CCAPP Seminar - Andrew Robertson (JPL)

Speaker: Andrew Robertson (JPL)

"Trying to understand the dark stuff"

The speaker will discuss attempts to measure the properties of dark matter and dark energy, the two components that dominate the Universe's
energy budget. With regards to dark matter, I will discuss what we can learn about dark matter self-interactions from the shapes of galaxy clusters
inferred from weak gravitational lensing. I will present some of the difficulties in using weak lensing to measure dark matter properties, and discuss
potential ways forward. I will then present ongoing work aiming to use the redshift-space distribution of galaxies around clusters to test theories of
gravity, focusing on trying to distinguish f(R) gravity from general relativity.