Carola Zanoletti is a PhD student in cosmology at Newcastle University. She is testing models that modify the background expansion and growth of structure in the universe. She received her master's degree at the University of Cambridge, studying discretization conditions on the perturbation equations for a palindromic universe model at the Institute of Astronomy. Before that, she obtained her bachelor's degree in Physical Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Title: Probing Gravity on Cosmological Scales: Theories and Parametrizations
Abstract: Vast amounts of data from Stage-IV surveys, such as the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and Euclid, promise to revolutionize our understanding of gravity and spacetime. These datasets will dramatically enhance our ability to test for deviations from the ΛCDM model, offering the most rigorous challenge yet to our standard cosmological paradigm. To make the most of this opportunity, we must carefully select which deviations to explore from the wide landscape of possibilities, ranging from physically motivated, specific theoretical models to flexible phenomenological parametrizations. In this talk, I’ll present two complementary strategies for testing gravity: (i) I’ll discuss work to model and constrain specific modified gravity theories across a wide range of scales (with a focus on 4D Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet and Cubic Galileon models); and (ii) I’ll introduce how to test more general modified gravity parametrizations without sacrificing valuable information contained in small-scale data. Together, these approaches illuminate a path toward robust tests of gravity with cosmological data.