This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Dr. Wandelt will develop several methods for using the properties of cosmic voids to learn about dark energy, the most fundamental problem in modern cosmology. The equation of state of dark energy will be constrained using the number, size, and ellipticity distribution of voids and their variations with redshift. Preliminary results indicate that this work will be competitive with other future dark energy probes. Voids as a cosmological probe have independent systematic effects allowing important cross-checks between this and other methods for investigating dark energy.
Broader impacts of this program include student training in research, and development of the online demonstration room, a "Dark Energy Laboratory," which will leverage the existing virtual community of over 8000 participants in CosmologyAtHome.org.
