Astro Tuesday: Judit Prat and Austin Joyce

12:00–1:00 pm ERC 501

Judit Prat "Stress-testing ΛCDM combining probes from the late-time Universe"

The current standard cosmological model ΛCDM provides a remarkably good fit to a great number of observations. Despite the exceptional success of this model, there is recent evidence for possible tensions between parameters as measured by different cosmological probes. Most significant among these is the “Hubble tension”, between measurements of the Hubble constant from the early Universe and from local estimations. Additionally, several experiments that are able to measure the growth of structure in the late-time Universe have historically preferred, on average, lower values of the amplitude of matter fluctuations relative to that predicted by the CMB. These tensions could either be indicative of a breakdown of the standard cosmological model, systematics impacting various analyses or a statistical fluctuation. In this talk, I will first review the status of the current tensions in cosmology assuming the ΛCDM model. Then, I will advocate for a full parameter space comparison between early- and late-time Universe constraints to provide a more constraining and complete test of the current standard cosmological model. I will discuss prospects to do that with current combinations of cosmological probes from the late-time Universe and upcoming data sets.

Austin Joyce "Taking the square root of a black hole"

Event Type

Seminars

Oct 4