Charles Keeton - Focusing Cosmic Telescopes on the Distant Universe

Speaker: Charles Keeton, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Abstract: Studying galaxy formation in the young universe is one of the frontiers of observational cosmology. Recent surveys have detected very distant galaxies, but only with large investments of telescope time. Massive clusters of galaxies can bend and focus light, acting as "cosmic telescopes" that magnify faint galaxies and make them easier to detect. I will describe a comprehensive theoretical and observational project to identify outstanding cosmic telescopes and build three-dimensional mass models to account for the light bending so we can infer the intrinsic properties of gravitationally lensed sources.