Cosmology Seminar – February 21

Tue, February 21, 2017

Elena Massara, UCB 

Neutrinos and voids in modern cosmology 
Neutrino oscillation experiments have shown neutrinos to be massive, thus they participate to the matter content of the Universe and to its evolution. In this era of precision cosmology, the analysis of observational datasets must account for neutrinos, both because cosmology can put strong constraints on the sum of their masses, and because ignoring them can bias the estimation of other cosmological parameters. Having this in mind, I will discuss how to model the nonlinear matter power spectrum in a massive neutrino cosmology, using an extended version of the halo model. Second, since cosmic voids are expected to be good environments to characterise the neutrino-induced effect on the matter distribution, I will present the results from a numerical study of void properties that aims to identify these effects. Finally, I will discuss a model for describing the shape and evolution of void density profiles and void bias.

Campbell 131

1:10pm