Astro Lunch Seminar

Speaker: Simon Birrer (Stanford University)
Title: From few to thousands: Opportunities and challenges in analyzing 10’000 gravitational lenses
Date (JST): Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 11:00 - 12:00
Place: Zoom
Abstract: Strong gravitational lenses have provided great insights into the expansion history of the universe and the dark matter distribution from clusters down to sub-galactic scales. Current state-of-the-art measurements involving strong gravitational lensing are based on samples of order a dozen gravitational lenses. This current decade, with the onset of wide and deep surveys, such as LSST, Euclid and Roman, 10’000s gravitational lenses will be discovered. With these numbers come great opportunities and challenges. New methods and approaches have to be chosen to utilize such a large sample to maintain accuracy at increased precision. In this talk, I will go through the challenges and methods that hold promises in analyzing large samples of lenses. I will further outline the potential of new approaches that only become possible with large numbers of gravitational lenses to fully utilize the opportunities that are laying ahead of us.