Cosmology at CMU

Rupert Croft Tiziana Di Matteo Richard Griffiths Shirley Ho Tina Kahniashvili Rachel Mandelbaum Jeffrey Peterson Hy Trac Talk plan science highlights

. Science approach

. External recognition

. Funding

. Postdocs, seminars and graduate students

. Cross-discipline collaborations

. Meetings

. Diversity

. Future plans Science approach:

Simulation, theory Large-scale sky surveys and

7 Physics faculty 8 postdocs 8 grad students 100,000+ core hydrodynamics + ACT (CMB) black holes SDSS3/BOSS (optical) radiative transfer AS3/eBOSS (optical) vizualization HSC (deep lensing) LSST (first light 2017)

DOE Cosmic Frontiers proposal with integrated science from both sides was recently submitted by the group. We are apparently unique in this respect. The largest volume ever used for clustering measurements

Gives constraints on the amplitude of dark matter fluctuations and the equation of state of dark energy Metric: Examples of external recognition Recent awards

Annie Jump Cannon award of AAS 2011 Rachel Mandelbaum DOE Early Career 2012 Rachel Mandelbaum Carnegie Science Award 2008 Tiziana Di Matteo RESCEU visiting professor 2012 Shirley Ho Leverhulme Visiting Professor (Oxford) 2012 Rupert Croft Leadership roles

Lensing group co-chair Hyper Suprime Cam Rachel Mandelbaum Data quality co-chair AS3-eBOSS Rachel Mandelbaum Image analysis lead, SDSS3/BOSS Shirley Ho +LSST Co-chair, clustering working group AS3 Shirley Ho tasks Chair, Intergalactic Science WG, SDSS3/BOSS Rupert Croft PI and co-PI, GMRT and GBT 21cm experiments Jeff Peterson National science committees

National Research Council Decadal Review Tiziana Di Matteo NSF High Perfomance Computing Task Force Tiziana Di Matteo Executive committee of APS DCOMP Tiziana Di Matteo (+NASA, NSF, XSEDE and other review panels) + PSC

At what redshifts do different parts of the Universe reionize? (simulation) Currently active funding from these sources:

1. NSF astronomy 2. NSF Physics 3. NSF Cyberinfrastructure 4. DOE HEP 5. NASA

6. Bruce and Astrid McWilliams 7. Moore foundation 8. Pittsburgh foundation 9. Templeton foundation 10. Leverhulme Trust Metric: funding (active grants)

CMU Physics share CMU Physics share [pa/total] ($K) as PI [pa/total] ($K) Croft 533/1634 176/439

Di Matteo 456/1464 456/1464

Kahniashvili* 298/895 298/895

Ho 125/250

Mandelbaum 301/901 301/901

Peterson 267/670 267/670

Trac 131/393 Other (not including 193/568 193/568 McWilliams) Average per faculty member 259/705 (no double counting) (pa is for 2012 year) Each person is on an average of 3.4 active sources of funding Weak gravitational lensing shear

Constraints on dark energy and curvature compared to just WMAP Current Postdocs

Advice and experience suggested that increasing the number of young active researchers was the best way for us compete with other top centers (e.g. Harvard ITC has 27, OSU CCAPP has 12)…

1. Aravind Natarajan dark matter detection theory + 21cm expt 2. Mariana Vargas large-scale structure and baryon oscillations 3. Nick Battaglia galaxy clusters, simulations 4. Melanie Simet gravitational lensing 5. KwangHo Park black hole simulation 6. Dustin Lang observational data mining 7. Nishant Agarwal inflation theory + survey non Gaussianity 8. Xiaoying Xu baryon oscillations

The McWilliams Center endowment supports about 2 fellows at any given time. We would like to be able to increase this number. Seminars etc.:

. At least 4 CMU cosmology events per week this semester (seminar, journal club, plot scotch, astrostatistics meeting+ others

. Attendance from Statistics, CS, PSC, Pitt.

. Often standing-room only A goal of the cosmology initiative: increase quality of grad students

The admitted/waitlisted grad students in 2012:

82 students 31 list “astro” as one of their interests

The admitted class of 2012:

21 students 9 list “astro” as one of their interests

This is significantly increased from previous years. Baryon oscillation detection in intergalactic gas (Lyman-alpha forest) from Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Constrains Hubble parameter at redshift 2.5 – we measure the Universe before it started to accelerate Examples of cross-disciplinary collaborations: “Astro-DISC: Astronomy and Cosmology applications of Data-Intensive Supercomputing”, $754K awarded, Moore Foundation. Eugene Fink, Julio Lopez, Garth Gibson (CMU CS) Tiziana Di Matteo, Rupert Croft. black hole merger tree database Visualization project : Illah Nourbakhsh, Randy Sargent (CMU Robotics), Rupert Croft, Tiziana Di Matteo. “Machine Learning for Massive Scale Cosmology”, 1.6 Million/3 yrs awarded, NSF. Jeff Schneider (CMU CS) et al. “Large Scale Statistical and Systematic Analysis of Cosmology Data-sets”, NSF submitted Statistics (CMU and PITT) + Rachel Mandelbaum + Shirley Ho. “Machine learning and quasar absorption lines” Jeff Schneider (CS) + Shirley Ho + 2 CS PDRAs +1 CS grad student. “Reconstructing large-scale maps of intergalactic space” (NSF supported) Hy Trac and Rupert Croft + Chris Genovese (Stats) and Larry Wasserman (Stats) “Petascale cosmology simulations” NSF cyberinfrastructure supported Tiziana Di Matteo PI + Roberto Gomez (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) +.. “Data sharing for astronomy” NSF submitted $1.6m CMU share, PI Alex Labrinidis PITT CS + CMU cosmologists + +others e.g. NSF BigData

Largest ever cosmological hydrodynamic simulation

+black holes database in collaboration with Garth Gibson et al (CMU CS)

=first ab initio prediction for supermassive black hole formation in CDM comology

Black holes can reach a billion solar masses by redshift z=6 (as observed) in standard cosmology (grow by “cold flow” accretion). Metric: National meetings hosted

. SDSS/BOSS 120+ participants Dec 2012

. AS3 Dec 2012

. Great 3 Lensing challenge workshop Oct 2012

. Accelerating Universe Aug 2012 ~100 participants

. Quasar and Lya SDSS Jun 2010 ~50 participants

. Great Lakes Cosmology 2008 ~120 participants 21cm emission from redshift z~1 using Green Bank Telescope Metric: Diversity

Cosmology Physics Dept minus cosmology

7 faculty (incl. research) 4 female (57%) 3/42 = 7%

8 postdocs 3 female (38%) 6/48 = 6%

8 grad students 2 female (25%) 10/84 =12% Future of Cosmology at CMU: 1. Jeff Peterson 2. Richard Griffiths • Complete the Dark Cosmology Initiative begun in 2007: 3. Rupert Croft Replace Richard Griffiths on his impending retirement 4. Tiziana Di Matteo and hire an astroparticle physicist (two searches 5. Hy Trac currently underway); then search for the ninth faculty 6. Shirley Ho member as a replacement for the next retirement 7. Rachel Mandelbaum 8. Astroparticle • Explore the possibility of a joint hire with Computer 9. Next retirement Science.

• Increase the Center’s endowment, with the goal of $8M in endowment. The draw from the added endowment would be used for support of professorships, postdocs, graduate students, plus operations of the Center, including outreach and maybe a new seminar room (for the whole department to use).

• Continue support from the University for Carnegie Mellon’s participation in future large sky surveys and associated computing resources.