Anže Slosar (BNL)

Sizing up the Universe with the Baryon Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) experiment

The biggest problem in astronomy has always been measurement of the distances to astronomical objects. The same is true of cosmology, where measuring distances in physical units as a function of redshift allows one to measure the expansion history of the universe and thus constrain properties of components of the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter. Baryonic acoustic oscillations are one technique to measure distances in the Universe. It relies on using an eponymous feature in the correlation function of the large scale structure in the universe as a ruler of a known physical length. I will present measurements of this quantity using two tracers of structure in the universe: galaxies and Lyman-alpha forest. Both measurements are consistent with the standard cosmological model and confirm the existence of dark energy.

Oct 24 at 4pm in Braunstein 301