Steward Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab Joint Colloquium Series: Precision measurement and machine-assisted discovery in the next generation of cosmological surveys

Abstract: The coming decade will see a qualitative change in our ability to probe the physics of dark energy. After almost two decades of preparation, a new generation of optical and infrared imaging surveys represented by Euclid, the Vera Rubin Observatory, and the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope is on the verge of delivering a deluge of survey data. These programs aim to map the large-scale structure of the Universe to unprecedented precision and accuracy.  This undoubtedly represents a golden age for cosmology. There are still important problems that must be solved before the measurements we make with these data will be sensitive enough to probe the physics of the dark sector, however. In this talk I’ll present novel approaches that bring to bear Bayesian methods, causal inference, and machine learning to solve key measurement problems and enable discovery in the next generation of astronomical surveys.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SIGN UP FOR A TIME TO MEET ONE ON ONE WITH ERIC, PLEASE REACH DAN STARK (dpstark@arizona.edu) DIRECTLY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.