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Computational cosmology

Research introduction

Cosmology is central for providing answers to some of the most urgent fundamental questions in physics, including what the physical natures of dark energy and dark matter are; cosmological and other astrophysical observations indicate that dark energy and matter make up 95 % of the entire content of the universe today.

 

The foundation of modern cosmology is general relativity and most importantly its central equation, Einstein’s equation. There is no analytical solution for this equation to describe the entire universe including its structures such as galaxy clusters. Modern research in cosmology therefore depends heavily on numerical methods that are used for constructing models of the universe, making mock-observations in the models and analysing mock as well as real observational data. Through this we can, e.g., learn about the qualities of dark matter and dark energy and how the universe evolved from a hot Big Bang into the universe we see today when we look into the sky.

 

The computational efforts in cosmology vary greatly. You can write your own programs for modelling the universe which can, e.g., be based on N-body simulation techniques or for numerically solving Einstein’s equation for specified initial conditions. The programs need to be supplemented with or include code for modelling the propagation of light or gravitational waves through the models. Often, one will also utilise and modify many of the existing elaborate open source programs developed for cosmological modelling or cosmological data analysis, and machine learning techniques are also applied more and more. For a typical research project in cosmology, you would be spending at least half of your time programming and often much more.

Videos, podcasts & press releases

Visual content that explains some of the research topics within astronomy, astrophysics and gravity.

Meet the researchers

Sofie Marie Koksbang

  • Postdoc at cp3-Origins at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, Faculty of Science, University of Southern Denmark
  • PhD in Physics fromAarhus University, Denmark
  • Research interests: inhomogeneous cosmology, light propagation, cosmological observations, exact solutions to Einstein’s equations.

SDU's research profile

Last Updated 12.07.2024