Rachel Mandelbaum
Princeton
Abstract:
Gravitational lensing is a highly useful way to observe the total
matter content of the universe, including dark matter. Given the
strong observational support for the claim that most of the matter in
the universe is dark, weak lensing is therefore a critical part of
current and future observational cosmology efforts. In this talk, I
will discuss several ways that lensing and other probes of large-scale
structure may be used to robustly constrain cosmology. Some very new
results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will serve as a proof
of concept of these methods, which should be a very promising way
forward with near-future surveys such as DES and HSC, and eventually
LSST, WFIRST, and Euclid.