Speaker:

Dr. Wang, Sheng
Affiliation:

  KICP, University of Chicago

Abstract:

 The accelerated expansion of the universe at the present time may be caused by a different law of gravity from General Relativity (GR) on cosmological scales instead of by a missing dark energy component.  One such example is the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) self-accelerating braneworld model where cosmic acceleration arises from gravitational leakage into an extra dimension. I will show the results of a Markov Chain Monte Carlo study of this model given the current observations of the CMB anisotropies from the five-year WMAP, supernovae from the SNLS and Hubble constant from the HST key project, and discuss how it is compared to the successful Lambda-CDM model that is based on GR but with a cosmological constant.

Time:

2:00 PM, April 7

Location:

Middle conf. room, 3rd floor