Radiation from early universe found key to answer major questions in physics

The UC San Diego astrophysicists employed the HuanTran Telescope in Chile to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Credit: POLARBEAR

Astrophysicists at UC San Diego have measured the minute gravitational distortions in polarized radiation from the early universe and discovered that these ancient microwaves can provide an important cosmological test of Einstein's theory of general relativity. These measurements have the potential to narrow down the estimates for the mass of ghostly subatomic particles known as neutrinos.

The radiation could even provide physicists with clues to another outstanding problem about our universe: how the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy," which has been undetectable through modern telescopes, may be distributed throughout the universe.

The scientists are publishing details of their achievement in the June issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The UC San Diego scientists measured variations in the polarization of microwaves emanating from the Cosmic Microwave Background -- or CMB -- of the early universe. Like polarized light (which vibrates in one direction and is produced by the scattering of visible light off the surface of the ocean, for example), the polarized "B-mode" microwaves the scientists discovered were produced when CMB radiation from the early universe scattered off electrons 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the cosmos cooled enough to allow protons and electrons to combine into atoms.

Astronomers had hoped the unique B-mode polarization signature from the early cosmos would allow them to effective "see" portions of the universe that are invisible to optical telescopes as gravity from denser portions of the universe tug on the polarized light, slightly deflecting its passage through the cosmos during its 13.8 billion year trip to Earth. Through a process called "weak gravitational lensing," the distortions in the B-mode polarization pattern, they hoped, would allow astronomers to map regions of the universe filled with invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" and well as provide a test for general relativity on cosmological scales.

The recent discovery confirms both hunches. By measuring the CMB polarization data provided by POLARBEAR, a collaboration of astronomers working on a telescope in the high-altitude desert of northern Chile designed specifically to detect "B-mode" polarization, the UC San Diego astrophysicists discovered weak gravitational lensing in their data that, they conclude, permit astronomers to make detailed maps of the structure of the universe, constrain estimates of neutrino mass and provide a firm test for general relativity.

"This is the first time we've made these kinds of measurements using CMB polarization data," said Chang Feng, the lead author of the paper and a physics graduate student at UC San Diego who conducted his study with Brian Keating, an associate professor of physics at the university and a co-leader of the POLARBEAR experiment. "This was the first direct measurement of CMB polarization lensing. And the amazing thing is that the amount of lensing that we found through these calculations is consistent with what Einstein's general relativity theory predicted. So we now have a way to verify general relativity on cosmological scales."

The POLARBEAR experiment examined a small (30 degree square) region of the sky to produce high resolution maps of B-mode polarization, which enabled the team to determine that the amplitude of gravitational fluctuations they measured was consistent with the leading theoretical model of the universe, known as the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmological model. Another team Keating's group collaborates with, based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, called BICEP2, used a telescope at the South Pole to examine B-mode polarization across wide swaths of the sky. In March, it announced it had found evidence for a brief and very rapid expansion of the early universe, called inflation.

One of the most important questions in physics that can be addressed from these data is the mass of the weakly interacting neutrino, which was thought to have no mass, but current limits indicate that neutrinos have masses below 1.5 electron volts. Feng said the B-mode polarization data in his study, while consistent with the predictions of general relativity, are not statistically significant enough yet to make any firm claims about neutrino masses. But over the next year, he and Keating hope to analyze enough data from POLARBEAR, and its successor instrument -- the Simons Array -- to provide more certainty about the masses of neutrinos.

"This study is a first step toward using polarization lensing as a probe to measure the mass of neutrinos, using the whole universe as a laboratory," Feng said.

"Eventually we will be able to put enough neutrinos on a 'scale' to weigh them -- precisely measuring their mass," Keating says. "Using the tools Chang has developed, it's only a matter of time before we can weigh the neutrino, the only fundamental elementary particle whose mass is unknown. That would be an astounding achievement for astronomy, cosmology and physics itself."

The study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Simmons Foundation, and Irwin and Joan Jacobs.

Source: University of California - San Diego

Exploding stars prove Newton's law of gravity unchanged over cosmic time

Remains of a Type Ia supernovae (G299.2-2.9). Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Texas/S. Park et al, ROSAT; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF

Australian astronomers have combined all observations of supernovae ever made to determine that the strength of gravity has remained unchanged over the last nine billion years.

