Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravitation at Portsmouth 2022-2025
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Portsmouth
Department Name: Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation
Abstract
This consolidated grant will support research in astrophysics, cosmology, and gravitation at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) in the University of Portsmouth. The ICG was formed in 2002 through a strategic investment from the university and now hosts more than 60 researchers making it one of the largest extragalactic astronomy groups in the UK. Portsmouth was ranked 8th in terms of quality of physics research outputs in the Research Excellence Framework 2014.
Cosmology and astrophysics are experiencing a golden age of discovery-driven by new astronomical surveys and theoretical advances, and the recent detection of gravitational waves from inspiralling black holes and neutron stars. However, we still face three fundamental challenges before a more complete model of the Universe can be achieved: i) What are the properties of the "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up 96% of the Universe? ii) How do galaxies form and evolve? iii) What is the origin, and statistical nature, of structures in the Universe? This grant will address these fundamental problems through pioneering theoretical work and the use of new surveys of the sky to map billions of distant galaxies. Galaxies are the "building blocks" of the Universe and as well as studying how they form, we will use the galaxies to improve our understanding of cosmology. We will exploit current and forthcoming galaxy surveys like DESI, 4MOST, SDSS, the Vera Rubin Observatory and Euclid to quantify the Universe using complementary probes such as the clustering of galaxies, supernovae and weak gravitational lensing. These data will be complemented with new gravitational wave observations from the LIGO and VIRGO experiments. Precise cosmological models will be constructed and analysed and simulated with Portsmouth's SCIAMA supercomputer. These models will be compared to data to reveal the true nature of the Universe.
Our work will help us understand and measure the evolution of the Universe throughout its entire history. We will bring together constraints from several cosmological probes, combining measurements from weak lensing, galaxy clustering, supernovae and HI intensity mapping to chart the cosmic expansion and structure formation over time. We will study how quantum fluctuations in the very early universe may be stretched by cosmic inflation to astronomical scales, leaving their imprint in the distribution of light and matter in the universe today. We will also explore the characteristic imprint of Einstein's general relativity or alternative gravity theories in shaping the evolution of structure in our Universe. Additionally, our analyses will shed light on the properties of dark matter, which we can "see" via gravity but which does not interact like normal matter. We will obtain a fuller understanding of the characteristics of galaxies throughout cosmic time. We will study the origin of the supermassive black holes at the centre of primaeval galaxies and the first quasars, and trace their merger history through the detection of gravitational waves. We will use astronomical surveys to understand how galaxies form by studying their stellar contents in ever greater detail.
ICG staff are committed to engaging the public in their research, e.g., online citizens science projects like Supernova Hunter and Gravity Spy. In addition, our staff visit many local schools and colleges, and run an annual Stargazing event at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for hundreds of participants. We also seek innovation from our research, using our skills and experiences to develop novel solutions to everyday problems, e.g. detecting faulty smart meters, improving emergency room care, and training the next generation of data scientists.
Cosmology and astrophysics are experiencing a golden age of discovery-driven by new astronomical surveys and theoretical advances, and the recent detection of gravitational waves from inspiralling black holes and neutron stars. However, we still face three fundamental challenges before a more complete model of the Universe can be achieved: i) What are the properties of the "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up 96% of the Universe? ii) How do galaxies form and evolve? iii) What is the origin, and statistical nature, of structures in the Universe? This grant will address these fundamental problems through pioneering theoretical work and the use of new surveys of the sky to map billions of distant galaxies. Galaxies are the "building blocks" of the Universe and as well as studying how they form, we will use the galaxies to improve our understanding of cosmology. We will exploit current and forthcoming galaxy surveys like DESI, 4MOST, SDSS, the Vera Rubin Observatory and Euclid to quantify the Universe using complementary probes such as the clustering of galaxies, supernovae and weak gravitational lensing. These data will be complemented with new gravitational wave observations from the LIGO and VIRGO experiments. Precise cosmological models will be constructed and analysed and simulated with Portsmouth's SCIAMA supercomputer. These models will be compared to data to reveal the true nature of the Universe.
