Cosmic Birefringence

Abstract
Polarised light of the cosmic microwave background, the remnant light of the Big Bang, is sensitive to parity-violating physics. In this presentation we report on new measurements of parity violation, called “cosmic birefringence”, from polarisation data of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Planck satellite. The statistical significance of the measured signal is about 3 sigma. If confirmed with higher statistical significance in future, it would have profound implications for the elusive nature of dark matter and dark energy.
BIO
Eiichiro Komatsu is a cosmologist who enjoys both theoretical and observational work. He has been Director of the Physical Cosmology division at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, since 2012. Prior to this he was a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Director of Texas Cosmology Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, in 2001. In recent years he has been trying to find ways to prove that the Universe underwent a period of quasi-exponential, accelerated expansion called “inflation” before the big bang, and to understand why and how the expansion of the current Universe is also accelerating.