Voids of Dark Energy – Sourish Dutta
Date: Tue. March 6th, 2007, 11:30 am-12:30 pmLocation: Rockefeller 221
The present-day acceleration of the Universe is one of the greatest mysteries of modern cosmology. In the framework of general relativity, the expansion could be caused by either a “cosmological constant”, or a dynamical dark energy component (DDE). In this talk I will describe a novel theoretical approach to distinguishing between these two possibilities, namely, via the clustering properties of DDE. By following the dynamical evolution of matter perturbations in a cosmic mix of matter and DDE, we find the very interesting result that the DDE tends to form voids in the vicinity of gravitationally collapsing matter. I will discuss these voids in detail, in particular the physics behind their formation and possible observational implications.