Gravitational Waves From Inflation

该项目由探索性研究机制小额赠款资助，对1999-2000年南极站的宇宙微波背景辐射的偏振模式进行了探索性研究。该项目涉及在现有望远镜上安装新的传感器系统，并制定观测协议。宇宙微波背景辐射是大爆炸后大约30万年发生的宇宙学事件的残余，当时膨胀和冷却的宇宙不再能够维持未分化的等离子体。对背景辐射(各向异性)中微小温差的持续和成功的搜索意味着，原始等离子体实际上并不是完全均匀的，但这种差异是存在的，这将产生引力波，其表达形式(今天)存在于背景辐射的偏振场的旋度中。对这一场的分析似乎是目前获得关于这场30万年事件之前宇宙状态的任何信息的唯一途径。微波背景的极化是宇宙学中一个极其活跃的领域，正在进行几项重大研究，具有重要意义，因为结果应该更好地约束基本宇宙常数，并定义我们对宇宙演化状态的看法。

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.