Shaul Hanany, Principal Investigator

Data Analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background Experiments; Model Robust Designs

These researchers continued to analyze and estimate cosmological parameters from the data collected by the MAXIMA- 1 and MAXIMA-2 balloon-borne experiments. The data constrained several of the parameters that determine the evolution of the universe. Using both the Bayesian and frequentist statistical approaches in the analysis, the researchers compared the values obtained in each. In general, they achieved substantial progress and expected further advances in the research period to come.

The research group has also begun a project to design and test the data analysis pipeline that will be used to analyze the forthcoming MAXIPOL data set. MAXIPOL is a balloon-borne experiment that will search for polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Also, we will continue to build on our existing software used to determine cosmological parameters from measurements of temperature anisotrophy of the CMB.

Another new area of research for this group includes development of an algorithmic approach to the construction of a class of model robust designs including supersaturated designs and response-surface design. Combined with other related work in computer- aided algorithms, the research will fundamentally change the way of selecting experimental designs in both academia and industry, i.e. shifting from traditional approaches that rely on design tables to algorithmic approaches that can better address the flexibility and design efficiency in today’s world. Model-robust designs usually consider many different possible models that can increase exponentially with the run size and are therefore very computationally intensive, requiring the resources of the Supercomputing Institute.

Research Group

Matt Abroe, Graduate Student Researcher
Julian Borrill, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, California
Jean-Christophe Hamilton, Physique Corpusculaire et Cosmologie, Collège de France, Paris, France
Brad Johnson, Graduate Student Researcher
Radek Stompor, Center for Particle Astrophysics, University of California at Berkeley