Testing the concordance cosmology with weak gravitational lensing – Ali Vanderveld
Date: Tue. March 20th, 2012, 11:30 am-12:30 pmLocation: Rockefeller 221
Weak gravitational lensing, whereby the images of background galaxies are distorted by foreground matter, can be a powerful cosmological probe if systematics are sufficiently controlled. In particular, I will show how we may use weak lensing to robustly test the standard cosmological constant-dominated “concordance model” of cosmology by using in-hand expansion history data to make predictions for future observations. I will then discuss one recent proposal for economically gathering the necessary data while minimizing systematics — the balloon-borne High Altitude Lensing Observatory (HALO). Download the slides