10:00–11:00 am ERC 401
Jason Poh "Strong Gravitational Lensing Science in the Era of Large Astronomical Surveys"
Strong gravitational lensing occurs when light from a distant source is deflected by a massive object along its line-of-sight to an observer, causing the source image to appear multiply imaged or distorted to the observer. The morphology of strong gravitational lensing systems depends not only on the projected mass profile of the intervening lens object, but also a combination of geometric distances between the observer, lens and source, making them useful probes of dark matter and dark energy. The advent of future large-scale cosmic surveys such as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time will usher in a new epoch of strong lensing science. However, the sheer number of lenses projected to be discovered necessitates the development of novel automated analysis techniques. This is a nascent field with many approaches that have not yet been explored. In this talk, I will describe some of my thesis work on this front, involving deep learning and simulation-based inference techniques.
