Cosmo Club (from Tia Plautz)

On Monday (March 10) at 12:30, the Cosmo Club talk will be given by my mentor of almost 10 years.  The abstract for the talk is given below. If you are interested in astrophysics or cosmology, I highly recommend you attend. The talk may get rather technical, but Adrian is an excellent speaker and a great teacher! 
Tia Plautz

Cosmo Club - Adrian Liu (Berkeley)

When:  Mon, March 10, 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Where:  ISB 102 (map)

Description: "Recent Results and Next Steps in 21cm Cosmology" Despite their importance in the evolution of cosmic structure, the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) and the preceding Dark Ages remain poorly constrained. The first luminous structures formed during the dark ages, and during the EoR, ionized the intergalactic medium (IGM) around them. To date, there have only been indirect observations of this period. In recent years, however, 21cm cosmology has emerged as a promising direct probe of reionization. By measuring fluctuations in the redshifted 21cm hyperfine transition of hydrogen, 21cm cosmology will provide a new window into the clustering, heating, and ionization properties of the IGM during the EoR. In this talk, I will highlight some recent progress from current-generation 21cm instruments, such the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER), the MIT Epoch of Reionization experiment (MITEoR), and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). Recent upper limits have begun to rule out "cold reionization" scenarios, and I will discuss the technical challenges that have been overcome to make these limits possible. I will conclude by describing the next steps in 21cm cosmology, with special emphasis on the recently-proposed Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) as an example of a next-generation instrument.