Speaker:  Tessa Baker (Oxford)

Abstract:

Over the past few years, much effort has been devoted to building parameterisations that describe the space of alternative gravity theories. It’s now time to move from the construction phase of these frameworks into the application phase, and use them to carry out model-independent tests of gravity. First I’ll look at how to generalise the usual calculations of gravitational weak lensing and large-scale structure growth for this purpose. I’ll present a careful account of all the subtleties involved, and the constraints that can be achieved with next-generation surveys. I’ll then move on to the somewhat neglected problem of how to combine cosmological tests of gravity with astrophysical tests. I’ll present a novel method for unifying all gravitational systems on a single diagram; this illuminates the gravitational regimes that have not yet been probed.