Cosmology and galaxy evolution with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

by Stephen Thorp (University of Cambridge)

Wednesday 4 Mar 2026, 11:15 → 12:45 Europe/Zurich

Grand Auditoire (Ecole de physique)

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is just commencing its landmark Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST): a ten-year project to image the full sky in exceptional detail. Over the duration of the survey we will observe around 20 billion galaxies, measuring their colours, shapes, and positions on the sky. It will also take a 'movie' of the sky, repeatedly revisiting the same patches to capture transient and variable phenomena such as supernovae and active galactic nuclei. The data obtained by LSST will allow us to map the large scale structure of the Universe and constrain the properties of the dark energy driving its expansion. However, achieving this goal will require detailed modelling of the tracers (e.g. galaxies or supernovae) that we are using to probe its expansion history. In this talk, I will give an overview of the Rubin Observatory and LSST, and will discuss the different tracers it will be using to achieve its cosmological goals. I will also briefly describe some of the work I have been doing to prepare for LSST: generative modelling of the galaxy population to enable large scale structure cosmology.