My work is in the field of cosmology, the study of the structure, origin, and evolution of the universe on the very largest scales. My students and I analyze and interpret measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is a relic of a time when the universe was only half a million years old (20,000 times younger than today). Maps of this radiation allow us to test models that attempt to explain how galaxies formed, as well as theories about what the universe was like a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
Our ability to test these theories depends on continuing to develop new telescopes. I am currently working on the design of new instruments, particularly the QUBIC telescope, which takes a radical new approach to the problem of accurately measuring the extremely faint cosmic microwave background polarization.
I also do some theoretical work on Einstein's theory of general relativity. John Baez and I published an article on "The Meaning of Einstein's Equation," which provides a novel and (we hope) more comprehensible explanation of the key equation of the theory. David Hogg and I wrote another article explaining the meaning of the cosmological redshift (the most important observation in cosmology).
H. Zheng and E.F. Bunn, "Cosmic microwave background constraints on cosmological models with large-scale isotropy breaking," Physical Review D, in press (2010).
E.F. Bunn, "Evolution and the second law of thermodynamics," American Journal of Physics, 77, 922 (2009).
E.F. Bunn and D.W. Hogg, "The kinematic origin of the cosmological redshift," American Journal of Physics, 77, 688 (2009).
E.F. Bunn and A. Bourdon, "Contamination cannot explain the lack of large-scale power in the cosmic microwave background radiation," Physical Review D, 78, 123509 (2008).
T. Faulkner, M. Tegmark, E.F. Bunn, Y. Mao, "Constraining f (R) Gravity as a Scalar Tensor Theory," Physical Review D, 76, 063505 (2007).
D. Hanson, D. Scott, and E.F. Bunn, "Directionality in the WMAP Polarization Data," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 381, 2 (2007).
Bunn, E.F. (2007) Systematic Errors in Cosmic Microwave Background Interferometry. Physical Review D, 75, 083517.
Korotkov, A.L., Kim, J., Tucker, G.S., Gault, A., Hyland, P., Malu, S., Timbie, P.T., Bunn, E.F., Bierman, E., Keating, B., Murphy, A., O'Sullivan, C., Ade, P.A.R., Calderon, C., & Piccirillo, L. (2006) The Millimeter-wave Bolometric Interferometer. Millimeter and Submillimeter Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy III (J. Zmuidzinas et al., eds.), Proceedings of SPIE, 6272, 62750X.