Adam Anderson
University of Chicago, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Two big puzzles remain in cosmology: inflation, the burst of ultra-fast expansion in the newborn Universe, and dark energy, which governs how the Universe expands today. Both are probed by mapping how galaxies are distributed and how those distances change over cosmic time.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
Engineering
- Topics
line intensity mapping
South Pole Telescope
carbon monoxide emission
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Demonstrate that multi-pixel on-chip superconducting spectrometers, patterned on silicon wafers and cooled to 0.1 K, can perform millimeter-wavelength line intensity mapping from the 10-meter South Pole Telescope.
- Deploy and operate an 18-pixel dual-polarization integral field unit covering the 150 GHz atmospheric window with resolving power near 300 during the Austral summer season at the South Pole.
- Detect the carbon monoxide power spectrum at 10-sigma in one month of observing, measuring how the combined glow of distant galaxies clusters across redshifts of 0.4 to 2.8.
- Constrain the molecular gas fraction, the star-forming fuel supply, in the full population of galaxies at redshift near 2 using the measured carbon monoxide intensity signal.
- Develop the observing strategies and data analysis techniques for on-chip spectrometer arrays using real on-sky data, including efficient redshift identification of sources from continuum surveys.
More about the research
A newer way to do this, line intensity mapping, skips the step of resolving individual galaxies and instead measures the combined glow of a particular atomic or molecular emission line across large patches of sky. Because each wavelength corresponds to a distance, that glow becomes a three-dimensional map of cosmic structure. Doing it well requires an unusual instrument: a camera in which every pixel is its own spectrometer.
Why it matters
Mapping large-scale structure through molecular emission lines addresses what dark energy and inflation actually are, and at the same time measures the molecular gas that fuels star formation in early galaxies. Demonstrating multi-pixel on-chip superconducting spectrometers would establish a technology path for future line intensity mapping surveys, and the detector and thin-film fabrication skills students gain transfer to many other fields.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Clarence Chang
University of Chicago, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Build COLIMATE, a 48-spectrometer millimeter-wave focal plane for the South Pole Telescope, with each pixel acting as its own on-chip spectrometer using superconducting kinetic inductance detectors.
Andrew Harris
University of Maryland, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Duplicate the existing COMAP Pathfinder receiver and use it to carry out a sky survey of redshifted carbon monoxide (CO) emission by line intensity mapping.
Chihway Chang
University of Chicago, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure cross-correlations between CMB lensing, galaxy positions, galaxy lensing and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect using DES, SPT and ACT data, to tighten constraints on the universe's properties.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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