Physics Department, Princeton University

Research on cosmology takes place in a number of places in the Princeton community. The experimental group in the Physics Department is involved in a number of measurements to characterize the 2.725 K cosmic microwave background (CMB). The CMB is the after glow of the hot early stages of the expansion of our universe. In the angular distribution of  its temperature and polarization  is encoded the history of the evolution of the universe and the values of the cosmological parameters. Measurements have reach the stage where we now have a "standard model of cosmology" and we are exploring the details of the model. These are exciting times. Efforts are underway to find gravitational radiation from the Big Bang, to determine the sum of the neutrino masses, to map out the earliest cosmic structures, and to find the parameters of the fields that produced the Big Bang.

Theses generally involve building sensitive receivers, observing the cosmos, analyzing data from those observations, or combinations of these.

Princeton is the lead partner on the ACT/ACTPol  projects and heavily involved in QUIET, SPIDER, BiCEP, PLANCK, TRUCE and ABS experiments. The group has a long history of measuring the temperature and polarization of the CMB. The recently completed WMAP mission was a partnership between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University.

from left to right, Emily Grace (graduate student), Suzanne Staggs (professor), Laura Newburgh (postdoc), Christine Pappas (graduate student) and Sara Simon (not shown)

• Edward J. Groth: Galaxies, large scale structure, cosmology, Hubble Space Telescope.
• Lyman Page: Cosmic microwave background anisotropy, satellite, and ground-based experiments, CMB polarization measurements.
• Suzanne Staggs: Cosmic microwave background: ground-based and balloon-based experiments to measure the CMB polarization anisotropy and its absolute temperature, CMB polarization measurements.
• Joseph H. Taylor: Pulsars (Emeritus) 
• Bill Jones: Cosmic microwave background, PLANCK, CMB polarization, SPIDER, BiCEP
• Norman Jarosik: Cosmic microwave background, WMAP analysis, bolometer arrays, coherent receivers

• David Spergel: Interests renge from the search for planets around nearby stars to the shape of the universe.

• Aurelien Fraisse
• Zigmund Kermish
• Akito Kusaka
• Laura Newburgh
• Jon Sievers