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Constraining Cosmology with Galaxy Clustering and Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing

TYPEAstrophysics Seminar
Speaker:Prof. Frank van den Bosch
Affiliation:Astronomy Department, Yale University
Date:18.01.2012
Time:14:30
Location:Lidow 620
Abstract:

According to the LCDM concordance cosmology, our Universe is dominated
by dark matter and dark energy, and underwent a phase of inflation
shortly after the Big Bang. Galaxies are believed to reside in massive
haloes of dark mater, which have formed out of quantum fluctuations in
this inflaton field. After a brief introduction of galaxy formation in
a LCDM cosmology, I discuss how we may test our concordance cosmology
using the clustering and gravitational lensing properties of the
galaxy population as a whole. I will introduce the Conditional
Luminosity Function (CLF), which is a powerful tool to describe halo
occupation statistics, the statistical description of how galaxies of
different properties are distributed over dark matter halos of
different mass. I show that the CLF can be constrained using either
galaxy clustering or galaxy-galaxy lensing, and that a combination of
these two data sets allows one to put tight constraints on
cosmological parameters.