Good afternoon: Talks and events for Friday, 1/30/09 Friday January 30, 2009 Robinson 251 (Library) Noon - 1:15 pm Lunch with Dr. Patrick McDonald in Robinson 251. All Graduate students and interested undergraduates should attend this informal event. Pizza and soda will be provided. Friday, January 30, 2009 3:00 pm Anderson Hall, Room 206 TUFTS UNIVERSITY Special Physics and Astronomy Colloquium ?Precision Large-Scale Structure ? Theory and Surveys? Patrick McDonald University of Toronto We have only scratched the surface of the potential for using large-scale structure (LSS) as a probe of fundamental physics/cosmology -- we have only measured a fraction of a percent of the accessible LSS information. Future measurements will probe dark energy, inflation, dark matter properties, neutrino masses, modifications of gravity, etc. with unprecedented precision. I will discuss three probes of LSS: the traditional galaxy redshift survey, the Lyman-alpha forest (LyaF), and the new idea of 21 cm intensity mapping; and two experiments I am involved with that cover these probes: SDSS-III/BOSS (galaxies and LyaF) and the proposed CHIME (21 cm). I will discuss three specific ways to use LSS: measurements of the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) distance scale, redshift-space distortions, and galaxy bias as it relates to non-Gaussianity of the primordial perturbations. Refreshments served in Knipp Library, Robinson 250, at 2:30 pm.
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special ColloquiumMcDonald1-30-09.doc
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special ColloquiumMcDonald1-30-09.pdf
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