Galaxy Clusters and The Dark Energy

白色宇宙学在过去的十年中取得了巨大的进步，许多基本问题即将得到解决。我们现在有了一个对宇宙中大尺度结构的出现具有高度预测性的理论。与通常的情况一样，这一理论提出了新的问题，还有几个关键问题仍有待理解。首先，宇宙中大多数物质的性质仍然是个谜。其次，虽然我们知道地球物质并不主宰宇宙中的能量已经有一段时间了，但我们现在相信，即使是奇异的“暗”物质也不会扮演这种角色。目前，宇宙似乎正在加速，被称为“暗能量”的神秘成分所驱动。幸运的是，我们正处于宇宙学观测的“黄金时代”。即将到来的观测将很快限制结构形成的初始条件和许多宇宙学参数，使我们能够解决下一个前沿：结构形成时代。对结构形成的透彻理解有助于确定发展中的“宇宙网”范例的后果以及对这一范例内变化的限制。理解这一点的关键是星系团。这些是已知的最大的天体。它们表现出非凡的规律性，但我们对它们的结构的理解对我们的建模假设很敏感。这个项目将构建星系团的计算机模型，以开发和改进方法，将这些星系团的属性与暗物质和暗能量的分布和性质联系起来，从而加强我们对这一主导范式的测试。

AST 0205010WhiteCosmology has made tremendous advances in the past decade, with many fundamental questions approaching resolution. We now have a highly predictive theory for the emergence of large-scale structure in the Universe. As is often the case, this theory raises new questions, and several crucial issues still remain to be understood. First, the nature of most of the matter in the Universe remains mysterious. Second, while we have known for some time that earthly matter doesn't dominate the energy in the Universe, we now believe that not even exotic `dark' matter plays that role. At present the Universe appears to be accelerating, driven by a mysterious component dubbed "dark energy''. Luckily we are in a "golden era'' of cosmological observations. Upcoming observations will soon constrain the initial conditions for structure formation and many cosmological parameters, allowing us to address the next frontier: the era of structure formation. A thorough understanding of structure formation is instrumental in determining both the consequences of the developing 'cosmic web' paradigm and the constraints on variations within this paradigm. The key to this understanding is clusters of galaxies. These are the largest known objects. They exhibit remarkable regularity, but our understanding of their structure is sensitive to our modeling assumptions. This project will construct computer models of galaxy clusters to develop and refine methods which will relate the properties of these clusters to the distribution and nature of the dark matter and the dark energy and thus to sharpen our tests of this dominant paradigm.***