Applications of High Resolution High Sensitivity Observations of the CMB

Abstract

With WMAP putting the phenomenological standard model of cosmology on a strong footing, one can look forward to mining the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for fundamental physics with higher sensitivity and on smaller scales. Future CMB observations have the potential to measure absolute neutrino masses, test for cosmic acceleration independent of supernova Ia observations, probe for the presence of dark energy at redshifts of 2 and larger, illuminate the end of the dark ages, measure the scale--dependence of the primordial power spectrum and detect gravitational waves generated by inflation.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the workshop on "The Cosmic Microwave Background and its Polarization", New Astronomy Reviews, (eds. S. Hanany and K.A. Olive