Our work will help us understand and measure the evolution of the Universe throughout its entire history. We will bring together constraints from several cosmological probes, combining measurements from weak lensing, galaxy clustering, supernovae and HI intensity mapping to chart the cosmic expansion and structure formation over time. We will study how quantum fluctuations in the very early universe may be stretched by cosmic inflation to astronomical scales, leaving their imprint in the distribution of light and matter in the universe today. We will also explore the characteristic imprint of Einstein's general relativity or alternative gravity theories in shaping the evolution of structure in our Universe. Additionally, our analyses will shed light on the properties of dark matter, which we can "see" via gravity but which does not interact like normal matter. We will obtain a fuller understanding of the characteristics of galaxies throughout cosmic time. We will study the origin of the supermassive black holes at the centre of primaeval galaxies and the first quasars, and trace their merger history through the detection of gravitational waves. We will use astronomical surveys to understand how galaxies form by studying their stellar contents in ever greater detail.
ICG staff are committed to engaging the public in their research, e.g., online citizens science projects like Supernova Hunter and Gravity Spy. In addition, our staff visit many local schools and colleges, and run an annual Stargazing event at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for hundreds of participants. We also seek innovation from our research, using our skills and experiences to develop novel solutions to everyday problems, e.g. detecting faulty smart meters, improving emergency room care, and training the next generation of data scientists.
Publications
Abbott T
(2023)
Joint analysis of Dark Energy Survey Year 3 data and CMB lensing from SPT and Planck . III. Combined cosmological constraints
in Physical Review D
Abbott T
(2023)
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Constraints on extensions to ? CDM with weak lensing and galaxy clustering
in Physical Review D
Amon A
(2023)
Consistent lensing and clustering in a low- S 8 Universe with BOSS, DES Year 3, HSC Year 1, and KiDS-1000
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Anbajagane D
(2023)
Beyond the 3rd moment: a practical study of using lensing convergence CDFs for cosmology with DES Y3
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Arena E
(2022)
Cosmic flexion
in Physical Review D
Auclair P
(2023)
Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
in Living Reviews in Relativity
Bagui E
(2025)
Primordial black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures.
in Living reviews in relativity
Bernardinelli P
(2023)
Photometry of Outer Solar System Objects from the Dark Energy Survey. I. Photometric Methods, Light-curve Distributions, and Trans-Neptunian Binaries
in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Bom C
(2024)
Designing an Optimal Kilonova Search Using DECam for Gravitational-wave Events
in The Astrophysical Journal
Bonici M
(2023)
Euclid : Forecasts from the void-lensing cross-correlation
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Brando G
(2023)
Revisiting Vainshtein screening for fast N-body simulations
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Brando G
(2022)
Enabling matter power spectrum emulation in beyond-?CDM cosmologies with COLA
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Bruni M
(2022)
Nonsingular cosmology from an interacting vacuum
in Physical Review D
Cagliari M
(2022)
Euclid : Constraining ensemble photometric redshift distributions with stacked spectroscopy
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Calderon R
(2024)
DESI 2024: reconstructing dark energy using crossing statistics with DESI DR1 BAO data
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Callow J
(2024)
The rate of extreme coronal line emitting galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and their relation to tidal disruption events
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Callow J
(2025)
The rate of extreme coronal line emitters in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey LOWZ sample
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cheng T
(2023)
Lessons learned from the two largest Galaxy morphological classification catalogues built by convolutional neural networks
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Clark P
(2024)
Long-term follow-up observations of extreme coronal line emitting galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cole P
(2024)
Smooth vs instant inflationary transitions: steepest growth re-examined and primordial black holes
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Cole P
(2023)
Primordial black holes from single-field inflation: a fine-tuning audit
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Contarini S
(2022)
Euclid : Cosmological forecasts from the void size function
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Dal Ponte M
(2023)
Ultracool dwarfs candidates based on 6 yr of the Dark Energy Survey data
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Deckers M
(2023)
Photometric study of the late-time near-infrared plateau in Type Ia supernovae
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
DeRose J
(2022)
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Cosmology from combined galaxy clustering and lensing validation on cosmological simulations
in Physical Review D
DESI Collaboration
(2022)
Overview of the Instrumentation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
in The Astronomical Journal
Donald-McCann J
(2023)
matryoshka II: accelerating effective field theory analyses of the galaxy power spectrum
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Donald-McCann J
(2023)
Analysis of unified galaxy power spectrum multipole measurements
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Drlica-Wagner A
