Related papers: Two Windows on Acceleration and Gravitation: Dark …
Strong gravitational lensing provides a geometric probe of cosmology in a unique manner through distance ratios involving the source and lens. This is well known for the time delay distance derived from measured delays between lightcurves…
The standard approach to test for deviations from general relativity on cosmological scales is to combine measurements of the growth rate of structure with gravitational lensing. In this study, we show that this method suffers from an…
Observations of distant supernovae indicate that the Universe is now in a phase of accelerated expansion the physical cause of which is a mystery. Formally, this requires the inclusion of a term acting as a negative pressure in the…
The GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2008 (GREAT08) Challenge focuses on a problem that is of crucial importance for future observations in cosmology. The shapes of distant galaxies can be used to determine the properties of dark…
Measuring the statistics of galaxy peculiar velocities using redshift-space distortions is an excellent way of probing the history of structure formation. Because galaxies are expected to act as test particles within the flow of matter,…
In the search for the nature of dark energy most cosmological probes measure simple functions of the expansion rate. While powerful, these all involve roughly the same dependence on the dark energy equation of state parameters, with…
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…
We show that in cosmology the gravitational action of the far away matter has quite relevant effects, if retardation of the forces and discreteness of matter (with its spatial correlation) are taken into account. The expansion rate is found…
In these lectures I give an overview of gravitational lensing, concentrating on theoretical aspects, including derivations of some of the important results. Topics covered include the determination of surface mass densities of intervening…
The observed cosmic acceleration today could be due to an unknown energy component (dark energy), or a modification to general relativity (modified gravity). If dark energy models and modified gravity models are required to predict the same…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies can probe the total projected mass distribution of foreground gravitational structures on all scales and has been used successfully to map the projected mass distribution of rich intermediate…
By using the comoving distance, we derive an analytic expression for the optical depth of gravitational lensing, which depends on the redshift to the source and the cosmological model characterized by the cosmic mass density parameter…
Weak gravitational lensing is responsible for the shearing and magnification of the images of high-redshift sources due to the presence of intervening matter. The distortions are due to fluctuations in the gravitational potential, and are…
Redshift distortion measurements from galaxy surveys include sensitivity to the gravitational growth index distinguishing other theories from Einstein gravity. This gravitational sensitivity is substantially free from uncertainty in the…
The unknown nature of dark energy motivates continued cosmological tests of large-scale gravitational physics. We present a new consistency check based on the relative amplitude of non-relativistic galaxy peculiar motions, measured via…
Forthcoming projects such as the DES, a JDEM, and LSST, aim to measure weak lensing shear correlations with unprecedented accuracy. Weak lensing observables are sensitive to both the distance-redshift relation and the growth of structure in…
Strong gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics provide two complementary and orthogonal constraints on the density profiles of galaxies. Based on spherically symmetric, scale-free, mass models, it is shown that the combination of both…
We explore potential strategies for testing General Relativity via the coherent motions of galaxies. Our position at z=0 provides the reference point for distance measures in cosmology. By contrast, the Cosmic Microwave Background at z ~…
The next generation of telescopes will usher in an era of precision cosmology, capable of determining the cosmological model to beyond the percent level. For this to be effective, the theoretical model must be understood to at least the…
Gravitational weak lensing by large scale structures is view as a tool to probe the bias relation between the mass and the light distributions. It is explained how a particular statistic can be used to deproject the 2D mass distribution…