Thesis
The main goal of this project is to find signatures of cosmic strings in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We used a digital filter called the Edgefinder to look for edge-like signatures in the CMB caused by the wake of a cosmic string.
We use the data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, WMAP. WMAP has been in orbit around the Sun-Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point since October 2001, observing the CMB signal free from the contamination of Earth's atmosphere.
The motivation for doing this project is to set a limit on the existence of
cosmic strings, in order that Grand Unification Theories may be limited. Currently, we
are able to set limits for Electroweak cosmic strings.
2nd Year Project
Fullerenes are a family of organic molecules the most famous of which is the Buckminsterfullerene, or, Buckyball. I wrote a Monte Carlo code that simulated the radiation coming from collisions between buckyballs and hydrogen atoms. We speculate that buckyball radiation may be responsible for the anomalous free-free radiation found in the Galactic foreground. The small size of buckyballs make it such that their thermal rotation velocity, at around 50 Kelvin, is on the order of 40 GHz.
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Last modified 09/14/2004