Meeting of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Quasar and Lyman alpha Forest Working Groups

The McWilliams Center for Cosmology at CMU is hosting a meeting of participants in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS).

BOSS will map the spatial distribution of luminous galaxies, quasars, and intergalactic gas clouds (known as the Lyman alpha forest) to detect the characteristic scale imprinted by baryon acoustic oscillations in the early universe. Sound waves that propagate in the early universe, like spreading ripples in a pond, imprint a characteristic scale on cosmic microwave background fluctuations. These fluctuations have evolved into today's walls and voids of galaxies, meaning this baryon acoustic oscillation scale is visible among galaxies today.Using the acoustic scale as a physically calibrated ruler, BOSS will determine the angular diameter distance with a precision of 1% at redshifts z = 0.3 and z = 0.6 and 1.5% at z = 2.5, and it will measure the cosmic expansion rate H(z) with 1-2% precision at the same redshifts. These measurements will provide demanding tests for theories of dark energy and the origin of cosmic acceleration.

The meeting will last from 9am Monday 21st June 2010 - 12:30pm Thursday 24th June 2010

The meeting place is the Reddy Auditorium (Hillman Center 4405) and also the McWilliams eScience video facility (Hillman 4303)

The organizers are Rupert Croft (CMU), Nic Ross (Berkeley Labs) and Michael Wood-Vasey (Univ. Pittsburgh)