Tilbake til søkeresultatene

IS-MOBIL-Mobilitetsprogr.f.utl.Ph.D-stu

Anisotropic cosmologies and dark energy

Tildelt: kr 84 999

The generation and formation of structure in the universe and the physics of the cosmic (CMB) are central in the understanding of cosmology. The large-scale structure and the CMB are the richest and most precise sources of information about our universe. Remarkably, recent cosmological data seems to contain hints that the assumptions of standard cosmology may not be valid. In particular, there seems to be some evidence for fundamental anisotropy in the universe, which would apparently violate the cosmolog ical principle. We will investigate how robustly the forthcoming experiments, in particular the measurements of the Planck satellite, can be used to constrain such a possibility. The observation of accelerating universe a ten years ago was a striking chan ge of paradigm. It made necessary to introduce dark energy, whose nature is still unknown. It is a possibility that the anomalous observations indicating the presence of anisotropy in the universe are due to an unexpected property of dark energy. Indeed, in our previous studies we have found theoretical motivation for anisotropic dark energy. These models we will subject to experimental scrutiny: in particular, we should analyze in detail the CMB maps and large scale structure in such models. This has not been done robustly, and it is a challenging but important task. It could result in a new approach to uncover the nature of dark energy, which is among the biggest mysteries of contemporary theoretical physics. However, even if we would be able to rule ou t the possibility of anisotropies in dark energy, it is of fundamental importance to set bounds on the anisotropies of our universe. If there are anisotropies not due to dark energy, we will learn something new about the earliest stages of cosmology durin g the primordial inflation. With the improving accuracy of the cosmological experiments, it becomes possible to constrain the fine details of inflation which can tell us about the fundamental physics behind it.

Budsjettformål:

IS-MOBIL-Mobilitetsprogr.f.utl.Ph.D-stu