BIO

I am a second-year student, originally from Belize, who loves math and physics. I particularly like these two fields because physics tries to understand how our universe works and functions, using the language of mathematics, and math has always been interesting to me from a young age. Moreover, there are a lot of unexplained phenomena in space and the universe, which further motivated me to pursue astrophysics. I try to seek out physics research opportunities to build my experience and prepare for graduate school; however, I am always open to maths research.

Measuring the Temperature Variations of the Early Universe

Abstract

Cosmology is a unique field of physics that asks questions such as, “How was the universe created?”, “Why does it have the cosmological structure it does?”, and “What is the evolution of our universe in the future?” Although these are tough questions to answer, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) discovery in 1965 ushered in a new era for cosmologists (Penzias and Wilson). The CMB provides data on the light from the universe when it was 300,000 years old (Hu and Dodelson) and by mapping that light, we can get an accurate picture of the early universe that can be analyzed by computing a power spectrum over the map. Gathering CMB data also comes with unwanted information from sources such as ground obscuration or galactic contamination (Hivon et al.). As a result, we would only be able to compute a power spectrum over the uncontaminated part of the sky. Fortunately, Hivon et al. have already described a method to convert the pseudo-power spectra (the power spectrum of the partial sky) into a power spectrum for the whole sky using the MASTER (Monte Carlo Apodised Spherical Transform EstimatoR) method.

Keywords: Cosmology, Temperature Variations, CMB, Early Universe