Special Astrophysics Seminar

Gravitational lensing of CMB polarization with SPTpol

Kyle Story

University of Chicago

As light traverses the universe, trajectories are perturbed by gravitational fluctuations. As the most distant possible source of light in the universe, gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is sensitive to the gravitational fluctuations from effectively all of the mass (both dark matter and luminous matter) in the observable universe. We use the South Pole Telescope polarimeter (SPTpol) to measure the temperature and polarization fluctuations in the CMB, and use these fluctuations to make mass maps over 100 square degrees. This is the most sensitive such map made to date, and will be useful for characterizing the amplitude of large scale structure in the universe and understanding the connections between luminous matter and dark matter.