Dissecting Cluster Cosmology


IFPU
July 3 – 7, 2023


In the last decade, astronomical data-sets have started to be widely and quantitatively used by the scientific community to address important physical questions such as: the nature of the dark matter and dark energy components and their evolution; the physical properties of the baryonic matter; the sum of neutrino masses; the nature of gravity over megaparsec (Mpc) scales and over cosmic times. Most of these results are based on well-established geometrical cosmological probes (e.g., galaxies, supernovae, cosmic microwave background). Galaxy clusters provide a complementary and necessary approach, as their distribution as a function of time and observables is sensitive to both the geometrical and the dynamical evolution of the Universe, driven by the growth of structures. Galaxy clusters trace in fact the extreme peaks in the matter density field on Mpc scales. The abundance of these peaks as a function of mass and redshift is highly sensitive to the matter density and the growth of structure and, under the assumption that their abundance can be accurately predicted for a given cosmology, the measurements of cluster abundance can yield powerful cosmological constraints. This program aims at bringing together leading experts from the very first steps of the definition of a cluster survey to the final cosmological posteriors, in order to define a path toward fully exploiting the overwhelming quantity and quality of data available in the next decade from cosmological surveys at different wavelengths.

Reference webpage: https://indico.ict.inaf.it/event/2223/

Scientific organizers:

  • Stefano Borgani (Università di Trieste & INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste)
  • Tiago Castro (Università di Trieste & INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste)
  • Matteo Costanzi (Università di Trieste & INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste)
  • Alexandro Saro (Università di Trieste & INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste)