Contact
Information:golwala at caltech.edu
phone: 626-395-8003
fax: 626-584-9929
Mail Code 59-33
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125
I am an assistant professor of physics in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at Caltech, since July, 2003.
Research Interests:
What is the nature of the dark matter and dark energy that dominate the universe? I am focused on efforts that try to better understand these mysterious components. These efforts tend to have significant technology development aspects: one approach to understanding such elusive phenomena is to find ways to do new and better measurements.
Current Projects:
- Bolocam: a
144-element
millimeter-wave camera for use on the Caltech
Submillimeter Observatory.
We use Bolocam to look for high-redshift dusty galaxies (using the
thermal emission for dust) and galaxy clusters (using the
Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect) and to study well-known galaxy clusters in
the SZ effect. My primary interest is in the measurement of the
abundance of galaxy clusters as a function of redshift, and correlation
of SZ-flux-limited cluster surveys with optical and X-ray surveys, to
better quantify the contribution and history of dark energy, and
observations of well-known clusters in the SZ to better understand
clusters and the systematics in SZ measurements.
- SPIDER,
a balloon-borne payload, and BICEP2/SPUD,
a ground-based receiver at
the South Pole: experiments to search for the signature of inflationary
gravity waves in the cosmic microwave background.
- Participation in the Cryogenic
Dark
Matter Search II
experiment, an experiment that uses cryogenic detectors to search for
rare interactions of WIMP dark matter with ordinary matter. I did
my thesis on CDMS I, the shallow-site pilot experiment.
New results (2008/02)!
Caltech press release
FNAL press release
preprint available at CDMSII web site
talk on results available at DM08 web site
Want to see what our data look like? See this YouTube realization.
- Development of
Weakly-Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter detectors using
Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) as phonon sensors.
- Development of a
multi-band submm/mm-wave camera using MKIDs. This will succeed
Bolocam on the CSO and be a technology demonstrator for the CCAT
long-wavelength camera.
- Development of the SZ science case for and long-wavelength camera for the Cornell-Caltech Atacama Telescope, at 25-m submm and mm-wave telescope to be sited in the Atacama Desert, currently in the partnership development stage.
Grad students are welcome to contact me to discuss any of these projects and whether they might provide good thesis topics.
I generally take on at least 1 undergrad each summer. For now, I only will consider Caltech undergrads. I welcome inquiries by first and second years as well as juniors. Contact me if you are interested. SURF proposals are usually due in late February, so I accept inquiries until Feb 1 and then choose students who will submit SURF applications.
More information
Here are some recent talks, notes, papers, etc. to provide some more information on these projects.
- Lay audience
talk on dark matter and dark energy (Caltech Seminar day, 2005): PDF.
- Recent Bolocam
results:
- Bolocam SZ anisotropy survey results (to be submitted for pub in April or May 2008): PDF
- Jack Sayers PhD thesis (Dec 2007) on SZ anisotropy survey, including many additional analysis details:
- Instrument description
- Noise performance
- Sky noise studies
- Beam measurements, pointing reconstruction, flux calibration
- Mapmaking and SZ anisotropy constraint technique
- CCAT (see the CCAT page for the full feasibility study report):
- Section of the CCAT feasibility study report (Jan, 2006) on SZ science: PDF.
- An
earlier, more detailed version: PDF.
- Section
of the CCAT feasibility study report on instrumentation; see esp. the
LWCam section: PDF.
AAS
Jan 2008 poster on LWCam: PDF.
- Dark Matter
Teaching
Physics 106ab, classical mechanics. (2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07)
Physics 125ab, quantum mechanics. (2007-2008)
Physics 135c, experimental non-accelerator particle physics (2007)
This page last updated 2008/03/24