Newton's gravitational constant, known as G, describes the attractive force between two objects, together with the separation between them and their masses. It has been previously suggested that G could have been slowly changing over the 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang.

If G has been decreasing over time, for example, this would mean that Earth's distance to the Sun was slightly larger in the past, meaning that we would experience longer seasons now compared to much earlier points in Earth's history.

But researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne have now analysed the light given off by 580 supernova explosions in the nearby and far Universe and have shown that the strength of gravity has not changed.

"Looking back in cosmic time to find out how the laws of physics may have changed is not new" Swinburne Professor Jeremy Mould said. "But supernova cosmology now allows us to do this with gravity."

A Type 1a supernova marks the violent death of a star called a white dwarf, which is as massive as our Sun but packed into a ball the size of our Earth.

Our telescopes can detect the light from this explosion and use its brightness as a 'standard candle' to measure distances in the Universe, a tool that helped Australian astronomer Professor Brian Schmidt in his 2011 Nobel Prize winning work, discovering the mysterious force Dark Energy.

Professor Mould and his PhD student Syed Uddin at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing and the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) assumed that these supernova explosions happen when a white dwarf reaches a critical mass or after colliding with other stars to 'tip it over the edge'.

"This critical mass depends on Newton's gravitational constant G and allows us to monitor it over billions of years of cosmic time -- instead of only decades, as was the case in previous studies," Professor Mould said.

Despite these vastly different time spans, their results agree with findings from the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment that has been measuring the distance between Earth and the Moon since NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s and has been able to monitor possible variations in G at very high precision.

"Our cosmological analysis complements experimental efforts to describe and constrain the laws of physics in a new way and over cosmic time." Mr Uddin said.

In their current publication, the Swinburne researchers were able to set an upper limit on the change in Newton's gravitational constant of 1 part in 10 billion per year over the past nine billion years.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) is a collaboration between The Australian National University, The University of Sydney, The University of Melbourne, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Queensland, The University of Western Australia and Curtin University, the latter two participating together as the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. CAASTRO is funded under the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence program, with additional funding from the seven participating universities and from the NSW State Government's Science Leveraging Fund.

The research is published this month in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

Source: Swinburne University of Technology

Tremors of the Big Bang: First direct evidence of cosmic inflation

Gravitational waves from inflation generate a faint but distinctive twisting pattern in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background, known as a "curl" or B-mode pattern. For the density fluctuations that generate most of the polarization of the CMB, this part of the primordial pattern is exactly zero. Shown here is the actual B-mode pattern observed with the BICEP2 telescope, which is consistent with the pattern predicted for primordial gravitational waves. The line segments show the polarization strength and orientation at different spots on the sky. The red and blue shading shows the degree of clockwise and anti-clockwise twisting of this B-mode pattern. Credit: BICEP2 Collaboration

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of our best telescopes. All this, of course, was just theory.

Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence for this cosmic inflation. Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

"Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today. A lot of work by a lot of people has led up to this point," said John Kovac (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.

These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background -- a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.

Since the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.

"Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called 'B-modes,' which represents a twisting or 'curl' pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light," said co-leader Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL).

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a "handedness," much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.

"The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness. This is the first direct image of gravitational waves across the primordial sky," said co-leader Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC).

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about one to five degrees (two to ten times the width of the full Moon). To do this, they traveled to the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air.

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said Kovac. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

They were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analyzed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.

"This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar," said co-leader Clem Pryke (University of Minnesota).

When asked to comment on the implications of this discovery, Harvard theorist Avi Loeb said, "This work offers new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin? These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was."

BICEP2 is the second stage of a coordinated program, the BICEP and Keck Array experiments, which has a co-PI structure. The four PIs are John Kovac (Harvard), Clem Pryke (UMN), Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL), and Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC). All have worked together on the present result, along with talented teams of students and scientists. Other major collaborating institutions for BICEP2 include the University of California at San Diego, the University of British Columbia, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the University of Toronto, Cardiff University, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique.

