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TRR 33:  The Dark Universe

Subject Area Physics
Term from 2006 to 2018
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 15499703
 
Final Report Year 2018

Final Report Abstract

The origin, evolution, and fate of our Universe is one of the most ancient and yet still pressing question in human minds. Even phenomena much closer to us, such as the emergence of the solar system and the origin of life, depend upon of the history and geography of the entire cosmos: the formation and chemical enrichment of stars is in fact directly related to the cosmic evolution. For the first time after centuries of philosophical speculations about our Universe, we have now a solid and exponentially expanding base of data, acquired through astronomical observations and terrestrial experiments. At the same time, the current advanced knowledge of the theory of elementary particles and of the forces, in primis gravity, that shape our environment, allowed us to organize the experimental data into a coherent description that extends across fourteen billion years. The general pattern of this story, from the initial inflationary expansion, to the formation of atomic nuclei, atoms, clouds of gas, galaxies, stars, is now confirmed through innumerable evidences. In the last two decades, however, the discovery of the acceleration of the cosmic expansion forced scientists to revisit the whole picture and to introduce a new form of fluid, called dark energy, which drives the acceleration. This new substance, anticipated in 1917 for different reasons by Albert Einstein with his Cosmological Constant, adds to two other enigmatic ingredients that are needed to explain observations: one is dark matter, composed probably by a new, still undetected, elementary particle that fills along with visible matter almost all the galaxies, and another one is the inflaton, a field that drove the cosmic expansion in its first primordial phase, only to disappear soon after by decaying into other particles. The research programme “The Dark Universe” has been designed to lie at the crossroad of these three areas of research. To address the problems of dark energy, dark matter, and inflation, we collected expertise in theoretical modeling, in astrophysical observations, and in numerical simulations, and created a network of interaction that fostered significant progress in all three areas. Among the achievements of the collaboration, we contributed to several observational surveys that greatly expanded the quantity and quality of astrophysical data (Planck, SDSS, DES, South Pole Telescope, CHFTLens, KiDS, etc.), we prepared for new international satellite missions (eROSITA, Euclid), and we extensively analyzed current data finding robust measurement of cosmological parameters. The results have been published in more than 1100 scientific papers. This project has paved the way for intense collaboration among the institutes and the scientists involved. The results already achieved and the network of new and old collaborations will be a lasting legacy of “The Dark Universe”.

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