Event

Neutrinos are Standard Model particles whose mass splittings are known, but whose absolute mass scale remains a mystery.  Cosmology provides the best upper bound on the sum of masses, 0.23 eV, a number intriguingly close to the dark energy scale, and promises to measure the neutrino masses over the next decade.  I describe the effects of massive neutrinos and evolving dark energy on the power spectrum of large-scale structure.  Working in the framework of higher-order cosmological perturbation theory, I show that the power spectrum in a wide variety of dark energy models agrees with N-body simulations over a large range of scales, and that Time-RG perturbation theory also accurately quantifies the effects of massive neutrinos.  Next, I extend Time-RG to redshift-space distortions, allowing for the detection of a qualitatively new effect that directly probes the gravitational potentials sourcing large-scale inflows, and I confirm its accuracy using N-body simulations.  Finally, I apply Time-RG to the redshift-space power spectrum from BOSS Data Release 11 in conjunction with Planck cosmic microwave background data.  I present constraints on the cosmological parameters and discuss their dependence on the modeling of scale-dependent bias.