Cosmology from the Megaparsec to the Micron – Amol Upadhye
Date: Fri. February 5th, 2016, 12:30 pm-1:30 pmLocation: Rockefeller 221
Two major challenges for cosmology over the next decade are to characterize the dark energy responsible for the cosmic acceleration and to weigh the neutrinos, the only Standard Model particles whose masses are not yet known. Part I of the presentation describes my ongoing work to understand the effects of massive neutrinos and evolving dark energy on the formation of large-scale structure. I include both effects in a redshift-space generalization of Time-RG perturbation theory, and establish its validity through comparison to N-body simulations. In Part II I discuss my previous work using stars and laboratory experiments to search for couplings between dark energy and Standard Model particles. A matter coupling would lead to a potentially-detectable fifth force, while a photon coupling would allow for the production and detection of dark energy particles.