2019

Testing cosmology with weak lensing beyond the power spectrum

by Dr Daniel Gruen (Stanford)

Pacific/Honolulu
112 (Watanabe Hall)

112

Watanabe Hall

Description

The Dark Energy Survey has measured structures in the evolved Universe using the distribution of galaxies and their gravitational lensing signal. I will give an overview both of the methodology of extracting lensing signals with small and quantified systematic uncertainties, and of the results of these analyses as tests of our cosmological model. Of the complementary ways of probing the matter density field for the purpose of cosmology, I will focus on those that go beyond its Gaussian features: clusters of galaxies, and the full PDF of the galaxy and matter density. A joint view of these statistics, and the rapidly increasing and improving data, have begun to deliver on the promise of optical surveys as an independent, leading test of cosmological models.