BICEP2 is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF also runs the South Pole Station where BICEP2 and the other telescopes used in this work are located. The Keck Foundation also contributed major funding for the construction of the team's telescopes. NASA, JPL, and the Moore Foundation generously supported the development of the ultra-sensitive detector arrays that made these measurements possible.

Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website: http://bicepkeck.org

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

Source: Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Gravity may have saved the universe after the Big Bang, say researchers

Center of the Milky Way galaxy (stock image). Credit: © DR / Fotolia

New research by a team of European physicists could explain why the universe did not collapse immediately after the Big Bang.

Studies of the Higgs particle -- discovered at CERN in 2012 and responsible for giving mass to all particles -- have suggested that the production of Higgs particles during the accelerating expansion of the very early universe (inflation) should have led to instability and collapse.

Scientists have been trying to find out why this didn't happen, leading to theories that there must be some new physics that will help explain the origins of the universe that has not yet been discovered. Physicists from Imperial College London, and the Universities of Copenhagen and Helsinki, however, believe there is a simpler explanation.

In a new study in Physical Review Letters, the team describe how the spacetime curvature -- in effect, gravity -- provided the stability needed for the universe to survive expansion in that early period. The team investigated the interaction between the Higgs particles and gravity, taking into account how it would vary with energy.

They show that even a small interaction would have been enough to stabilise the universe against decay.

"The Standard Model of particle physics, which scientists use to explain elementary particles and their interactions, has so far not provided an answer to why the universe did not collapse following the Big Bang," explains Professor Arttu Rajantie, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London.

"Our research investigates the last unknown parameter in the Standard Model -- the interaction between the Higgs particle and gravity. This parameter cannot be measured in particle accelerator experiments, but it has a big effect on the Higgs instability during inflation. Even a relatively small value is enough to explain the survival of the universe without any new physics!"

The team plan to continue their research using cosmological observations to look at this interaction in more detail and explain what effect it would have had on the development of the early universe. In particular, they will use data from current and future European Space Agency missions measuring cosmic microwave background radiation and gravitational waves.

"Our aim is to measure the interaction between gravity and the Higgs field using cosmological data," says Professor Rajantie. "If we are able to do that, we will have supplied the last unknown number in the Standard Model of particle physics and be closer to answering fundamental questions about how we are all here."

The research is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, along with the Villum Foundation, in Denmark, and the Academy of Finland.

Source: Imperial College London

Turning the Moon into a cosmic ray detector

Artists rendition of the SKA. Credit: SKA Organisation

Scientists from the University of Southampton are to turn the Moon into a giant particle detector to help understand the origin of Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) cosmic rays -- the most energetic particles in the Universe.

The origin of UHE cosmic rays is one of the great mysteries in astrophysics. Nobody knows where these extremely rare cosmic rays come from or how they get their enormous energies. Physicists detect them on Earth at a rate of less than one particle per square kilometre per century.

Dr Justin Bray, a Research Fellow in Cosmic Magnetism at the University of Southampton, is lead author of a proposal to use the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), set to become the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world, to detect vastly more UHE cosmic rays by using the Moon as a giant cosmic ray detector.

On Earth, physicists detect these high-energy particles when they hit the upper atmosphere triggering a cascade of secondary particles that generate a short and faint burst of radio waves only a few nanoseconds long.

It is this signal that astronomers hope to pick up from the Moon, but as these signals are so short and faint no radio telescope on Earth is currently capable of picking them up.
With its large collecting area and high sensitivity, the SKA will be able to detect these signals using the visible lunar surface -- millions of square kilometres -- giving the researchers access to more data about UHE cosmic rays than they have ever had before.

The current largest detector on Earth is the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina that covers an area of 3,000 square kilometres, about the size Luxembourg. The SKA will be more than 10 times larger (33,0000 square kilometres) and researchers hope to detect around 165 UHE cosmic rays a year from the Moon compared to the 15-a-year currently observed.

Dr Bray announced details of the project at a major SKA conference in Italy.. He says: "Cosmic rays at these energies are so rare that you need an enormous detector to collect a significant number of them -- but the moon dwarfs any particle detector that has been built so far. If we can make this work, it should give us our best chance yet to figure out where they're coming from."

