Elucidating the origins of dark matter (DM) and dark energy (DE) constitute two of the chief goals for particle physics and cosmology in the next two decades. A 10-year optical survey of half the sky by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will produce an unparalleled dataset of billions of objects and the ability to explore the faint time domain on short time scales. This data set, through the combined efforts of high-energy physicists, astrophysicists, statistics experts and computational scientists, will give us unprecedented measures of the properties of both DM and DE. Previous astronomical measurements have given us compelling evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model, the best constraints we have on DM and DE and constraints on several other topics of interest to particle physicists like the number and masses of neutrino species. This talk will cover a few of the physics topics addressed by LSST and what we hope to learn from telescopes rather than accelerators in the next decade.
Tea after the talk in SPL 3rd Floor Lounge