The next big test for cosmology: the non-linear scales of structure formation

by Dr Benjamin Bose

Tuesday 26 Oct 2021, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

Video conference equipment

https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/62320153507
 

One exciting opportunity to push our understanding of the Universe are  the under-utilised small (non-linear) scales of cosmic structure formation. Upcoming galaxy survey missions promise tiny measurement errors at these scales where even the tiniest deviation to the standard model, ΛCDM, would provide strong evidence for non-standard physics. This hinges on our ability to accurately model the galaxy distribution in a theoretically agnostic way. I describe a promising framework to model the matter correlations in the non-linear regime of structure formation at the required accuracy, while accounting for possible deviations to ΛCDM, massive neutrinos and baryonic physics. I will also discuss a Bayesian neural network trained using this framework able to discern even the tiniest signatures of beyond standard model physics in the matter power spectrum.