Dr Bray is working with Professor Anna Scaife, also from Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton, who leads the development of the SKA's Imaging Pipeline as part of the Science Data Processor (SDP) work package consortium.

Professor Scaife says: "Defining science goals for the telescope is crucial for ensuring that the appropriate technical capabilities are considered during the design phase."

Using a network of radio antennas in the Southern hemisphere, the SKA will advance our understanding of how the Universe evolved and challenge Einstein's theory of relativity. With receivers across Australia and Africa, its dishes and antennas will provide detailed information on the large scale 3D structure of the Universe.

When operational in the early 2020's, the SKA radio telescope will produce more than 10 times the current global traffic of the Internet in its internal telecommunications system. To play back a single day's worth of SKA data on an MP3 player would take about two million years.

Source: University of Southampton

Planet Mercury a result of early hit-and-run collisions

New simulations show that Mercury and other unusually metal-rich objects in the solar system may be relics left behind by hit-and-run collisions in the early solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

Planet Mercury's unusual metal-rich composition has been a longstanding puzzle in planetary science. According to a study published online in Nature Geoscience July 6, Mercury and other unusually metal-rich objects in the solar system may be relics left behind by collisions in the early solar system that built the other planets.

The origin of planet Mercury has been a difficult question in planetary science because its composition is very different from that of the other terrestrial planets and the moon. This small, innermost planet has more than twice the fraction of metallic iron of any other terrestrial planet. Its iron core makes up about 65 percent of Mercury's total mass; Earth's core, by comparison, is just 32 percent of its mass.

How do we get Venus, Earth and Mars to be mostly "chondritic" (having a more-or-less Earth-like bulk composition) while Mercury is such an anomaly? For Arizona State University professor Erik Asphaug, understanding how such a planet accumulated from the dust, ice and gas in the early solar nebula is a key science question.

There have been a number of failed hypotheses for Mercury's formation. None of them until now has been able to explain how Mercury lost its mantle while retaining significant levels of volatiles (easily vaporized elements or compounds, such as water, lead and sulfur). Mercury has substantially more volatiles than the moon does, leading scientists to think its formation could have had nothing to do with a giant impact ripping off the mantle, which has been a common popular explanation.

To explain the mystery of Mercury's metal-rich composition, ASU's Asphaug and Andreas Reufer of the University of Bern have developed a new hypothesis involving hit-and-run collisions, where proto-Mercury loses half its mantle in a grazing blow into a larger planet (proto-Venus or proto-Earth). One or more hit-and-run collisions could have potentially stripped away proto-Mercury's mantle without an intense shock, leaving behind a mostly-iron body and satisfying a number of the major puzzles of planetary formation -- including the retention of volatiles -- in a process that can also explain the absence of shock features in many of the mantle-stripped meteorites.

Asphaug and Reufer have developed a statistical scenario for how planets merge and grow based on the common notion that Mars and Mercury are the last two relics of an original population of maybe 20 bodies that mostly accreted to form Venus and Earth. These last two planets lucked out.

"How did they luck out? Mars, by missing out on most of the action -- not colliding into any larger body since its formation -- and Mercury, by hitting the larger planets in a glancing blow each time, failing to accrete," explains Asphaug, who is a professor in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration. "It's like landing heads two or three times in a row -- lucky, but not crazy lucky. In fact, about one in 10 lucky."

By and large, dynamical modelers have rejected the notion that hit-and-run survivors can be important because they will eventually be accreted by the same larger body they originally ran into. Their argument is that it is very unlikely for a hit-and-run relic to survive this final accretion onto the target body.

"The surprising result we have shown is that hit-and-run relics not only can exist in rare cases, but that survivors of repeated hit-and-run incidents can dominate the surviving population. That is, the average unaccreted body will have been subject to more than one hit-and-run collision," explains Asphaug. "We propose one or two of these hit-and-run collisions can explain Mercury's massive metallic core and very thin rocky mantle."

According to Reufer, who performed the computer modeling for the study, "Giant collisions put the final touches on our planets. Only recently have we started to understand how profound and deep those final touches can be.

