Speaker
Description
Over the next several years, more sensitive measurements of the polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are poised to lead to substantial improvements in cosmological constraints. On degree angular scales, the amplitude of the B-mode polarization gives a constraint on the energy scale of cosmic Inflation, with measurements in the next several years improving constraints by an order of magnitude. On intermediate angular scales, the CMB polarization anisotropy gives constraints on a range of physics, including the abundance of light relic particle species, the mass of the neutrino, and dark energy. I will describe the experimental landscape pushing these new frontiers of CMB measurements, focusing on the South Pole Telescope (SPT-3G, SPT-3G+) and the BICEP Array (BA) experiment, which combined form the South Pole Observatory (SPO), and the Simons Observatory (SO) in Chile. I will also describe recent and upcoming results, which are forecasted to reduce the allowed Lambda-CDM cosmological parameter space by a factor of 100, with the potential to resolve some of the current cosmic tensions and improve our understanding of the physics of the Universe.