Theory HEP Seminar

The future of weak gravitational lensing in cosmology

Ludovic Van Waerbeke

UBC

Gravitational lensing by large scale structures is poised to play a central role in the future of precision cosmology, to help constraining modified theories of gravity, the neutrino mass, quantifying the dark energy equation of state and a lot more. It is quite possible however that gravitational lensing will first shed light on some of the complex astrophysical processes taking place in galaxy and galaxy cluster formation, before it can reach the high precision needed for dark energy and modified gravity tests. I will review the most important results of the Canada France Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) and explore some of the questions on-going and future surveys will be able to address and what the challenges are going to be.