RSAA Colloquia / Seminars / Feast-of-Facts: Wednesday, 29 May 2019, 11:00-11:30; Duffield Lecture Theatre


Georgina Taylor

"Tightening Constraints on Dark Energy Through Better Distances to Type Ia Supernovae (Thesis proposal talk)"

Over the last two decades, type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) have acted as one of the best probes of the expansion history of the Universe. Large-scale survey telescopes are now able to detect and observe thousands of SN Ias, to measure the dark energy equation of state with ever-increasing accuracy. For example, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has recently finished five years of high-quality SN Ia light-curve observations, which I will fit during my PhD at RSAA. These results will form the foundation of the DES five-year photometric supernova analysis, which will produce the tightest measure of the dark energy equation of state every seen. During this talk, I will discuss the general methods used to fit a light-curve and propagate the results through to a measure of dark energy. I will then introduce the Dark Energy Survey and outline the work I will be doing for DES as part of my PhD.