From Planck to SPHEREx: Adding the 3rd Dimension to a Full-sky Map to Probe Inflation

Abstract:
    The Planck success leaves cosmology with impressively well established questions and... few answers. Amongst them, the nature of the initial conditions that led to the large-scale structure we observe today is one of the most salient. I will briefly review Planck latest results, and motivate the need for the 3D mapping of an ultra-large volume to directly observe the nature of inflation. From a theoretical point of view, measuring the largest scales promises a powerful and clean probe of the initial conditions. The modeling of these large scales yields interesting (solvable) physics problems. The measurement of these large scales is also feasible: I will present a proposed satellite mission, SPHEREx, that promises to accomplish such a mapping, and much more. By constructing the first all-sky near-infrared spectral survey, SPHEREx will not only constrain the physics of inflation with unprecedented accuracy but also offer new insights on the origin and history of galaxies and build a spectral catalog of 100s of millions of objects for the astronomy community to use.

Brief Bio:
    Dr. Olivier Doré is conducting his research at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at the California Institute of Technology. He moved there in 2009 after post-doctoral positions at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto and at Princeton University. He received his PhD at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, where he defended his thesis in 2001. As a cosmologist, his research interests include probes of large scale structures, the very early universe and the reionization era. He is or has been a member of the following collaborations: WMAP, Planck, Spider, BICEP3, Euclid and most recently SPHEREx. He received several NASA Group Achievement Awards and was a co-recipient of the Gruber 2012 Cosmology Prize awarded to Charles Bennett and the WMAP team.