Stony Brook University
7:30 pm; Friday, March 4, 2022
on-line via Zoom
Probing the Early Universe through Magnetic Fields
Dr. Sayan Mandal
We detect magnetic fields in the universe at all scales, from galaxies all the way up to superclusters of galaxies and also the voids between them. The origin of these magnetic fields is unknown, and we think they may have originated in events that happened right after the big bang — inflation and phase transitions. I will discuss how we detect magnetic fields on these cosmic scales, how they could have been generated during these early-universe processes, and how we can learn about the fundamental physics of the early universe by looking at the imprints these primordial magnetic fields leave on observable cosmological quantities today.
Dr. Sayan Mandal is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Physics and Astronomy Department of Stony Brook University, which he joined after completing his Ph.D at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. His research interests lie in theoretical cosmology, where he focuses on using the cosmic microwave background radiation to learn about dark matter and early universe physics.
