ESA-ESO WG on Fundamental Cosmology
Working Group Members
George Efstathiou
gpe@ast.cam.ac.uk
John Ellis
john.ellis@cern.ch
Bruno Leibundgut
bleibund@eso.org
Simon Lilly
simon.lilly@phys.ethz.ch
Yannick Mellier
mellier@iap.fr
John Peacock (chair)
jap@roe.ac.uk
Peter Schneider (co-chair)
peter@astro.uni-bonn.de
Abstract of final report
In September 2003, the executives of ESO and ESA agreed to establish a number
of working groups to explore possible synergies between these two major
European astronomical institutions on key scientific issues. The first two
working group reports (on Extrasolar Planets and the Herschel--ALMA Synergies)
were released in 2005 and 2006, and this third report covers the area of
Fundamental Cosmology.
The Working Group's mandate was to concentrate on fundamental issues
in cosmology, as exemplified by the following questions:
- What are the essential questions in fundamental
cosmology?
- Which of these questions can be tackled, perhaps exclusively,
with astronomical techniques?
- What are the appropriate methods with which these key questions
can be answered?
- Which of these methods appear promising for realization within
Europe, or with strong European participation, over
the next ~15 years?
- Which of these methods has a broad range of applications and a
high degree of versatility even outside the field of fundamental
cosmology?
From the critical point of view of synergy between ESA and ESO, one major
resulting recommendation concerns the provision of new generations of imaging
survey, where the image quality and near-IR sensitivity that can be attained
only in space are naturally matched by ground-based imaging and spectroscopy to
yield massive datasets with well-understood photometric redshifts (photo-z's).
Such information is essential for a range of new cosmological tests using
gravitational lensing, large-scale structure, clusters of galaxies, and
supernovae. All these methods can in principle deliver high accuracy, but a
multiplicity of approaches is essential in order that potential systematics can
be diagnosed -- or the possible need for new physics revealed. Great scope in
future cosmology also exists for ELT studies of the intergalactic medium and
space-based studies of the CMB and gravitational waves; here the synergy is
less direct, but these areas will remain of the highest mutual interest to the
agencies. All these recommended facilities will produce vast datasets of
general applicability, which will have a tremendous impact on broad areas of
astronomy.
To request a printed copy, please contact
Britt Sjoeberg (bsjoeber@eso.org).
Maintained by Wolfram Freudling <wfreudli@eso.org>
