Related papers: WFMOS - Sounding the Dark Cosmos
Ordinary matter-including particles such as protons and neutrons-accounts for only about one sixth of all matter in the Universe. The rest is dark matter, which does not emit or absorb light but plays a fundamental role in galaxy and…
One of the most important and surprising discoveries in cosmology in recent years is the realization that our Universe is dominated by a mysterious dark energy, which leads to an accelerating expansion of space-time. A simple generalization…
LSST will open new vistas for cosmology in the next decade, but it cannot reach its full potential without data from other telescopes. Cosmological constraints can be greatly enhanced using wide-field ($>20$ deg$^2$ total survey area),…
The presence of dark energy in the Universe is inferred directly from the accelerated expansion of the Universe, and indirectly, from measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. Dark energy contributes about 2/3 of the…
Diffuse radio emission in galaxy clusters is a tracer of ultra-relativistic particles and $\mu$G-level magnetic fields, and is thought to be triggered by cluster merger events. In the distant Universe (i.e. $z>0.6$), such sources have been…
Measurements of the growth rate of structure, $f\sigma_8$ in the low-redshift Universe allow stringent tests of the cosmological model. In this work, we provide new constraints on $f\sigma_{8}$ at an effective redshift of $z=0.03$ using the…
The large-scale structure is a major source of cosmological information. However, next-generation photometric galaxy surveys will only provide a distorted view of cosmic structures due to large redshift uncertainties. To address the need…
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…
Major progresses have been made this last year towards a better knowledge of the invisible mass. Michel Spiro will talk in details about the micro-lensing experiments and their promising results; the ROSAT satellite has provided extended…
The centres of galaxies are powerful laboratories to test the current $\Lambda$CDM model for structure formation and evolution. While these sub-galactic scales can be directly investigated in the local Universe, it is observationally…
Context. Explaining the accelerated expansion of the Universe is one of the fundamental challenges in physics today. Cosmography provides information about the evolution of the universe derived from measured distances, assuming only that…
This contribution intends to give a pedagogical introduction to the topic of dark energy (the mysterious agent supposed to drive the observed late time acceleration of the Universe) and to various observational tests which require only…
Exploring dark matter via observations of extreme astrophysical environments -- defined here as heavy compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, as well as supernovae and compact object merger events -- has been a…
The cold dark matter scenario of hierarchical large-scale structure formation predicts the existence of abundant subhalos around large galaxies. However, the number of observed dwarf galaxies is far from this theoretical prediction,…
Strong gravitational lensing has been identified as a promising astrophysical probe to study the particle nature of dark matter. In this paper we present a detailed study of the power spectrum of the projected mass density (convergence)…
Weak gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for studying both the geometry and the dynamics of the Universe. Its power spectrum contains information on the sources emitting photons and on the large--scale structures that these hotons…
The observed late-time acceleration of the cosmic expansion constitutes a fundamental problem in modern theoretical physics and cosmology. In an attempt to weight the validity of a large number of dark energy models, I use the recent…
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…
Understanding the large-scale structure of the Universe requires analyses of cosmic clustering and its evolution over time. In this work, we investigate the clustering properties of SDSS blue galaxies, which are excellent tracers of dark…
We examine the prospects for the next generation of surveys aimed at elucidating the nature of dark energy. We review the methods that can be used to determine the redshift evolution of the dark energy equation of state parameter w,…