Speaker
Description
Large-Scale Structure cosmology has made tremendous progress in the last few years, and is now able to place constraints on cosmological parameters with a precision rivalling that achieved by CMB experiments. In this process, the concordance Lambda CDM model has been shown to provide a very reasonable description of the evolution of the Universe's structure and expansion at late times. However, small cracks in the model have appeared, in the form of moderate tensions between parameters measured directly from low-redshift data and those inferred from the CMB. Elucidating the origin of these has been a key task for the community in the last few years. However, the evidence for these tensions comes, predominantly, from data at fairly low redshifts (distance ladder, cosmic shear). The intermediate-redshift universe (1<z<6) remains relatively unconstrained by current data, and its study may be able to throw light on the origin of these tensions, as well as provide key confirmation of the Lambda CDM predictions. I will discuss recent progress in our study of this regime using the Gaia - unWISE quasar catalog, Quaia, as well as prospects for future exploration of the mid-high-redshift Universe with this and other future datasets.
