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Understanding the large scale structure of the Universe is one of the main goals of cosmology. In the last two decades it has become widely accepted that gravitational instability plays a central role in giving rise to the remarkable structures mapped by the galaxy distribution. Work at NYU concentrates on extracting information contained in galaxy clustering and weak gravitational lensing to learn about cosmology. In particular, we concentrate on questions such as:
1. What is the relation between the galaxy distribution and the underlying dark matter distribution?
2. What are the statistical properties of the primordial fluctuations that seed structure in the Universe?
3. How much do dark matter and dark energy contribute to the energy budget of the universe?
These questions are addressed using various analytical and numerical tools, which can be applied to realistic models of structure formation and compared to observations. Their answers may enable us to discriminate different sources of inflation. The cosmic microwave background radiation is a very sensitive complementary probe to understanding the early universe and inflation, and the precision of observational data is improving at a remarkable pace. At NYU powerful new theoretical tools are being developed to interpret and analyze data especially polarization and cross-correlations - in order to answer questions relating to statistical properties of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation, cosmic geometry, primordial fluctutations, and matter content. Other areas of interest include the Sunya'ev Zeldovich effect and the Lyman-alpha forest.
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