Speaker
Description
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements and other observations, combined with relatively basic theory, allow us to extrapolate back to when our Universe had a temperature $>10^{12}$ Kelvin, and to infer the very particular set of conditions which pertained at that time - almost uniform plasma with adiabatic, Gaussian, scale-free perturbations. The leading hypothesis for how those conditions were set up posits a brief burst of exponential hyper-expansion---the so-called Inflation theory. If inflation did occur it will have injected into the fabric of spacetime a background of gravitational waves, which may be detectable through their imprint in the CMB polarization pattern.
The current world leaders in the quest to detect this signal are the BICEP/Keck experiments which are located at the South Pole in Antarctica. I will describe the existing BK18 results as well as the experimental progress since then, and the prospect for a next generation "de-lensed" result in conjunction with the South Pole Telescope (SPT).
