Welcome 👋
We work on novel instruments designs that support experiments probing the early universe, the nature of dark matter, and the birth of the first stars. From here you can take a quick tour of our efforts, read about our projects, or get in touch. We are recruiting, so please get in touch if you are looking for jobs in experimental astrophysics!
A key aspect of our research at the University of Iceland and Stockholm University focuses on optics design, characterization, and technology development for telescopes operating at millimetre wavelengths and the development of novel metamaterial resonators.
Our efforts are supported by the Science Institute at the University of Iceland, The Stockholm University Physics Department and the Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics. Our group efforts are funded by the European Research Council, the Swedish National Space Agency, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, the European Space Agency, and the Knut and Allice Wallenberg Foundation. We are truly thankful to these funding agencies!
Members of the CMBeam team participated in Vísindavaka, an annual public outreach event for young people. Our booth was equipped with a 1.5-m diameter gravity demonstrator, some videos (in Icelandic) on various astrophysics activities at the University of Iceland, a Hoberman sphere, a perpetual motion machine, and a poster summarizing CMB research activities at the university. The gravity demonstrator and perpetual motion machine were definitely the main attractions.
We went away with lots of ideas on what to demonstrate next year and we will definitely be participating again :)
Members of the CMBeam team visited Yokohama, Japan, to participate in the SPIE conference. It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones. The highlight was definitely talking to all the brilliant people at the poster sessions and learning about their work. Also, it turns out that there is a clothing store in Japan called BEAMS!
Here are some photos from the meeting:
Alex and Nadia successfully defended their PhD thesis this spring. This is a great photo taken on the day of Nadia’s defense (June 11, 2024). Congratulations on the milestone and best of luck in your future endeavours!!
The New York Times did a news article on the Simons Observatory see link to the online article below. The article also appeared in the Science Times printed version of the NYT. Surprisingly, the journalist decided to use a figure from Nadia’s recent paper describing simulations that probe beam reconstruction capabilities of the Simons Observatory Small Aperture Telescope optics.
We are setting up an infrastructure that enables holographic techniques at millimeter wavelengths. Thomas and Rustam made an amazing video showing some the capabilities of the system, which includes a 6-axis robot from Kuka.
The video shows that the 3-mm waves that are emitted by the system allow us to pear through plastics and reveal a 3D-printed cat in a box :)
Rustam is in the process of writing an SPIE conference proceeding summarizing this work. Stay tuned!