Astrophysics and Cosmology

Faculty: Rupert Croft, Tiziana Di Matteo, Richard Griffiths, Takamitsu Miyaji, Jeffrey Peterson

Postdocs: Gulab Chand Dewangan, Shwetabh Singh

Graduate Students: Daniel Bock, Kevin Bandura, Gauri Kulkarni, Ergin Demir, Soma De, Young-Rae Kim, Gabriel Altay, Ben Beppler and Kivanc Sabirli

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The research of the CMU Astrophysics and Cosmology group covers a wide range of problems in observational cosmology. From the study of the earliest energy emission in the universe -the Cosmic Background Radiation- to the evolution of galaxies and the formation of large-scale structure. We're part of the worldwide scientific effort to put constraints on the basic cosmological parameters that describe the evolution of the universe. Many of these parameters are expected to be tied down over the next decade using data from the current and planned ground-based and space-based observatories. The analysis of these new data sets is very challenging and will require both the development of highly sophisticated numerical simulations and the application of the latest tools in data-mining, statistics, and computer science. With the recent addition of theorist Rupert Croft; the establishment of The Pittsburgh Computational Astrostatistics Group; and our continued close associations with our neighbors at the University of Pittsburgh, the CMU Astrophysics and Cosmology group now has strengths in all of these key areas.

Group members have access to data from a variety of major telescopes and space missions, including the Sloan Digitised Sky Survey, the Chandra and XMM X-ray satellites, and the Hubble Space Telescope. CMU is a partner in The National Virtual Observatory and in the 11m SALT telescope in South Africa. CMU also owns a 2m sub-millimeter telescope, Viper, at the South Pole. Computer resources are vital to the success of any modern astrophysics group. The CMU group owns a state-of-the-art Beowulf cluster and has access to the TeraScale facilities of the Pittsburgh Super Computing center.

Recent results include those in strong lensing; the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect; the X-ray background; numerical simulations; and ``baryon wiggles''. The group has also made preliminary measurements of many of the fundamental cosmological parameters including Hubble's Constant, Omega Matter, Omega Total and sigma-8. The group has major involvements in some of the most exciting projects in cosmology and extra-Galactic astronomy e.g. ACBAR, AMiBA, MDS, NVO, SDSS and XCS and is well placed to be a world leader in the race to the underlying cosmological model.