Probing Fundamental Physics With the Cosmic Microwave Background: Present Status and Future Prospects (Joint DTP - DAA Colloquium)

With the observations of the CMB from space by the COBE, WMAP, and Planck   satellites as well as numerous suborbital observations from the Atacama Desert in Chile, the South Pole, and stratospheric balloons, a precise characterization of the microwave sky both in temperature and in polarization has emerged.  This data has allowed us to constrain the New Physics at play in the very early Universe, thus greatly winnowing down the space of allowed inflationary models, and has also constrained other aspects of fundamental physics, such as the neutrino sector, just to name one example. In this talk I shall examine a few of the present constraints and also offer some predictions concerning what new things we are still likely to learn from the CMB with future probes, such as the Stage 4 Experiment, which could be described as the almost ultimate ground-based experiment, and the Japanese-led LiteBIRD satellite.