Kenny Lau

I am a Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics at the California Institute of Technology, specializing in experimental cosmology. My research focuses on measurements of microwave signals originating from the early Universe, including the aggregate emission of atomic transition lines from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) during z = 5–9, and the primordial photons observed today as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from z ≈ 1100. I am involved in the TIME and BICEP/Keck experiments for these observations.

I contribute to the instrument development and data analysis of the following telescope projects:

• TIME: We are testing and deploying a spectrometer array on the ARO-12m to map the fluctuations of the redshifted [CII] line, a singly-ionized carbon fine-structure spectral line emitted during the EoR. As [CII] is an excellent tracer of the star formation rate, TIME is designed to perform line intensity mapping, an emerging observational technique for surveying large cosmic volumes, to measure the [CII] power spectrum and constrain the EoR.

• BICEP/Keck: We are running BICEP3 and BICEP Array, two small-aperture telescopes scanning approximately 1.5% of the sky at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, to obtain high-precision and multiple-frequency CMB maps to search for the inflationary B-mode polarization.

In 2023, I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, I completed my master's and undergraduate studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.