Speaker Name:
Kavilan Moodley
Speaker Affiliation:
UKZN
Talk Subject:
Measuring the small-scale cosmic microwave background anisotropy with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope
Date:
04/28/2010 - 13:00
Venue:
RW James C
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) is a custom-designed mm-wave telescope that is currently mapping the small-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. In this talk I present first results from ACT focussing on a measurement of the angular power spectrum from l=600 to l=8000 and detection of galaxy clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. I also discuss the prospects for measuring weak gravitational lensing of the CMB and detecting the missing baryons, and describe our programme of multi-wavelength observations of SZ-detected galaxy clusters that will constrain the equation of state of the low-redshift universe via a measurement of the cluster abundance.