Science of SLAC | BICEP at the South Pole: Finding Fingerprints of the Big Bang

How did the universe begin? This is one of the deepest mysteries in science. In this Science of SLAC lecture Kuo will describe the BICEP program, a series of South Pole-based experiments aiming to answer this question by studying a faint, swirling polarization of light in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang. It’s an enterprise that combines big ideas – cosmic inflation, general relativity and quantum gravity – with cutting-edge technology – superconductors, quantum electronics, microwave engineering and advanced materials.

In March 2014, scientists with the second experiment of the series, BICEP2, announced that they had detected “B-mode polarization” that seems to be consistent with having originated in a burst of rapid inflation in the early universe. Kuo will describe what this measurement means and how scientists are going to follow up on the discovery.

Chao-Lin Kuo is co-leader of the BICEP and Keck Array programs and assistant professor of physics at SLAC and Stanford. He was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2009 and an NSF Faculty Early Career Award in 2011. Kuo received his PhD in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003.