PhD defence

Playing dice with the Universe

• G. Cañas Herrera

Date

Wednesday 19 October 2022

Time

13:45 - 14:30 hour

Address

Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden

The ultimate goal of cosmologists is to find a cosmological model able to explain the current observational data, and so far, it seems that they have accomplished it. The Standard Cosmological model establishes that our universe is mainly composed of two well-measured yet unknown components: a type of matter that is known to only interact through gravitation, Cold Dark Matter (CDM), and a substance responsible for the current accelerated expansion of the universe that can be modelled by a cosmological constant. Still, this model, though successful, fails to answer hot-burning questions in the field. For this reason, theoretical cosmologists focus on developing further modifications of the model to test them against astrophysical data to check whether alternative scenarios can provide a better explanation of the observations.

This thesis is dedicated to the Bayesian statistical analyses of extensions of the Standard Cosmological model using several astronomical data sets, and to the forecast of new observables or experiments. The first part focuses on data science and inflation, and it aims to constrain inflationary models using advanced inference techniques. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the novel concept of cross-correlations of gravitational-wave physics and large scale structure observables. The third part of this thesis is dedicated to the incoming ESA Euclid satellite, and in particular, it focuses on a crucial data science analysis software for the mission: the code “Cosmological Likelihood for Observables in Euclid”, also known as CLOE.

Supervisor(s)

• Prof. A. Achúcarro

PhD dissertations

Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.

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