"The implication of the dynamical scenario explains, at long last, where the 'missing mantle' of Mercury is -- it's on Venus or the Earth, the hit-and-run targets that won the sweep-up," says Asphaug.

Disrupted formation

The duo's modelling has revealed a fundamental problem with an idea implicit to modern theories of planet formation: that protoplanets grow efficiently into ever larger bodies, merging whenever they collide.

Instead, disruption occurs even while the protoplanets are growing.

"Protoplanets do merge and grow, overall, because otherwise there would not be planets," says Asphaug. "But planet formation is actually a very messy, very lossy process, and when you take that into account, it's not at all surprising that the 'scraps,' like Mercury and Mars, and the asteroids are so diverse."

These simulations are of great relevance to meteoritics, which, just like Mercury's missing mantle, faces questions like: Where's all the stripped mantle rock that got removed from these early core-forming planetesimals? Where are the olivine meteorites that correspond to the dozens or hundreds of iron meteorite parent bodies?

"It's not missing -- it's inside the mantles of the planets, ultimately," explains Asphaug. "It got gobbled up by the larger growing planetary bodies in every hit-and-run series of encounters."

Source: Arizona State University

New revelations on dark matter and relic neutrinos

Temperature map of the relic radiation (bottom left), and close-ups showing, in relief, the polarisation of light in the 353 GHz channel (the colors correspond to the intensity of the thermal emission from galactic dust. Credit: © ESA - Planck collaboration

The Planck collaboration, which notably includes the CNRS, CEA, CNES and several French universities, has disclosed, at a conference in Ferrara, Italy, the results of four years of observations from the ESA's Planck satellite. The satellite aims to study relic radiation (the most ancient light in the Universe). This light has been measured precisely across the entire sky for the first time, in both intensity and polarisation1, thereby producing the oldest image of the Universe. This primordial light lets us "see" some of the most elusive particles in the Universe: dark matter and relic neutrinos.

Between 2009 and 2013, the Planck satellite observed relic radiation, sometimes called cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Today, with a full analysis of the data, the quality of the map is now such that the imprints left by dark matter and relic neutrinos are clearly visible.

Already in 2013, the map for variations in light intensity was released, showing where matter was in the sky 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Thanks to the measurement of the polarisation of this light (in four of seven frequencies2, for the moment), Planck can now see how this material used to move. Our vision of the primordial Universe has thus become dynamic. This new dimension, and the quality of the data, allows us to test numerous aspects of the standard model of cosmology. In particular, they illuminate the most elusive of particles: dark matter and neutrinos.

New constraints on dark matter The Planck collaboration results now make it possible to rule out an entire class of models of dark matter, in which dark matter-antimatter annihilation3 is important. Annihilation is the process whereby a particle and its antiparticle jointly disappear, followed by a release in energy.

The basic existence of dark matter is becoming firmly established, but the nature of dark matter particles remains unknown. There are numerous hypotheses concerning the physical nature of this matter, and one of today's goals is to whittle down the possibilities, for instance by searching for the effects of this mysterious matter on ordinary matter and light. Observations made by Planck show that it is not necessary to appeal to the existence of strong dark matter-antimatter annihilation to explain the dynamics of the early universe. 

Such events would have produced enough energy to exert an influence on the evolution of the light-matter fluid in the early universe, especially around the time relic radiation was emitted. However, the most recent observations show no hints that this actually took place.

These new results are even more interesting when compared with measurements made by other instruments. The satellites Fermi and Pamela, as well as the AMS-02 experiment aboard the International Space Station, have all observed an excess of cosmic rays, which might be interpreted as a consequence of dark matter annihilation. Given the Planck observations, however, an alternative explanation for these AMS-02 or Fermi measurements-such as radiation from undetected pulsars-has to be considered, if one is to make the reasonable hypothesis that the properties of dark matter particles are stable over time.

Additionally, the Planck collaboration has confirmed that dark matter comprises a bit more than 26% of the Universe today (figure deriving from its 2013 analysis), and has made more accurate maps of the density of matter a few billion years after the Big Bang, thanks to measurements of temperature and B-mode polarisation.

