Speaker
Description
The most compelling open questions in cosmology -- understanding the nature of inflation, dark energy, dark matter, and light relativistic species -- require cosmic surveys over extremely large volumes. The emerging technique of millimeter-wave line intensity mapping (LIM) has the potential to measure large-scale structure at distances far greater than the next generation of optical surveys. I will discuss SPT-SLIM, a pathfinder experiment to demonstrate the use of on-chip superconducting spectrometers for LIM, and our first deployment to the South Pole in 2025. I will describe the technical advances needed for these detectors to achieve their potential, including novel spectrometer architectures and R&D in superconducting materials. Finally, I will outline the path towards deploying dense spectroscopic focal planes at the scale needed to advance high-redshift cosmology.