Searching for Parity Violation in the Planck Full-Sky CMB Maps

Project Description:

This project will establish new constraints on parity violation in the early universe by analyzing the parity violating component of the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background. Maps of the sky from the ESA Planck mission will be used for this analysis. The discovery of parity violation in the weak interaction played a key role in the development of the standard electroweak model of particle physics. It remains an open question whether parity is a good symmetry of the new physics at play in the very early universe.

Research Area:

Astrophysics

Project Level:

Masters

This Project Is Offered At The Following Node(s):

(UCT)

Special Requirements:

It is highly desirable that the student recruited have some familiarity with Python programming and basic statistics as well as some background in cosmology.