SB/BNL Joint Cosmo seminar [(at Stony Brook)]: Elena Massara, CCA: "Exploring novel probes and methods for cosmology"

Monday 26 Nov 2018, 11:30 → 12:30 US/Eastern

The neutrino masses and the force driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe are some of the most interesting challenges in cosmology. In this talk I will discuss a fairly new probe, the cosmic voids, and a novel method, an emulator with simulations on the fly, to extract cosmological parameters and understand the nature of neutrinos and dark energy. First, I will discuss how voids can be used as cosmological tools and in particular to extract the neutrino masses. Second, I will present a theoretical framework to describe the matter density profile around voids and the void bias. Finally, I will talk about the design of the new emulator we are developing. It will generate the galaxy-galaxy power spectrum in redshift space by combining fast quasi-nbody simulations (FastPM), Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) modeling, and variance cancellation techniques to produce accurate ensemble averaged galaxy power spectra without invoking a large bill of computer hours.