The Department of Astronomy at the University of Science and Technology of China, and, the CAS Key Laboratory of Cosmology and Galaxy, will host the annual NSFC "Galaxies and Quasars" Innovation Group Workshop Series - 2017 CfA@USTC Junior Cosmology Symposium: Early Universe & Ali CMB Polarization Telescope from March 3rd to 5th at the city of Hefei. All young experts in relevant fields are most welcome.
Paradigms of the very early universe, such as inflation and bounce cosmologies, are able to address various conceptual issues of the tradiational hot big bang cosmology. These theoretical hypotheses can also provide primordial origins for the formation of the large scale structure (LSS) of our universe, including galaxies, clusters, voids and other plentiful giants, as observed in various experiments, which are vacuum quantum fluctuations in a primordial era. By virtue of accummulated cosmological observations, such as the successful measurements of the temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the matter power spectrum of the LSS, we are now able to precisely examine the theoretical predictions made by these cosmological paradigms. Except for the primordial density fluctuations of scalar type, there exist quantum ripples of the spacetime in the very early universe, i.e., primordial gravitational waves (GWs). These waves would carry abundant information about the dynamics of our universe at very early times. Thus, the experimental survey of primordial GWs will not only allow us to explore the dynamics of the very early universe and then further to examine various cosmological models, but also may push our recognition of the universe back to the moment right after the big bang, which is close to the world of quantum gravity.
Since the energy scale of the universe was extremely high in this epoch, the amplitudes of primordial GWs could be large enough to affect the physics at late times. In particular they will lead to specific imprints in the B-mode of CMB polarizations. These signals, however, experience red-shifting and will damp away within the frequency band sensitive to astronomical instruments. Only the amplitudes of primordial GWs at cosmological scales will survive throughout the cosmic expansion, since their physical wavelengths are of the order of the observed universe today. In order to probe these signals, a major effort ought to be devoted to the design of cosmological experiments, i.e. high precision measurements of the CMB polarization.
With the aforementioned motivation, the project of Ali CMB Polarization Telescope (AliCPT), which aims at measuring the polarization patterns of the CMB, has been put forward, which is led by the Institute of High Energy Physics at Chinese Academy of Sciences and collaborated with a number of institutions around the world. This project under design in the Ngari area of Tibet will be the first CMB experiment in China, and also the first ground-based CMB experiment in the northern hemisphere of the Earth. Its scientific goal is to realize the deep survey of the CMB polarizations in the north sky, and combined with other international CMB experiments, to search for evidence of primordial gravitational waves.
In order to improve academic interactions of young scholars in related fields, we organize this meeting and call for oral talks and posters to report the latest progresses on a number of hot topics including, theoretical studies of various very early universe models, their observational tests in the new generation of the CMB experiments, in particular, the future research directions that may be provoded by AliCPT.
Additionally, in order to inspire the research interest of young graduate students in the field of cosmology, the Department of Astronomy at USTC and the Department of Physics at Fudan University will host the Spring School on “Early Universe Cosmology: Theory and Observations” from February the 26th 2017, Sunday, to March the 3rd 2017, Friday. The school will be held in the Handan Road campus of Fudan University. All graduate students in the field of cosmology, high energy astrophysics as well as theoretical physics are most welcome to attend the School. More information can be found here.
Organizing committee: Yi-Fu Cai, Wenjuan Fang, Hong Li, Mingzhe Li, Antonino Marciano, Taotao Qiu, Larissa Santos, Youping Wan, He Xu, Xinmin Zhang, Yang Zhang, Wen Zhao
Sponsors:
The NSFC "Galaxies and Quasars" Innovation Group
Department of Astronomy, School of Physical Sciences, USTC
CAS Key Laboratory of Cosmology and Galaxy
The NSFC Director Fund for AliCPT
The Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS
The Interdisciplinary Center for Theoretical Study, USTC
The Institute of Astrophysics, Central China Normal University
Department of Physics, Fudan University