Abstract:

The spatial clustering of distant galaxies is a powerful probe of both the nature of those galaxies and of fundamental physics. The MUSYC collaboration used the connection between galaxies and their dark matter halos to identify distant Lyman Alpha Emitting galaxies as the progenitors of typical present-day galaxies like the Milky Way. The HETDEX experiment will discover nearly one million of these Lyman Alpha Emitting galaxies during the next three years and will use them to determine the expansion history of the universe revealed by Baryon Acoustic Oscillations. These measurements will determine the dark energy equation-of-state and will measure the curvature of the Universe to 0.1% precision. The forthcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will greatly expand upon these results, using billions of distant galaxies to measure the evolution of the dark energy equation of state, to seek evidence for modifications to General Relativity, and to constrain the masses of cosmological neutrinos. I will provide an overview of the cosmological structure formation theory and experimental techniques that enable these measurements.