Clara Verges joined the CMB group in November of 2020 to contribute to data analysis for the BICEP/Keck series of experiments located at the South Pole. BICEP/Keck currently leads the field in making the most sensitive measurements of the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background, with the goal of constraining inflation, a hypothetic phase of extreme expansion in the very early Universe. Clara focused in particular on understanding, measuring, and mitigating instrumental systematics, i.e. all the different was that the telescope can interact with the signal, and potentially bias the measurement they are trying to make – because the measurements being made are extremely low, they need to be careful about they need to be very careful about adjusting the measurements!
Additionally, with James Cornelison, a former Harvard Astronomy graduate student now at Argonne National Lab, they led the measurement of one of their telescopes’ polarization angles. This was the highest precision to date for such a measurement on a CMB experiment. Afterwards, performing subsequent analysis to derive constraining power on cosmic birefringence, which would be a manifestation of parity violation. Their paper has been posted on Arxiv and currently awaiting publication.
Clara has also been increasingly involved with the CMB-S4 collaboration, a next generation experiment which push our sensitivity to CMB polarization into new territories, and will allow for multiple breakthroughs in our comprehension of the Universe. She has contributed to the latest BICEP/Keck release in 2021 as well as other numerous publications by the collaboration.
This is her last month here at the CfA. She will be joining Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory (LBNL) in California as a staff scientist. There, she will continue to contribute to data analysis and operations of CMB experiments, with a focus on developing the design, then building and fielding the telescopes that will constitute CMB-S4.
More about her research and work can be found in her page:
Clara Verges Website