Recent Results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Implications for our Understanding of Cosmology and Fundamental Physics

Abstract: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope has recently reported the most accurate measurements of temperature and polarization of the cosmic microwave background. I will highlight these results and their implications for our understanding of cosmology. The new measurements constrain the number and mass of neutrinos, the presence of new light particles, the properties of dark matter and dark energy, and the physics of inflation.

The speaker: David Spergel is president of the Simons Foundation and the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy Emeritus on the Class of 1897 Foundation at Princeton University. David's research interests cover a wide range of topics, ranging from search for planets around nearby stars to studying the shape of the universe and nature of dark energy. David's work within the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and later in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) contributed significantly to establishing the standard model of cosmology. He is a member of Simons Observatory and played a leading role in defining the science program for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. After spending 30 years at Princeton, David joined Flatiron Institute as the founding director of the Center for Computational Astrophysics in 2016 and became the president of Simons Foundation in 2021. In 2022, David Spergel accepted chair of NASA’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team.