Letters of Intent received in 2017

LoI 2019-2008
Galaxy Formation and Cosmology in the era of large surveys

Date: 17 June 2019 to 21 June 2019
Category: Non-GA Symposium
Location: Teruel, Spain
Contact: Alvaro Orsi (aaorsi@cefca.es)
Coordinating division: Division J Galaxies and Cosmology
Other divisions: Division J Galaxies and Cosmology
Co-Chairs of SOC: Licia Verde (ICC, UB)
Carlos Hernandez-Monteagudo (CEFCA)
Co-Chairs of LOC: Alvaro Orsi (CEFCA)
Luisa Valdivielso (CEFCA)

 

Topics

- Next generation of wide-field spectroscopic and photometric galaxy surveys.
- Current and future constraints on the gravity law, dark energy and dark matter.
- Cosmological Probes: Baryonic acoustic oscillations, Redshift-space distortions, Gravitational Lensing, Galaxy clusters.
- Multi-wavelength view of galaxies from high redshifts to the present-day.
- Galaxy formation models and constraints on their physical ingredients from large datasets.
- Joint constraints on galaxy formation and cosmology.
- Optimal analyses of large survey datasets.
- Complementarity and synergies between future surveys.

 

Rationale

During the past decade our knowledge about the Universe increased enormously thanks to the intensive exploitation of large public galaxy surveys, such as SDSS, 2dFGRS, 2MASS, 6dF, etc. The field of galaxy formation developed at a rapid pace revealing the life of galaxies: their evolution and transformation, the key role played by super-massive black holes, and the importance of environment and mergers. Over the same period of time, cosmology became a precision science: a standard model emerged whose parameters are measured in a progressively more accurate and robust manner. However, this standard cosmological model features some of the most remarkable puzzles in modern physics: dark energy and dark matter. Similarly, our understanding of galaxy formation physics is still incomplete.

The next generation of observational campaigns will map a large fraction of the visible Universe in an attempt to answer fundamental questions regarding the nature of the dark matter, dark energy and the gravitation law. Simultaneously, these galaxy surveys will observe hundreds of millions of galaxies, aiming at providing a complete census across different mass ranges, environments and cosmic time.
Each ongoing or planned survey attempts to impact cosmological and galaxy formation studies by relying on a different strategy that maximizes
the performance of the instruments used. As a result, in the next few years we expect to contemplate a rich diversity of observational datasets with important overlaps and complementarity in terms of redshift, wavelength coverage and systematic errors. For this reason, an optimal exploitation of the new datasets necessarily relies on joint analyses and, therefore, on the interaction and collaboration between the galaxy formation and cosmology community across the different surveys.
The proposed IAU symposium intends to bring together observers and theorists involved in the design and scientific exploitation of large galaxy redshift surveys. Recent progress and future directions in the field will be discussed. Collaboration and networking opportunities will be encouraged via open discussions in each session. Additionally, synergies with other cosmological experiments will be discussed, such as probes of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation and the Intergalactic Medium in the radio and X-ray range in the context of the interplay between Galaxy Formation and Cosmology. As a result, an overview of the challenges and problems, together with possible routes for overcoming these problems, planning of the concrete work in terms of observations needed and key scientific goals should be identified. This includes the crucial synergies between surveys needed to tackle these issues. We believe this would be essential to enable a solid and optimal advance of our understanding of the universe.
The venue of this symposium is the historical city centre of Teruel, in Spain. The city gathers in its historical center the uniqueness of Mudéjar architecture, declared World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1986. Apart from the Mudéjar art, there exists many artistic and architectonic manifestations from the 16th century to the late 19th century, both periods of great splendor and development of the city. The exquisite gastronomy, the proximity between hotels and the tourist resources, and the availability of inexpensive child-care options provides a comfortable, family-friendly and quiet environment for celebrating this meeting. This facilitates an atmosphere suitable for (formal and informal) scientific discussion and interaction. We would like to highlight our plan of creating a family-friendly symposium, where different child-care options would be provided to participants bringing young children.

Program outline:

The program for each day will have a mixture of contributed, invited talks, a poster session, 2-3 parallel thematic lunches where more specific topics can be discussed, and a round table with expert moderators that will discuss the most important topics and how to advance the field, such as the interplay between galaxy formation and cosmological studies, strategic planning of surveys, and concrete work that is needed to fully exploit cosmological surveys.

A list of possible topics to be discussed at thematic lunches:
photometric redshifts
alternative cosmologies
database / virtual observatories