NASA is funding studies of several Probe class missions, among them is the Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO), a deep polarimetric survey of the entire sky in CMB and nearby frequency bands. The missions will be presented to the 2020 decadal panel in the form of a 50 page science report and cost assessment. This workshop will discuss the science goals of PICO. Such goals include detecting or placing limits on the energy scale of inflation and the physics of quantum gravity, a determination of the mass of the neutrino and constraining the number of light particles in the early Universe, elucidating the nature of dark energy, clarifying the role of dark matter in forming structures, determining the ionization history of the Universe, detecting the structure of galactic magnetic fields over a broad range of angular scales to explain their role in star formation, and creating a legacy survey of the entire sky consisting of thousands of newly-discovered clusters, proto-clusters, and lensed extragalactic sources that will be mined for years. Sub-orbital experiments are now implementing tens of thousands of detectors, and CMB-S4 is seeking funding to implement hundreds of thousands. We will also discuss the characteristics of space-based and sub-orbital-based data sets, how these data will be used together to extract information on fundamental physics and structure formation and evolution on all scales, and how they will complement other astrophysics data sets. A goal of this workshop is to clarify the key points the PICO report should deliver to the decadal panel in terms of science, technology, and the role NASA should play in CMB science in the next decade. The Science Organizing Committee: |
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