Related papers: Gaia, Fundamental Physics, and Dark Matter
Precise measurement of the fundamental parameters of stellar systems, including mass and radius, depends critically on how well the stellar distances are known. Astrometry from space provides parallax measurements of unprecented accuracy,…
GAIA (originally the acronym for Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics) is a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) which will make the largest, most precise three dimensional map of our Galaxy by an unparalleled survey of…
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…
The final astrometric data from the Gaia mission will transform our view of the stellar content of the Galaxy, particularly when complemented with spectroscopic surveys providing stellar parameters, line-of-sight kinematics and elemental…
Advancement in astronomical observations and technical instrumentation implies taking into account the general relativistic effects due the gravitational fields encountered by the light while propagating from the star to the observer.…
The performance expected from a galaxy survey to be carried out with GAIA, the GAIA Galaxy Survey, is outlined. From a statistical model of galaxy number density, size and surface brightness distribution, and from detailed numerical…
The second Gaia data release (DR2), contains very precise astrometric and photometric properties for more than one billion sources, astrophysical parameters for dozens of millions, radial velocities for millions, variability information for…
Quasars are essential for astrometric in the sense that they are spatial stationary because of their large distance from the Sun. The European Space Agency (ESA) space astrometric satellite Gaia is scanning the whole sky with unprecedented…
The proposed GaiaNIR mission would extend Gaia's astrometric capabilities into the near-infrared, improving astrometric precision and enabling observations in heavily dust-obscured regions. In this work, we investigate the impact of GaiaNIR…
Breakthroughs in physics and astrophysics are often driven by technological advances, with the recent detection of gravitational waves being one such example. This white paper focuses upon how improved astrometric and spectroscopic…
Astrophysical measurements away from the 1 AU orbit of Earth can enable several astrophysical science cases that are challenging or impossible to perform from Earthbound platforms, including: building a detailed understanding of the…
The GAIA Galactic survey satellite will obtain photometry in 15 filters of over 10^9 stars in our Galaxy across a very wide range of stellar types. No other planned survey will provide so much photometric information on so many stars. I…
During the last century, with the development of modern physics in such diverse fields as thermodynamics, statistical physics, and nuclear and particle physics, the basic principles of the evolution of stars have been successfully well…
Cosmological observations offer unique and robust avenues for probing the fundamental nature of dark matter particles-they broadly test a range of compelling theoretical scenarios, often surpassing or complementing the reach of terrestrial…
A suite of vast stellar surveys mapping the Milky Way, culminating in the Gaia mission, is revolutionizing the empirical information about the distribution and properties of stars in the Galactic stellar disk. We review and lay out what…
Gaia will play an important role in providing information about star formation histories, merging events, intergalactic streams etc., for nearby galaxies of the Local Group. One of the most crucial contributions will be proper motions,…
The second data release of the Gaia mission contained astrometry and photometry for an incredible 1,692,919,135 sources, but how many sources did Gaia miss and where do they lie on the sky? The answer to this question will be crucial for…
Astrometric surveys offer us a method to search for elusive cosmic signatures, such as ultralight dark photon dark matter and gravitational waves, by observing the deflection to the apparent positions of the stars. The detection…
We present an approach to measure the Milky Way (MW) potential using the angular accelerations of stars in aggregate as measured by astrometric surveys like Gaia. Accelerations directly probe the gradient of the MW potential, as opposed to…
Exoplanets mass measurements will be a critical next step to assess the habitability of Earth-like planets: a key aspect of the 2020 vision in the previous decadal survey and also central to NASA's strategic priorities. Precision astrometry…