Date/Time
Date(s) - 13/01/2016
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Title: Seeing Dark Matter through a Gravitational Lens

Speaker: Dr. Mike Hudson

Institute: University of Waterloo

Location: ABB 102

Description:

For fifty years after Zwicky’s 1933 realization that the Universe was dominated by dark matter, all probes of dark matter were dynamical. Since the discovery of the first double quasar and giant arcs in galaxy clusters, gravitational lensing has been an increasingly important tool for mapping dark matter over a wide range of physical scales and cosmic epochs. I will describe some of the history of dark matter and gravitational lensing, and show some recent applications. One such application is weighing the dark matter halos of galaxies, which helps to understand galaxy formation and evolution. I will highlight the work of our CFHTLenS team in this area.