Related papers: Cosmic Visions Dark Energy: Small Projects Portfol…
For physicists, recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology present exciting challenges. We are conducting "experiments" in energy regimes some of which will be probed by accelerators in the near future, and others which are…
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a massively multiplexed fiber-fed spectrograph that will make the next major advance in dark energy in the timeframe 2018-2022. On the Mayall telescope, DESI will obtain spectra and…
The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the last major building block of the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark…
In this series of lectures we review observational evidence for, and theoretical investigations into, cosmic acceleration and dark energy. The notes are in four sections. First I review the basic cosmological formalism to describe the…
Starting around 2013, data from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be analyzed for a wide range of phenomena. By separately tracing the development of mass structure and rate of expansion of the universe, these data will…
The current understanding of dark matter comes largely from measurements of the total matter content in the universe, from the distribution of gravitating matter on very large scales, and from rotation curves and velocity dispersions on…
The accelerating expansion of the Universe is one of the most surprising and potentially profound discoveries of modern cosmology. Measuring the acceleration well enough to meaningfully constrain interesting physical models requires…
Cosmology is entering a very exciting time in its history, when a wealth of cutting-edge experiments are all starting to collect data, or about to. These experiments aim at addressing some of the most intriguing questions in fundamental…
Several attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem, which concerns the value of the cosmological constant being extremely smaller than the Standard Model mass scales, have introduced a scalar field with a very flat potential that…
The cosmographic technique is a powerful model-independent tool for distinguishing between competing cosmological scenarios. The key strengths and weaknesses of standard cosmography are discussed in view of healing the convergence problem…
We present forecasts on the capability of future wide-area high-sensitivity X-ray surveys of galaxy clusters to yield constraints on the parameters defining the Dark Energy (DE) equation of state (EoS). Our analysis is carried out for…
Strong gravitational lensing enables a wide range of science: probing cosmography; testing dark matter models; understanding galaxy evolution; and magnifying the faint, small and distant Universe. However to date exploiting strong lensing…
There is compelling evidence that the Universe is undergoing a late phase of accelerated expansion. One of the simplest explanations for this behaviour is the presence of dark energy. A plethora of microphysical models for dark energy have…
Dark energy is a fundamental constituent of our universe, its status in the cosmological field equation should be equivalent to that of gravity. Here we construct a dark energy and matter gravity coupling (DEMC) model of cosmology in a way…
We investigate the possibility of a dark energy component that is scaling with epochs. A phenomenological model is introduced whose energy density depends on the redshift in such a way that a smooth transition among the three dominant…
We present Fisher matrix projections for future cosmological parameter measurements, including neutrino masses, dark energy, curvature, modified gravity, the inflationary perturbation spectrum, non-Gaussianity, and dark radiation. We focus…
If dark energy is a form of quintessence driven by a scalar field $\phi$ evolving down a monotonically decreasing potential $V(\phi)$ that passes sufficiently below zero, the universe is destined to undergo a series of smooth transitions.…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will produce unprecedented volumes of heterogeneous astronomical data (images, catalogs, and alerts) that challenge traditional analysis pipelines. The LSST Dark Energy…
Recent cosmological and astrophysical observations point out that the Universe is in accelerating expansion and filled up with non-luminous matter. In order to explain the observed large scale structures and this accelerating behavior one…