Dr Danielle Leonard is a Lecturer at the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics at Newcastle University. Their research focuses on late-time observational cosmology, particularly weak lensing and photometric galaxy clustering. They work both on understanding systematic effects which impact weak gravitational lensing measurements such as intrinsic alignment and photometric redshift uncertainties, and on methods for best constraining beyond-standard cosmological models with observational data. Prior to joining Newcastle in 2019, they were a McWilliams Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. They did their PhD at University of Oxford.
Title: Measuring and modelling galaxy intrinsic alignment
Abstract: Characterising dark energy – the mysterious phenomenon driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe – is the holy grail of modern cosmology. Determining its nature using weak gravitational lensing is a primary science goal of global flagship surveys Euclid (ongoing) and LSST (due to commence this year). To achieve this, we need to control modelling uncertainty on the intrinsic alignment of galaxies – correlations in the observed shapes of galaxies due to local gravitational and astrophysical processes. Intrinsic alignment is believed to be caused by a combination of tidal effects, galaxy evolution, and environment, but the precise physical details are poorly understood. In this talk, I will discuss work toward improving our measurements and modelling of galaxy intrinsic alignment, to enable precision constraints on dark energy and our cosmological model with weak lensing
Location Information
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON, CA N2L 3G1
