Fundamental Physics and Observational Cosmology

The universe’s earliest moments left imprints that satellite experiments like Planck and Clover are now trying to read, and this project builds the theoretical tools to decode them. Cosmologists have good evidence that the universe expanded explosively in a split-second after the Big Bang—a process called inflation—but dozens of competing models explain how that happened. This research aims to winnow those models by calculating precise, testable signatures that experiments can actually measure. It also tackles deeper questions: whether our universe is just one slice of a higher-dimensional reality, what dark energy is, whether fundamental constants like the speed of light have changed over time, and how black holes might reveal extra dimensions. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. The payoff is understanding whether our current picture of the cosmos is correct or whether we need entirely new physics. Historically, such work—like the theoretical predictions that led to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background—has reshaped not just astronomy but also technologies like satellite communications and atomic clocks, which rely on the same fundamental constants this project will probe.