22–26 Jun 2026
Richard Roberts Auditorium
Europe/London timezone

Physical, Viable and Predictive Models of Dark Energy

22 Jun 2026, 14:35
35m
Richard Roberts Auditorium

Richard Roberts Auditorium

13 Brook Hill, Sheffield S3 7HF

Speaker

Tessa Baker

Description

Recent combinations of BAO, supernovae and CMB data prefer cosmologies with an evolving dark energy equation of state, w(z), which crosses the phantom divide (w=-1). But parameterisations of w(z) are not, in themselves, complete physical models of dark energy.

In this talk we’ll ask: what kind of underlying modified gravity or dark energy models give rise to phantom-crossing behaviour? We’ll see that crossing the phantom divide can have strong consequences for other observables, particularly for ISW-galaxy cross-correlations and voids.

I’ll present a system to triage the large gravity model space down to a set of viable, predictive theories which can be verified or falsified with Stage IV galaxy surveys.

Presentation materials