(2022)
The DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey Data Release 2
in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Elvin-Poole J
(2023)
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: magnification modelling and impact on cosmological constraints from galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Euclid Consortium
(2023)
Euclid : modelling massive neutrinos in cosmology - a code comparison
Faris S
(2024)
Light-curve Structure and Ha Line Formation in the Tidal Disruption Event AT 2019azh
in The Astrophysical Journal
Fiorini B
(2023)
Fast production of cosmological emulators in modified gravity: the matter power spectrum
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Fiorini B
(2022)
Studying large-scale structure probes of modified gravity with COLA
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Fortunato J
(2025)
Fast Radio Bursts and Artificial Neural Networks: a cosmological-model-independent estimation of the Hubble constant
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Frusciante N
(2024)
Euclid : Constraining linearly scale-independent modifications of gravity with the spectroscopic and photometric primary probes
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Gatti M
(2022)
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Cosmology with moments of weak lensing mass maps
in Physical Review D
Giannini G
(2024)
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: redshift calibration of the MagLim lens sample from the combination of SOMPZ and clustering and its impact on cosmology
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Golden-Marx J
(2023)
Characterizing the intracluster light over the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.8 in the DES-ACT overlap
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Golubchik M
(2023)
A search for transients in the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS): three new supernovae
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gordon J
(2024)
Modeling nonlinear scales with the comoving Lagrangian acceleration method: Preparing for LSST Y1
in Physical Review D
Gow A
(2023)
Non-perturbative non-Gaussianity and primordial black holes
in Europhysics Letters
Gow A
(2023)
Primordial black holes from a curvaton scenario with strongly non-Gaussian perturbations
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Graur O
(2024)
Underluminous 1991bg-like Type Ia supernovae are standardizable candles
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Grayling M
(2023)
Core-collapse supernovae in the Dark Energy Survey: luminosity functions and host galaxy demographics
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gsponer R
(2024)
Cosmological constraints on early dark energy from the full shape analysis of eBOSS DR16
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gümrükçüoglu A
(2022)
Gravitational wave interactions in ? 3 models of dark energy
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Hale C
(2024)
Cosmology from LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey Data Release 2: angular clustering of radio sources
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Hernández-Lang D
(2023)
The PSZ-MCMF catalogue of Planck clusters over the DES region
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
| Description | Dark Energy Survey (DES) |
| Organisation | Dark Energy Survey (DES) |
| Country | Global |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Scientific leadership and guidance, preparation of simulations, organisation of meetings and events |
| Collaborator Contribution | Access to proprietary data and scientific collaboration |
| Impact | Scientific publications (See publication list) |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | Euclid Consortium |
| Organisation | UK Space Agency |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Scientific and collaboration leadership. Help with design of weak lensing science requirements, scientific coordination of the mission and design of the Euclid deep field. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Involvement in the design, construction and science preparation for the Euclid satellite mission. |
| Impact | Involvement in many aspects of Euclid design and management, and funding from the UK Space Agency |
| Start Year | 2008 |
| Description | Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 400 members of the public attended the ICG's Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard event on the 25th January 2023; our first in-person public Stargazing event since 2020. The event was organised by the ICG in collaboration with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, with additional support from the Hampshire Astronomical Group and Airbus Defence and Space. The attendees engaged with ICG research topics through hands-on demos and talks, interacting with ICG researchers and University of Portsmouth physics undergraduate students in the process. The event was incredibly popular, with the free tickets selling out within 2 days of release. Informal feedback on the night was overwhelmingly positive. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Stargazing at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards 2025 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Nearly 1000 members of the public attended the ICG's Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard event on the %th February 2024. The annual event was organised by the ICG in collaboration with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, with additional support from the Hampshire Astronomical Group and Airbus Defence and Space. The attendees engaged with ICG research topics through hands-on demos and talks, interacting with ICG researchers and University of Portsmouth physics undergraduate students in the process. The event was incredibly popular and informal feedback on the night was overwhelmingly positive. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |