope combined with data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument; deploy a cryogenic array camera based on kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) that she designed for early science with a new submillimeter telescope; and develop an extended multifrequency pipeline for SZ analyses for existing and planned CMB telescopes. By demonstrating the background-limited sensitivity of KIDs, this project might help establish them as detectors of choice for future millimeter and submillimeter telescopes.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.