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Caltech

TAPIR Seminar

Friday, February 12, 2016
2:00pm to 3:00pm
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East Bridge 114
Probing Gravity: CMB Lensing, Galaxies, and Intensity Mapping
Anthony Pullen, McWilliams Postdoctoral Fellow, McWilliams Center for Cosmology, Carnegie Mellon University,

We discuss recent work exploring the use of large-scale structure to probe gravity.  We first consider using CMB lensing and galaxy surveys to probe E_G, the ratio between curvature and velocity perturbations. This quantity is independent of galaxy clustering bias and is distinct for various gravity models, breaking the degeneracy in current cosmological probes of gravity and dark energy. We present our constraints to E_G using CMB data from Planck and galaxy data from the SDSS BOSS survey, which are in tension with general relativity (GR). We also forecast gravity constraints for upcoming galaxy and CMB surveys.  Finally, we consider intensity mapping (IM) as a gravity probe.  Specifically, we discuss our recent work probing intensities of star formation lines, i.e. CO, Ly-a, at high redshifts, and how IM lines can be used to measure E_G.

For more information, please contact JoAnn Boyd by phone at 4280 or by email at [email protected].