Zachary Atkins
Cosmology | Phd Student | Princeton University | zatkins at princeton dot edu
I am a PhD student in physics at Princeton University, advised by Jo Dunkley. I analyze data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to learn more about fundamental physics. I am a member of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the Simons Observatory (SO) collaborations. ACT and SO are making exceptionally low-noise and high-resolution maps of 40% of the microwave sky, including the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies, from atop Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
During my PhD, I developed core components of the ACT data release 6 (DR6) cosmology pipeline. My work has enabled measurements of CMB lensing by large-scale-structure at “low” redshift, measurements of the gas content in and around massive galaxy clusters, and a measurement of the CMB anisotropy power spectrum*. I also helped develop Jupyter notebook-based curricula for ACT DR4, DR5, and DR6, and co-taught these materials in multiple “data schools” for junior members of the cosmology research community.
My contributions and research interests include:
- map-level noise modeling for all ACT DR6 analyses
- covariance modeling and systematics tests for the ACT DR6 power spectrum
- map-level inference for small scales (CMB, dust, …)*
- making all of the above accessible and easy-to-use to researchers and the public
I look forward to continuing this work for SO!
I obtained my undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University in 2016. I then worked for two years as a foreign exchange (FX) derivatives analyst at Barclays. I returned to physics by helping kickstart in-lab detector testing for the SO focal plane under Suzanne Staggs (through 2020). I love baseball, the Philadelphia food scene, and napping with my cats.
*coming soon!