Neutrinos from the earliest instants detected

The new results from the Planck collaboration also inform us about another type of very elusive particle, the neutrino. These "ghost" particles, abundantly produced in our Sun for example, can pass through our planet with almost no interaction, which makes them very difficult to detect. It is therefore not realistic to directly detect the first neutrinos, which were created within the first second after the Big Bang, and which have very little energy. However, for the first time, Planck has unambiguously detected the effect these relic neutrinos have on relic radiation maps.

The relic neutrinos detected by Planck were released about one second after the Big Bang, when the Universe was still opaque to light but already transparent to these particles, which can freely escape from environments that are opaque to photons, such as the Sun's core. 380,000 years later, when relic radiation was released, it bore the imprint of neutrinos because photons had gravitational4 interaction with these particles. Observing the oldest photons thus made it possible to confirm the properties of neutrinos.

Planck observations are consistent with the standard model of particle physics. They essentially exclude the existence of a fourth species of neutrinos5, previously considered a possibility based on the final data from the WMAP satellite, the US predecessor of Planck. Finally, Planck makes it possible to set an upper limit to the sum of the mass of neutrinos, currently established at 0.23 eV (electron-volt)6.

The full data set for the mission, along with associated articles that will be submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), will be available December 22 on the ESA web site. These results are notably derived from measurements made with the High Frequency Instrument (HFI), which was conceived and assembled under the direction of the Institut d'astrophysique spatiale (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud), and utilized, under the direction of the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris (CNRS/UPMC), by different laboratories including those from the CEA, the CNRS and French universities, with funding from CNES and the CNRS.

Notes

1. Polarisation is a property of light on the same level as color or direction of travel. This property is invisible to the human eye, but remains familiar (sunglasses with polarised lenses and cinema 3D glasses, for instance).. A travelling photon is associated with an electrical field (E) and a magnetic field (B), at right angles to each other and to their direction of travel. If the electrical field remains in the same plane, the photon is said to be linearly polarised, as is the case for relic radiation.

2. In all three frequencies of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) and in the 353 GHz channel of the High Frequency Instrument (HFI).

3. In some models, dark matter particles are their own anti-particles.

4. According to general relativity, even if photons have no mass, they are sensitive to the gravitational force that bends space-time.

5. According to the standard model of particle physics, there are three species of neutrinos.

6. The electron volt (symbol: eV) is a unit of energy used in particle physics to express mass, since mass-energy equivalence links energy and mass (E=mc2, where c represents the speed of light). The lightest known particle after photons and neutrinos weighs 511 keV, more than 2 million times the sum of the mass of all three neutrinos.

Source: CNRS

Hunt for Big Bang particles offering clues to the origin of the universe

Chris Tully makes an adjustment to the PTOLEMY prototype.
Credit: Elle Starkman/PPPL Office of Communications

Billions upon billions of neutrinos speed harmlessly through everyone's body every moment of the day, according to cosmologists. The bulk of these subatomic particles are believed to come straight from the Big Bang, rather than from the sun or other sources. Experimental confirmation of this belief could yield seminal insights into the early universe and the physics of neutrinos. But how do you interrogate something so elusive that it could zip through a barrier of iron a light-year thick as if it were empty space?

At the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), researchers led by Princeton University physicist Chris Tully are set to hunt for these nearly massless Big Bang relics by exploiting a curious fact: Neutrinos can be captured by tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and provide a tiny boost of energy to the electrons -- or beta particles -- that are emitted in tritium decay.

Tully has created a prototype lab at PPPL to detect Big Bang neutrinos by measuring the extra energy they impart to the electrons -- and to achieve this with greater precision than has ever been done before. Spotting these neutrinos is akin to "detecting a faint heartbeat in a sports arena filled to the brim" said Charles Gentile, who heads engineering for the project, which Tully has dubbed PTOLEMY for "Princeton Tritium Observatory for Light, Early Universe Massive Neutrino Yield." Ptolemy was an ancient Greek astronomer who lived in Egypt during the first century.

