Frontier Challenges in Neutrino Cosmology, Dark Energy and Dark Matter

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of this proposal is to study dark energy, dark matter, and the neutrino mass by doing N-body numerical simulations of the evolution of the universe incorporating large and small scale cosmological structure formation. The simulations will incorporate future survey results as they become available. This work specifies the physical processes driving the distribution of galaxies within their halos, the halo and sub-halo mass function, the bias of halos relative to the dark matter, as well as pure dark matter statistics such as the nonlinear power spectrum and higher order statistics. Determining these quantities robustly and at high precision is necessary in order to determine the equation of state of the dark energy and neutrino mass. The presence of new physics which generates neutrino mass highlights the chance that something extremely significant may be present in the neutrino sector ? namely,it is a strong contender to be dark matter. Sterile neutrinos, predicted in most extensions to the standard model of particle physics, can be produced in the early universe and be part of dark matter. The PI proposes to improve the analysis of sterile neutrino production and their clustering and growth in order to see whether these particles are responsible for a large fraction of the dark matter in the universe. The projects presented in this research proposal will integrate research and education by training and developing graduate students through supervised research on these projects. The results of this research will be disseminated to the community on the web and in various talks given by the PI. The graduate students involved on this project would develop the skills needed to work at the forefront of theoretical astrophysics, including sophisticated computational skills.