Robert Smith

Constraining the cosmological model with next generation large-scale structure surveys

The next decade will see the undertaking of several large photometric and spectroscopic galaxy surveys, like the Rubin Telescope, Euclid, 4MOST and DESI. These surveys will enable us to map the positions and properties of tens of millions of galaxies across a significant fraction of the sky and out to depths of the order z∼2 (roughly 10 billion years into the past). Thus covering a significant fraction of the observable Universe.  This data has the power to revolutionise our understanding of dark energy and dark matter and shed new light on the physics of the Early Universe.  However, in order to achieve these gains, we will need to control a number of systematic effects to a high precision and also take our modelling of the observables to new heights in particular the nonlinear evolution of structure, redshift space distortions and galaxy biasing.

 The large-scale structure group in the Astronomy Centre at the University of Sussex has a long history of developing the methodology for maximising the cosmological constraining power of these upcomingimaging and spectroscopic surveys. We have various open PhD projects that range from developing new theoretical models of the observables to performing state-of-the-art numerical simulations that will allow us to build mock Universes. We are part of the Virgo Consortium and have access to DiRAC and the COSMA6, COSMA7 and COSMA7 supercomputers.

We are active members of the Rubin Telescope's LSST mission, Euclid and 4MOST.

Should you have any questions about the project please do not hesitate  to contact me directly.

 Dr Robert E. Smith, 
Reader in Cosmological Physics,
Astronomy Centre, 
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Sussex,

email: r.e.smith@sussex.ac.uk

https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p330705-robert-e-smith

Click here for an up to date list of Dr Robert E. Smith’s publications.