The LIGO detections of Gravitational Waves have started the field of Gravitational Wave astronomy. This opens an exiting opportunity to test gravity theories in regimes where it has not been tested yet. Together with standard cosmological observations, one can put tight multimessenger constraints on different cosmological models.
Objective
These lecture series will be dedicated to combining theory with cosmological observations. First of all, I will discuss the consistent construction of prominent gravity theories, both from a geometrical as well as field theory perspectives. I will introduce more general space-time geometries as well as the building blocks of field theories based on additional degrees of freedom in the gravity sector. Coming from the theory side, I will explain the theoretical constraints and consistency checks that can be applied to fundamental gravity theories. In the observational side, the confrontation of gravity theories with cosmological observations is a crucial ingredient in testing these theories. A natural starting point will be the study of the background evolution. Theory parameters can then be constrained using the distance redshift relation from Supernovae, the distance priors method from CMB and BAO measurements. Given the recent developments in gravitational wave physics, I will discuss the implications of alternative gravity theories in the regime of strong gravity.
Literature
Useful reading materials: cosmology book by Matthias Bartelmann, gravitational waves book by Michele Maggiore and the articles arXiv:1807.01725, arXiv:1806.05195
Performance assessment
Performance assessment information (valid until the course unit is held again)