TRR 33:  The Dark Universe

• Subject Area: Physics
• Term: from 2006 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 15499703

• Final Report Year: 2018

Final Report Abstract

The origin, evolution, and fate of our Universe is one of the most ancient and yet still pressing question in human minds. Even phenomena much closer to us, such as the emergence of the solar system and the origin of life, depend upon of the history and geography of the entire cosmos: the formation and chemical enrichment of stars is in fact directly related to the cosmic evolution. For the first time after centuries of philosophical speculations about our Universe, we have now a solid and exponentially expanding base of data, acquired through astronomical observations and terrestrial experiments. At the same time, the current advanced knowledge of the theory of elementary particles and of the forces, in primis gravity, that shape our environment, allowed us to organize the experimental data into a coherent description that extends across fourteen billion years. The general pattern of this story, from the initial inflationary expansion, to the formation of atomic nuclei, atoms, clouds of gas, galaxies, stars, is now confirmed through innumerable evidences. In the last two decades, however, the discovery of the acceleration of the cosmic expansion forced scientists to revisit the whole picture and to introduce a new form of fluid, called dark energy, which drives the acceleration. This new substance, anticipated in 1917 for different reasons by Albert Einstein with his Cosmological Constant, adds to two other enigmatic ingredients that are needed to explain observations: one is dark matter, composed probably by a new, still undetected, elementary particle that fills along with visible matter almost all the galaxies, and another one is the inflaton, a field that drove the cosmic expansion in its first primordial phase, only to disappear soon after by decaying into other particles. The research programme “The Dark Universe” has been designed to lie at the crossroad of these three areas of research. To address the problems of dark energy, dark matter, and inflation, we collected expertise in theoretical modeling, in astrophysical observations, and in numerical simulations, and created a network of interaction that fostered significant progress in all three areas. Among the achievements of the collaboration, we contributed to several observational surveys that greatly expanded the quantity and quality of astrophysical data (Planck, SDSS, DES, South Pole Telescope, CHFTLens, KiDS, etc.), we prepared for new international satellite missions (eROSITA, Euclid), and we extensively analyzed current data finding robust measurement of cosmological parameters. The results have been published in more than 1100 scientific papers. This project has paved the way for intense collaboration among the institutes and the scientists involved. The results already achieved and the network of new and old collaborations will be a lasting legacy of “The Dark Universe”.

Publications

• “Galaxy cluster X-ray luminosity scaling relations from a representative local sample (REXCESS),” Astron. Astrophys. 498 (2009) 361
  G. W. Pratt, J. H. Croston, M. Arnaud and H. Boehringer
  
• "On Abelian Gauge Symmetries and Proton Decay in Global F-theory GUTs,” Phys. Rev. D 82 (2010) 086009
  T. W. Grimm and T. Weigand
  
• “Hydrodynamical N-body simulations of coupled dark energy cosmologies,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 403 (2010) 1684
  M. Baldi, V. Pettorino, G. Robbers and V. Springel
  
• “Two-component spinor techniques and Feynman rules for quantum field theory and supersymmetry,” Phys. Rept. 494 (2010) 1
  H. K. Dreiner, H. E. Haber and S. P. Martin
  
• “G-Bounce,” JCAP 1111 (2011) 021
  D. A. Easson, I. Sawicki and A. Vikman
  
• “A measurement of gravitational lensing of the microwave background using South Pole Telescope data,” Astrophys. J. 756 (2012) 142
  A. van Engelen et al.
  
• “CFHTLenS: The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 427 (2012) 146
  C. Heymans et al.
  
• “Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH): An Overview,” Astrophys. J. Suppl. 199 (2012) 25
  M. Postman et al.
  
• “Non-Geometric Fluxes in Supergravity and Double Field Theory,” Fortsch. Phys. 60 (2012) 1150
  D. Andriot, O. Hohm, M. Larfors, D. Lust and P. Patalong
  
• “Normal Type Ia supernovae from violent mergers of white dwarf binaries,” Astrophys. J. 747 (2012) L10
  R. Pakmor, M. Kromer, S. Taubenberger, S. A. Sim, F. K. Roepke and W. Hillebrandt
  
• “Scaling relations for galaxy clusters in the Millennium-XXL simulation,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 426 (2012) 2046
  R. E. Angulo, V. Springel, S. D. M. White, A. Jenkins, C. M. Baugh and C. S. Frenk
  
• “The X-ray cluster survey with eROSITA: forecasts for cosmology, cluster physics, and primordial non-Gaussianity,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 422, 44 (2012)
  A. Pillepich, C. Porciani and T. H. Reiprich
  
• "Mimetic Dark Matter,” JHEP 1311 (2013) 135
  A. H. Chamseddine and V. Mukhanov
  
• “Black Hole’s Quantum N-Portrait,” Fortsch. Phys. 61 (2013) 742
  G. Dvali and C. Gomez
  
• “CFHTLenS: Combined probe cosmological model comparison using 2D weak gravitational lensing,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 430 (2013) 2200
  M. Kilbinger et al.
  