Darkest, coldest conditions achievable

The task calls for measuring the energy of an electron with a precision comparable to detecting the mass of a neutrino, which until recently was thought to have no mass at all. Such measurements require the darkest, coldest conditions achievable in a laboratory and the use of quantum electronics -- a discipline that deals with the effect of quantum mechanics on the behavior of electrons in matter -- to detect the minute extra energy that a Big Bang neutrino would impart. Quantum mechanics describes the motion and direction of subatomic particles.

Why is the energy that a Big Bang neutrino provides so extraordinarily small? What's unique about these relics is that their wavelength has been stretched and cooled as the space-time we live in has expanded over approximately 13.7 billion years. This expansion has cooled a tremendous number of neutrinos to temperatures that are billions of times colder, and therefore less energetic, than those of neutrinos originating from the sun. When tritium captures these cold neutrinos, they create a narrow peak in energy that is just above the maximum energy of an electron from tritium decay.

The difficulty in identifying a Big Bang relic doesn't end there. Since neutrinos can take different forms, the height of the peak could be higher or lower by a factor of two, depending on whether the neutrino is like normal matter with a corresponding particle of antimatter -- an antineutrino -- or whether the neutrino is different and is in fact its own antiparticle. The extra height might not appear at all if neutrinos decay over billions of years into yet unknown, lighter particles.

Cutting-edge technology

Tully aims to show that the prototype for PTOLEMY, which is housed in a basement site at PPPL, can indeed achieve the precision needed to detect Big Bang neutrinos. The cutting-edge technology could then become the basis for a major experiment at PPPL to test long-held assumptions about the density of Big Bang neutrinos throughout the universe.

Confirming the assumptions could validate the standard model of the origin of the universe, Tully says, while refuting them could overturn the model and prompt new ideas about the Big Bang and its aftermath. Finding the neutrinos could also show if they could be a source of the invisible dark matter that scientists say makes up 20 percent of the total mass of the universe.

Such discoveries could be epochal. Could the project "make long-term contributions to the understanding of the universe?" Tully asks in presentations about PTOLEMY. "Absolutely!" he says. "We believe that we live in a sea of 14 billion-year-old neutrinos all around us. But is it true?"

The prototype at PPPL may hold the key to finding out. The device consists of a pair of superconducting magnets connected to opposite ends of a five-foot cylindrical vacuum chamber. A source containing a tiny bit of tritium sits inside one end of the chamber, with a calorimeter that Argonne National Laboratory is providing to measure electron energy set at the other end. The experiment will bind electrons from the tritium decay to magnetic field lines and pass them through filters in the vacuum chamber that will remove all but the highest-energy electrons, which the calorimeter will then measure.

Preventing "noise"

Great care will be taken to keep random thermal "noise" from disrupting the finely tuned equipment at each end of the experiment. Researchers will deposit the tritium on the nanomaterial graphene -- a layer of carbon just one atom thick -- to ensure that the electrons come off cleanly into the vacuum.

The calorimeter at the other end of the chamber will be connected to a dilution refrigerator set at between 70 and 100 millikelvins, a temperature 20 times colder than deep space and less than one-tenth of a degree above absolute zero. This deep-freeze will keep the calorimeter poised between a superconducting state -- one in which electrons can flow with virtually no resistance -- and a non-superconducting state with resistance to the flow of electrons. The delicate balance between these two states, combined with extremely low noise conditions achievable only with quantum electronics, will provide the sensitivity needed to precisely measure the energy of an electron that impinges upon the calorimeter. The setup will produce "the most precise electron-energy measurements ever made using calorimeter techniques," Tully said.

This experiment is "a perfect match for the competencies and capabilities that exist at PPPL," said Adam Cohen, deputy director for operations at PPPL and supervisor of the PTOLEMY project. Such qualities include know-how in handling tritium, a laboratory for synthesizing nanomaterial, decades of experience operating magnets and vacuum vessels, and space for an expanded experiment. "Chris and I talked about collaboration between PPPL and the University about three years ago," Cohen recalled. "Every time we pursue an activity with the campus it strengthens the bridge that exists between us."

Cross-fertilization

Looking ahead, Cohen sees PTOLEMY attracting new students, researchers and visitors, along with experts in high-energy physics, to PPPL. This could produce cross-fertilization with the Laboratory's core mission of advancing fusion and plasma science, he said.

Source: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory