Abstract:

First, I will discuss plans for measurements of polarization anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. The most exciting prospect of such measurements is the detection of the signature of gravity waves emitted during the inflationary era. Such a signal would be a "smoking gun" of inflation and measure its energy scale. CMB polarization measurements will also probe the reionization epoch, measure the matter power spectrum via lensing of the CMB photons, and help verify the inflationary paradigm. Second, I will discuss plans for galaxy cluster searches via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect (inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons from the hot has in the clusters). Measurements of cluster abundance as a function of redshift have the potential for very accurate measurements of the mass density of the Universe and can probe the dark energy equation of state in a way complementary to supernovae measurements.