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Physical Society ColloquiumInterview for Faculty PositionThe hunt for the equation of state of the universeHenk HoekstraCITAThe recent discovery that the dynamics of the universe are dominated by some "dark energy" has created much excitement and puzzled physicists. Although many different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the results, the observational constraint to distinguish between various models is limited. The key parameter to be determined over the next decade is the equation of state w=P/rho.I will discuss three techniques that we will use to constrain this parameter. The type Ia supernovae and weak lensing measurements will use data from the upcoming CFHT Legacy Survey, whereas we will use the RCS2 cluster survey to use the abundance of massive clusters to constrain the cosmology. To support the feasibility of these techniques I will discuss some recent results obtained using data from the RCS1 cluster survey.
Friday, January 24th 2003, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112) |