News: The symposium will take place on the first two days of the EWASS 2016 conference Monday July 4 and Tuesday July 5.

An inflation-probing B-mode signal in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would be a discovery of utmost importance in physics. While recent BICEP2 results hinting upon the detection of such a signal rallied enthusiasm, Planck all-sky polarization measurements in multiple wavelengths showed that this breakthrough is still out of reach. The reason is polarization foregrounds, the dominant one being contamination from polarized emission by Galactic dust within a magnetic interstellar medium. It has therefore become clear that our path to the inflationary B-modes passes through understanding and successfully controlling microwave polarization foregrounds at high accuracy. With next-generation CMB polarization experiments underway and under development, the timing is ideal to discuss:

• our theoretical understanding of such foregrounds;
• standard and novel techniques for foreground control and subtraction;
• current and future experiments for measuring polarization foregrounds and improving polarization foreground modeling.

Programme

Invited speakers

• Moumita Aich (UKZN)
• Carlo Baccigalupi (SISSA)
• Jean-Philippe Bernard (IRAP)
• Francois Boulanger (IAS)
• Anthony Challinor (Cambridge)
• Josquin Errard (ILP)
• Anne Gambrel (Princeton)
• Ricardo Genova-Santos (IAC)
• Brandon Hensley (JPL/Caltech)
• Renee Hlozek (Toronto)
• Charles Lawrence (JPL/Caltech)
• Luca Pagano (Sapienza)
• Mathieu Remazeilles (JBCA Manchester)
• Jan Tauber (ESA)
• Ingunn Kathrine Wehus (UiO)

Scientific organisers
Erminia Calabrese (Oxford); Clive Dickinson (Manchester); Hans Kristian Eriksen (Oslo); Vasiliki Pavlidou (Crete); Anthony Readhead (Caltech); Konstantinos Tassis (Crete)

Contact
tassis @ physics.uoc.gr