Related papers: WFIRST: The Essential Cosmology Space Observatory …
Cosmic acceleration is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades. Testing and distinguishing among possible explanations requires cosmological measurements of extremely high precision probing the full history of cosmic…
Despite two decades of tremendous experimental and theoretical progress, the riddle of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains to be solved. On the experimental side, our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the…
Astrophysical transients have been observed for millennia and have shaped our most basic assumptions about the Universe. In the last century, systematic searches have grown from detecting handfuls of transients per year to over 7000 in 2018…
Dark energy appears to be the dominant component of the physical Universe, yet there is no persuasive theoretical explanation for its existence or magnitude. The acceleration of the Universe is, along with dark matter, the observed…
The accelerating expansion of the universe is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades, implying that the universe is dominated by some form of "dark energy" with exotic physical properties, or that Einstein's theory of…
The acceleration of the cosmic expansion is a fundamental challenge to standard models of particle physics and cosmology. The new physics of dark energy may lie in the nature of gravity, the quantum vacuum, or extra dimensions. I give a…
The Astro2010 Decadal Survey recommended a Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) as its top priority for a new large space mission. The report of the WFIRST-AFTA Science Definition Team (SDT) presents a Design Reference Mission for…
The discovery of the accelerating universe in the late 1990s was a watershed moment in modern cosmology, as it indicated the presence of a fundamentally new, dominant contribution to the energy budget of the universe. Evidence for dark…
Cosmological observations in the new millennium have dramatically increased our understanding of the Universe, but several fundamental questions remain unanswered. This topical group report describes the best opportunities to address these…
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…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
While astrophysical and cosmological probes provide a remarkably precise and consistent picture of the quantity and general properties of dark matter, its fundamental nature remains one of the most significant open questions in physics.…
Discoveries in the last few years have revolutionized our knowledge of the universe and our ideas of its ultimate fate. Measurements of the expansion of the universe show that it is not slowing down under normal gravity but accelerating due…
The Astro2010 Decadal Survey recommended a Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) as its top priority for a new large space mission. As conceived by the decadal survey, WFIRST would carry out a dark energy science program, a…
The recent observational evidence for the acceleration of the universe demonstrates that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete - if not incorrect - and that new physics is out there, waiting to be discovered.…
Understanding cosmic acceleration is one of the key science drivers for astrophysics and high-energy physics in the coming decade (2014 P5 Report). With the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument…
The acceleration of the expansion of the universe arises from unknown physical processes involving either new fields in high energy physics or modifications of gravitation theory. It is crucial for our understanding to characterize the…
Observations provide increasingly strong evidence that the universe is accelerating. This revolutionary advance in cosmological observations confronts theoretical cosmology with a tremendous challenge, which it has so far failed to meet.…
A web of interlocking observations has established that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up and not slowing, revealing the presence of some form of repulsive gravity. Within the context of general relativity the cause of cosmic…
This report describes the 2014 study by the Science Definition Team (SDT) of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission. It is a space observatory that will address the most compelling scientific problems in dark energy,…