Frontiers in Cosmology Conference

‘Frontiers in Cosmology’ was a five-day international conference held at RRI during February 20 – 24, 2023. More than 100 participants including researchers, scientists, students and faculties from around the world attended the meet.

The organisers made the conference platform a stage for numerous deliberations and discussions focused on five broad themes. These covered Inflation and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionisation, Low Redshift Cosmology, the Evolving Universe and the Next Generation Experiments.

In his welcome address, Prof. Tarun Souradeep, director, RRI, highlighted about the growing Indian research community working in cosmology.

The conference hosted talks on CMB, characterization of galactic foregrounds, instrumentation, and telescope facilities like the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the BICEP Array telescopes, both located in Antarctica, SARAS, and CHIME, among others. Deliberations on the 21cm HI signal and the cosmic dawn, results from EDGES, MIST, PRIZM, and REACH were tabled.

Peering into future astronomical facilities, the invited speakers elaborated on upcoming facilities like the Simons Observatory, a ground-based CMB experiment located at Cerrro Toco in Chile; the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), PRATUSH -- some of which has active participation of RRI. NenuFAR and the European Research Council’s CoDEX Program were discussed. About 25 best posters were shortlisted and presented by students during the conference.

Many experts highlighted the growing challenges faced by the astronomy community and stressed on the need for building improved instrumentation facilities and upgraded technological support on a collaborative basis. Some of the participants visited the institute’s Gauribidanur radio telescope facility and were apprised about its contributions and capabilities.