11:00 am–12:00 pm ERC 501
Title: The Path to Constraining Primordial non-Gaussianity with the SPHEREx Mission
Abstract: The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx, began its nominal 2-year survey in May of this year (2025), surveying the full sky in 102 wavelength channels spanning from 0.5 to 5 microns. A key goal of the SPHEREx mission is to construct a 3-D galaxy redshift catalog spanning an unprecedented cosmological volume, which will ultimately be used to search for the signatures of non-Gaussian fluctuations in the spectrum of primordial perturbations. With such advances in statistical precision, systematic and modeling errors may rise to the forefront, requiring careful characterization and mitigation. In this talk, I will overview the SPHEREx mission and briefly review its other science goals, before focusing on the non-Gaussianity measurement, initial performance and redshift validation, and discuss the various approaches being taken to ensure mitigation of systematics and the robustness of the ultimate constraints.
Zoom: https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/93802578500?pwd=NWNKLhJbCVfJkaam4yWCgRZXcntdhA.1
