Jeffrey Peterson

Professor, Physics

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Research

Professor Peterson's research focuses on observational cosmology, including measurements of anisotropy in the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the thermal radiation relic of the hot big bang. CMB anisotropy provides direct information on the structure in the Universe at age 300,000 years. This information is used to attempt to answer such questions as these: Did the Universe undergo an inflationary period of vacuum-energy-driven expansion? If so could quantum fluctuations have produced the anisotropy in the CBR? How did the large scale structure in the Universe, the great clusters and sheets of galaxies, form? Peterson's group builds telescopes and photometers to make CBR anisotropy measurements and uses them at the South Pole. Graduate students and undergraduates travel to the Pole to install and test their instruments. Other research projects within the group include studies of galaxy clustering and gravitational lensing.

Selected Publications

• Gregory Paciga, Tzu-Ching Chang, Yashwant Gupta, Rajaram Nityanada, Julia Odegova, Ue-Li Pen, Jeffrey B. Peterson, Jayanta Roy, Kris Sigurdson, The GMRT Epoch of Reionization experiment: a new upper limit on the neutral hydrogen power spectrum at z≈ 8.6, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 413, 1174 (2011)
• Jayanta Roy, Yashwant Gupta, Ue-Li Pen, Jeffrey B. Peterson, Sanjay Kudale, Jitendra Kodilkar, A real-time software backend for the GMRT, Experimental Astronomy 28, 25 (2010)
• Tzu-Ching Chang, Ue-Li Pen, Kevin Bandura, Jeffrey B. Peterson, An intensity map of hydrogen 21-cm emission at redshift z ≈ 0.8, Nature 466, 463 (2010)
• Chao-Te Li et al., AMiBA wideband analog correlator, The Astrophysical Journal 716, 746 (2010)
• Ue-Li Pen, Tzu-Ching Chang, Christopher M. Hirata, Jeffrey B. Peterson, Jayanta Roy, Yashwant Gupta, Julia Odegova, Kris Sigurdson, The GMRT EoR experiment: limits on polarized sky brightness at 150 MHz, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 399, 181 (2009)
• Paul T. P. Ho et al., The Yuan-Tseh Lee array for microwave background anisotropy, The Astrophysical Journal 694, 1610 (2009)
• Tzu-Ching Chang, Ue-Li Pen, Jeffrey Peterson, Patrick McDonald, Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Intensity Mapping of Dark Energy, Physical Review Letters 100, 091303 (2008)
• C. L. Reichardt et al., High-resolution cmb power spectrum from the complete ACBAR data set, The Astrophysical Journal 694, 1200 (2009)
• Ue-Li Pen, Lister Staveley-Smith, Jeffrey B. Peterson, Tzu-Ching Chang, First detection of cosmic structure in the 21-cm intensity field, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 394, L6 (2009)