McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Physical Society Colloquium

Interview for Faculty Position

Gravitational Lensing and Cosmology

Ludovic Van Waerbeke

Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

Recent advances in cosmology have revealed the beautiful picture of the very high redshift universe at the photon/matter decoupling, galaxy surveys have shown the three dimensional distribution of light in the nearby universe, and the exploration of the deep universe at high redshift with radio, infrared and X-rays brought new insights about large scale structures formation.

Yet, cosmology is a young science and new observations are desperately needed in order to consolidate our picture of the universe. In particular a large fraction of the universe's content is not seen directly and its physical nature remains totally unknown. In this talk, I will describe a new way to probe the universe, based on the gravitational optics. This technic enables the possibility to 'see' the dark matter directly and to study its distribution out to high redshift. I will discuss the recent results in this field and put them in perspective within the expected progress in cosmology over the next few years.

Friday, February 27th 2004, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)