• “Cosmological Constraints from Sunyaev-Zel’dovich-Selected Clusters with X-ray Observations in the First 178 Square Degrees of the South Pole Telescope Survey,” Astrophys. J. 763 (2013) 147
  B. A. Benson et al.
  
• “Dilaton Quantum Gravity,” Phys. Lett. B 727 (2013) 298
  T. Henz, J. M. Pawlowski, A. Rodigast and C. Wetterich
  
• “Galaxy clusters discovered via the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect in the first 720 square degrees of the South Pole Telescope survey,” Astrophys. J. 763 (2013) 127
  C. L. Reichardt et al.
  
• “Spectrophotometric time series of SN 2011fe from the Nearby Supernova Factory,” Astron. Astrophys. 554 (2013) A27
  R. Pereira et al.
  
• “Aligned Natural Inflation: Monodromies of two Axions,” Phys. Lett. B 737, 124 (2014)
  R. Kappl, S. Krippendorf and H. P. Nilles
  
• “Anisotropic Stress as a Signature of Nonstandard Propagation of Gravitational Waves,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 (2014) no.19, 191101
  I. D. Saltas, I. Sawicki, L. Amendola and M. Kunz
  
• “Black Holes as Critical Point of Quantum Phase Transition,” Eur. Phys. J. C 74 (2014) 2752
  G. Dvali and C. Gomez
  
• “Cosmic degeneracies - I. Joint N-body simulations of modified gravity and massive neutrinos,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 440 (2014) no.1, 75
  M. Baldi, F. Villaescusa-Navarro, M. Viel, E. Puchwein, V. Springel and L. Moscardini
  
• “D7-Brane Chaotic Inflation,” Phys. Lett. B 737, 16 (2014)
  A. Hebecker, S. C. Kraus and L. T. Witkowski
  
• “Improved Primordial Non-Gaussianity Constraints from Measurements of Galaxy Clustering and the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect,” Phys. Rev. D 89 (2014) no.2, 023511
  T. Giannantonio, A. J. Ross, W. J. Percival, R. Crittenden, D. Bacher, M. Kilbinger, R. Nichol and J. Weller
  
• “Resolving Witten‘s superstring field theory,” JHEP 1404 (2014) 150
  T. Erler, S. Konopka and I. Sachs
  
• “Stable and unstable cosmological models in bimetric massive gravity,” Phys. Rev. D 90, 124014 (2014)
  F. Koennig, Y. Akrami, L. Amendola, M. Motta and A. R. Solomon
  
• “The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the full shape of the clustering wedges in the data release 10 and 11 galaxy samples,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 440, no. 3, 2692 (2014)
  A. G. Sanchez et al.
  
• “CheckMATE: Confronting your Favourite New Physics Model with LHC Data,” Comput. Phys. Commun. 187 (2015) 227
  M. Drees, H. Dreiner, D. Schmeier, J. Tattersall and J. S. Kim
  
• “Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 451, no. 3, 2663 (2015)
  B. M. B. Henriques, S. White, P. Thomas, R. Angulo, Q. Guo, G. Lemson, V. Springel and R. Overzier
  
• “Planck 2015 results. XIV. Dark energy and modified gravity,” Astron. Astrophys. 594 (2016) A14
  P. A. R. Ade et al. [Planck Collaboration]
  
• “Winding out of the Swamp: Evading the Weak Gravity Conjecture with F-term Winding Inflation?,” Phys. Lett. B 748 (2015) 455
  A. Hebecker, P. Mangat, F. Rompineve and L. T. Witkowski
  
• “Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clusters in the 2500 square-degree SPT-SZ Survey,” Astrophys. J. 832, no. 1, 95 (2016)
  T. de Haan et al. [SPT Collaboration]
  
• “Cosmology from cosmic shear with Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data,” Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) no.2, 022001
  T. Abbott et al. [DES Collaboration]
  
• “Graviton fluctuations erase the cosmological constant,” Phys. Lett. B 773 (2017) 6
  C. Wetterich
  
• “KiDS-450: Cosmological parameter constraints from tomographic weak gravitational lensing,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 465 (2017) 1454
  H. Hildebrandt et al.
  
• “Monodromy Dark Matter,” JCAP 1701 (2017) no.01, 036
  J. Jaeckel, V. M. Mehta and L. T. Witkowski
  
• “The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological analysis of the DR12 galaxy sample,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 470 (2017) no.3, 2617
  S. Alam et al. [BOSS Collaboration]
  
• “The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the configuration-space clustering wedges,” Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 464 (2017) no.2, 1640
  A. G. Sanchez et al. [BOSS Collaboration]
  
• “Cosmology and fundamental physics with the Euclid satellite,” Living Rev. Rel. 21 (2018) no.1, 2
  L. Amendola et al.