NLO-CO · Large scale structure of the Universe and fundamental physics
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-11-01 → 2020-10-31
- EU contribution
- €264,668
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Large scale structure of the Universe and fundamental physics
Detailed astronomical observations have established a standard model for cosmology, accounting for the Universe’s contents and the laws that govern its dynamics. If Einstein’s theory is assumed to be a valid description of gravity in the cosmos, two new components, dark matter and dark energy, need to dominate the evolution of the Universe while evading detection on terrestrial experiments. Together, these dark components make up 95% of the energy in the Universe today. The objective of this action is to advance our knowledge of the Universe through the study of theories for gravity, dark energy and dark matter. The predictions of these theories are compared with data to identify viable scenarios which may differ from the standard paradigm. To address the great variety of theories involved, it is necessary to craft flexible computational tools adaptable to many different models. This theoretical, computational and data-interpretation work is crucial to understanding our Universe and the laws of nature. Identifying the nature of dark matter and dark energy is a driver for science and innovation, involving many different experiments across the globe and in space. Progress in fundamental physics drives technical developments in the short term, necessary to implement novel experiments, while it will lead to fundamentally new applications in the long term. Finally, the topics of cosmology and fundamental physics connect with some of the deepest questions known to humanity. The search for answers trains many scientifically skilled workers, many of whom will apply their training beyond purely academic goals, helping society solve its most immediate and pressing challenges.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The purpose of this cosmology project is to study the content and evolution of our Universe using the distribution of matter on large scales. A key goal of forthcoming galaxy surveys is probing fundamental physics, such as the mass of neutrinos and the nature of dark energy, the component sourcing cosmic acceleration. The analysis and interpretation of their data crucially relies on the development of perturbation theory methods and other theoretical tools to describe and predict the evolution of large scale structures in the universe, particularly in the non-linear regime. This project aims to establish the optimal approach to compute the growth of structures and to extract information about dark energy and neutrino masses from the data.This action will address important questions in non-linear structure formation. More specifically, I will 1) devise efficient techniques to obtain information on non-linear clustering from data and apply it to bispectrum estimators and BAO reconstruction; 2) obtain the predictions for general massive neutrinos and dark energy models, beyond the power spectrum; and 3) improve the precision of semi-analytical methods to compute non-linear perturbations on small scales; A very concrete goal of the project is to produce a numerical code and make it public. This code will find direct application in the forecast and analysis of the data from the Euclid mission and other galaxy surveys, to probe the properties of neutrinos and the nature of gravity.In the outgoing phase I will work at University of California, Berkeley (US) to benefit from its great involvement in galaxy surveys and expertise in studies of large scale structure in connection to observations. In the return phase I will work in the Institut de Physique Théorique Saclay (France) where many theoretical developments in perturbation theory and extensions to non-standard models have been developed.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES · ParisCoordinatorFrance
- THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA · OaklandUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union