The Project “Exploring Inflation Physics”, coordinated by the Group of Observational Cosmology and Instrumentation of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA, mixed CSIC-University of Cantabria centre), has been chosen by the Department of Science and Innovation as one of the seven projects in the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme, up against 100 proposals which were presented. This official announcement, which aims to achieve excellence in R+D+i by increasing cooperation between researchers and groups, will provide 4 million Euros for the development of this important project throughout the next five years.
“Exploring Inflation Physics” consists of the observational study of physics during the inflationary period of the universe through data from the cosmic microwave background obtained from the QUIJOTE experiment (Q U and I Joint Tenerife) and the Planck satellite in the European Space Agency (ESA). With this aim in mind, a telescope and two 42GHz instruments will be built, which will mean a substantial improvement in the frequency range as well as in the sensitivity of the QUIJOTE experiment, located in Izaña observatory in Tenerife.
This experiment, currently consisting of a telescope and two instruments which are under construction, will measure the polarization of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (residual radiation from the Big Bang, which took place 13,700 million years ago). The new instruments which will be built within the Consolider project, added to those which are currently being built for QUIJOTE, “will provide very sensitive data which, combined with that being provided by the Planck satellite and which is currently in operation, will place us in a unique position for detecting the bottom of gravitational waves at the time of inflation”, explains Enrique Martínez, a researcher in CSIS, who is in charge of the Group of Observational Cosmology and Instrumentation.
IMPROVE EXPERIMENTS
The Project will also study the feasibility of a future interferometer of hundreds of elements via the development of a prover. Overcoming these difficulties, related with the correlation of hundreds of detectors, will allow a great improvement in the sensitivity of current experiments. After analysis of the observations, scientific results are expected after five years and these results could be given in combination with the data from Planck, a space observatory in which the Group of Observational Cosmology has worked. Under the coordination of Enrique Martínez, the project “Exploring Inflation Physics” has the participation of the Department of Telecommunications Engineering in the University of Cantabria (DICOM) and other research centres: the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canary Islands (IAC, Tenerife), the Department of Theoretical Physics and the Cosmos in the University del País Vasco (Basque Country) and the Department of Theoretical Physics and History of Science in the University del País Vasco (Basque Country). International centres also take part, such as the British universities in Manchester and Cambridge and the University of Chalmers in Sweden.
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