KamLAND has measured the flux of nu;(e)'s from distant nuclear reactors. We find fewer nu;(e) events than expected from standard assumptions about nu;(e) propagation at the 99.95% C.L. In a 162 ton.yr exposure the ratio of the observed inverse beta-decay events to the expected number without nu;(e) disappearance is 0.611+/-0.085(stat)+/-0.041(syst) for nu;(e) energies >3.4 MeV. In the context of two-flavor neutrino oscillations with CPT invariance, all solutions to the solar neutrino problem except for the "large mixing angle" region are excluded.

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial configuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping ≈ 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 µK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of σ(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map ≈ 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 µK-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensorto-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources a .

We present results of a study of neutrino oscillation based on a 766 ton/year exposure of KamLAND to reactor antineutrinos. We observe 258 nu (e) candidate events with energies above 3.4 MeV compared to 365.2+/-23.7 events expected in the absence of neutrino oscillation. Accounting for 17.8+/-7.3 expected background events, the statistical significance for reactor nu (e) disappearance is 99.998%. The observed energy spectrum disagrees with the expected spectral shape in the absence of neutrino oscillation at 99.6% significance and prefers the distortion expected from nu (e) oscillation effects. A two-neutrino oscillation analysis of the KamLAND data gives Deltam(2)=7.9(+0.6)(-0.5)x10(-5) eV(2). A global analysis of data from KamLAND and solar-neutrino experiments yields Deltam(2)=7.9(+0.6)(-0.5)x10(-5) eV(2) and tan((2)theta=0.40(+0.10)(-0.07), the most precise determination to date.

This document on the CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan is the product of a global community of scientists who are united in support of advancing CMB-S4 to cross key thresholds in our understanding of the fundamental nature of space and time and the evolution of the Universe. CMB-S4 is planned to be a joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE) project, with the construction phase to be funded as an NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) project and a DOE High Energy Physics (HEP) Major Item of Equipment (MIE) project. At the time of this writing, an interim project office has been constituted and tasked with advancing the CMB-S4 project in the NSF MREFC Preliminary Design Phase and toward DOE Critical Decision CD-1. DOE CD-0 is expected imminently.CMB-S4 has been in development for six years. Through the Snowmass Cosmic Frontier planning process, experimental groups in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and broader cosmology communities came together to produce two influential CMB planning papers, endorsed by over 90 scientists, that outlined the science case as well as the CMB-S4 instrumental concept [1, 2]. It immediately became clear that an enormous increase in the scale of ground-based CMB experiments would be needed to achieve the exciting thresholdcrossing scientific goals, necessitating a phase change in the ground-based CMB experimental program. To realize CMB-S4, a partnership of the university-based CMB groups, the broader cosmology community, and the national laboratories would be needed.The community proposed CMB-S4 to the 2014 Particle Physics Project Prioritization Process (P5) as a single, community-wide experiment, jointly supported by DOE and NSF. Following P5's recommendation of CMB-S4 under all budget scenarios, the CMB community started in early 2015 to hold biannual workshops -open to CMB scientists from around the world -to develop and refine the concept. Nine workshops have been held to date, typically with 150 to 200 participants. The workshops have focused on developing the unique and vital role of the future ground-based CMB program. This growing CMB-S4 community produced a detailed and influential CMB-S4 Science Book [3] and a CMB-S4 Technology Book [4]. Over 200 scientists contributed to these documents. These and numerous other reports, workshop and working group wiki pages, email lists, and much more may be found at the website http://CMB-S4.org.Soon after the CMB-S4 Science Book was completed in August 2016, DOE and NSF requested the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC) to convene a Concept Definition Taskforce (CDT) to conduct a CMB-S4 concept study. The resulting report was unanimously accepted in late 2017. 1 One recommendation of the CDT report was that the community should organize itself into a formal collaboration. An Interim Collaboration Coordination Committee was elected by the community to coordinate this process. The resulting draft bylaws were refined at the Spring 2018 CMB-S4...

LiteBIRD is a next-generation satellite mission to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. On large angular scales the B-mode polarization of the CMB carries the imprint of primordial gravitational waves, and its precise measurement would provide a powerful probe of the epoch of inflation. The goal of LiteBIRD is to achieve a measurement of the characterizing tensor to scalar ratio r to an uncertainty of δr = 0.001. In order to achieve this goal we will employ a kilopixel superconducting detector array on a cryogenically cooled sub-Kelvin focal plane with an optical system at a temperature of 4 K. We are currently considering two detector array options; transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers and microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKID). In this paper we give an overview of LiteBIRD and describe a TES-based polarimeter designed to achieve the target sensitivity of 2 µK·arcmin over the frequency range 50 to 320 GHz.

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We present an overview of the design and status of the POLARBEAR-2 and the Simons Array experiments. POLARBEAR-2 is a Cosmic Microwave Background polarimetry experiment which aims to characterize the arc-minute angular scale B-mode signal from weak gravitational lensing and search for the degree angular scale B-mode signal from inflationary gravitational waves. The receiver has a 365 mm diameter focal plane cooled to 270 milli-Kelvin. The focal plane is filled with 7,588 dichroic lenslet-antenna coupled polarization sensitive Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometric pixels that are sensitive to 95 GHz and 150 GHz bands simultaneously. The TES bolometers are read-out by SQUIDs with 40 channel frequency domain multiplexing. Refractive optical elements are made with high purity alumina to achieve high optical throughput. The receiver is designed to achieve noise equivalent temperature of 5.8 µK CMB √ s in each frequency band. POLARBEAR-2 will deploy in 2016 in the Atacama desert in Chile. The Simons Array is a project to further increase sensitivity by deploying three POLARBEAR-2 type receivers. The Simons Array will cover 95 GHz, 150 GHz and 220 GHz frequency bands for foreground control. The Simons Array will be able to constrain tensor-to-scalar ratio and sum of neutrino masses to σ (r) = 6 × 10 −3 at r = 0.1 and ∑ m ν (σ = 1) to 40 meV.