Speaker
Description
Modern cosmology has revealed many secrets of the nature and evolution of the Universe. To date, most surveys have done this by mapping the early Universe with the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) or relatively recent times by mapping the large-scale distribution of galaxies. However, epochs in between, from the dark ages through the epoch of reionization (EoR) all the way to the Epoch of Galaxy Assembly (EoGA), are strongly data-starved. This is where line intensity mapping aims to fill the gap by providing direct 3D measurements of the aggregate emission from redshifted lines such as the 21 cm line, CO rotational lines, [CII], and other atomic and molecular lines. These will be highly complementary to CMB, galaxy surveys, and other cosmological probes. In this talk, I will present results from the Carbon monOxide Mapping Array Project (COMAP). COMAP aims to map the large-scale distribution of star-forming matter at redshifts $z = 2$--$3$ and $z = 6$--$8$, respectively constraining the physics of the EoGA and EoR using the CO(1–0) and CO(2–1) lines of CO. In recent years, COMAP has produced two successive world-leading upper limits (Season 1 and 2), and is the first to directly constrain, on the 3D large-scale clustering power spectrum of CO(1-0). The Season 2 constraints between $0.09 \mathrm{Mpc^{-1}} < k < 0.72\mathrm{Mpc^{-1}}$ constrain the CO power spectrum to $kP_\mathrm{CO}(k) < 2400$--$4900 \mathrm{\mu K^2 Mpc^2}$, and is around an order of magnitude improvement on COMAP Season 1. I will present an overview of the COMAP experiment, the state-of-the-art Season 2 analysis and results, as well as preliminary results from the Season 3 analysis.