RAS Specialist discussion meeting, London, UK, February 12, 2016
Organizers: Rafal Szepietowski (RAS), Sandrine Pires (CEA Saclay, France)
Title: ‘Cosmology with Maps’
10:00-10:30 Coffee
10:30-10:50 Opening – Rafal Szepietowski
10:50-11:20 Review on “Maps of the universe: past, present and future“, Ofer Lahav (UCL, London)
11:20-11:50 Review on “2D and 3D Mapping Techniques“, Jean-Luc Starck (CEA, Saclay)
11:50-12:10 “Astronomically large particle colliders“, Richard Massey (Durham)
12:10-12:30 “Cosmology with Cluster Lenses in HST and Wide Field Surveys“, Eric Jullo (LAM, Marseille)
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:00-14:30 Review on “Fresh approaches to density maps“, David Bacon (ICG, Portsmouth)
14:30-14:50 “Exploring darkness through light: on combining lensing and galaxy maps“, Chihway Chang (ETH, Zurich)
14:50-15:10 “Weak Lensing Mass Maps in Euclid“, Sandrine Pires (CEA, Saclay)
15:10-15:30 Discussion
Topic of the discussion:
Summary statistics, such as the power spectrum, have often been a primary tool of modern cosmology as they can be explicitly linked with theoretical predictions for different physical theories. However, the fields in the Universe contain much more information than can be captured by those compressive statistics.
To give just few examples, spatially resolved maps of large-scale structure are especially suited to study individual elements of the cosmic web – clusters, voids, and filaments; they are sensitive to non-Gaussian features of the density field and environment-dependent effects in modified gravity. Of course, such maps can be used beyond purely cosmological applications, for example to study the correlations between galaxy properties and the local and large scale environments in which these galaxies reside, thus providing crucial information for galaxy formation and evolution studies.
Ongoing and future wide-field surveys, such as the DES, Euclid, LSST and SKA, will provide data to construct resolved maps of large volumes of the Universe. However, the choice of the observational probe, e.g. weak gravitational lensing, peculiar velocities or galaxy positions, and a specific map-making algorithm depend on a particular science application.
This meeting will be an opportunity to present map-making techniques for various probes, and their unique science applications and provide a forum for the different scientific efforts that make use of such maps.