July 25, 2024
UChicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics celebrates 20 years of discovery.
The field of cosmology is just the small matter of understanding the entire universe: how it began, how it works, and how it’s changing. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago, which brings together theoretical and experimental astronomers and physicists to investigate these expansive questions within the University’s distinctly interdisciplinary culture.
Established in 2001 as the Center for Cosmological Physics, it became KICP in 2004 after receiving an endowment from The Kavli Foundation, which ensured the institute’s permanence at UChicago. There are 20 Kavli Institutes across the world focused on astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience, and theoretical physics. UChicago hosts one of six astrophysics-based Kavli Institutes, along with Peking University-Beijing, MIT, Cambridge, Stanford, and the University of Tokyo.
On June 6–8, more than 160 current and former KICP members from UChicago gathered at a conference to celebrate cosmology’s past, present, and future. The conference included special talks, a poster session, and an evening at the Adler Planetarium featuring a performance by The Spectral Distortions (generally regarded as our universe’s premier physics punk band). We spoke with KICP’s David N. Schramm Director Abigail Vieregg about the event, the institute’s mission and accomplishments, and her goals for the future.
What was the highlight of the anniversary conference for you?
That so many of our alumni returned to celebrate with us. The program featured our former postdocs, graduate students, long-term visitors, and faculty giving talks on their current work. I was honored that almost everyone we invited to speak accepted. Our alumni are very busy, and I was floored that so many dropped what they were doing to fly to Chicago from all over the world.
What is the mission of the Kavli Institute at UChicago?
The mission of KICP is to deepen our understanding of the fundamental physics driving the evolution of the universe—that’s cosmology in a nutshell. We’re trying to push the forefront of the field and figure out where we can make the next big discoveries.
I’ve learned that achieving this comes down to the people: the postdocs, graduate students, and faculty. We’re building a community where people can come and collaborate across boundaries. The theme of collaboration came up over and over during our conference—that’s how we’ve been so successful.
What is the most important goal to you as director of KICP?
Day-to-day, I spend a lot of time and energy creating an exciting environment that fosters productivity and supports the best research possible, which in turn helps attract the best people to our institute. This involves organizing conferences and workshops and inviting visitors to stimulate collaboration. I also encourage activities such as seminars and even pop-up coffee bars to engage postdocs and grad students and build a strong interconnected community. Sometimes the students will bring me fun ideas, and I’ll help make those happen. I feel like my job is to say “yes” to good things, right?
Ultimately, the most important goal is scientific discovery. That’s why we’re here—to advance cosmology by nurturing and empowering our scientists to make new discoveries about the fundamental workings of the universe.
Let’s talk about some of those discoveries. What are the most notable achievements from KICP over the past 20 years?
Two projects immediately come to mind—one is the South Pole Telescope, which KICP was integral in developing. The Kavli Institute provided seed funding, and it has grown into an extremely successful project led by John Carlstrom and now also led by Bradford Benson and Thomas Crawford.
When an idea is just starting to take shape, a place like the Kavli Institute is incredibly valuable, not only because we can provide support to help develop the idea so that later we can apply for federal support but also for the intellectual connections it fosters. For example, we have John [Carlstrom], who is designing a telescope to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB), sitting next to someone like Wayne Hu, a world-leading theorist on the cosmic microwave background.
The South Pole Telescope has discovered B-mode polarization in the CMB, measured numerous galaxy clusters across a large redshift range, and measured the power spectrum of the CMB out to extremely small scales with extremely high precision, which tells us about the physics driving the evolution of the universe.
Another major achievement I’d point to is the Dark Energy Survey (DES), on which Josh Frieman has served as director. The DES was ultimately a Fermilab-led project facilitated by KICP’s strong ties with our national labs. Because we have more flexibility on the university side, we can offer early-stage support and resources to help get a project off the ground.
The Dark Energy Camera located on a telescope in Chile surveyed galaxies mainly to constrain the nature of dark energy. But as it turns out, if you have a great instrument, you can do all kinds of science, and the DES has achieved
What do you hope is the next big milestone?
One important upcoming experiment that KICP is involved with is CMB-S4, which will make astonishingly precise measurements of the polarization of the CMB. The goal is to learn about the nature of inflation in the early universe and to determine the number of light particles in the early universe, which we often call neutrinos as a shorthand. CMB-S4 will also offer insights into dark matter and dark energy.
Another project I’ve been thinking a lot about in the past six months is Spec-S5, a next-generation spectroscopic galaxy survey. There are two kinds of galaxy surveys: photometric, where you take pictures of many galaxies, and spectroscopic, where you measure the spectra of fewer galaxies. The spectra allow us to determine the redshift, which tells us how far away the galaxy is. Taking both photometric and spectroscopic surveys makes it possible to map the universe.
From left: Former KICP directors Edward “Rocky” Kolb and Michael Turner; current KICP director Abigail Vieregg; President of The Kavli Foundation Cynthia Friend; former KICP director John Carlstrom; and Stephan S. Meyer, PI of the NSF grant that helped fund KICP.
What is the significance of KICP and its role in interdisciplinary research at UChicago?
KICP is the reason I came to Chicago. I build experiments that do particle astrophysics and cosmology for a living. Those fields fit right between physics and astronomy. If I were in a physics department, I would miss out on astronomy. And if I were in an astronomy department, I’d miss out on the physics. But with UChicago’s KICP, people had already seen that connection and already built an institute for that. It felt like home. That’s why I came, and I think I’m not alone.
KICP arose from a long tradition of interdisciplinary research at UChicago. When KICP was founded, we already had a model of research institutes, like the Enrico Fermi Institute and the James Frank Institute.
Before KICP existed, there was a faculty member, David Schramm, who was a famous cosmologist who died relatively young. He had a larger-than-life personality and a vision to bring cosmology and particle physics together—the largest and smallest scales of the universe. He brought in Mike Turner and Rocky Kolb, who literally wrote the book on this stuff, to start this new field of inquiry at Fermilab.
We owe a lot to those scientists, even all the way back to Enrico Fermi, and to the history of interdisciplinary work at UChicago. I’ve been here only 10 years, but when I walk around the halls of KICP, I can really feel the fingerprints of those who were here before.
All photos by John Zich unless otherwise noted.
