Thesis

Dark energy from quantum entanglement: a test in the Euclid era

• Call:

  IDPASC Portugal - PHD Programme 2019

• Academic Year:

  2019 / 2020

• Domain:

  Cosmology

• Supervisor:

  Ismael Tereno

• Co-Supervisor:

  Alberto Rozas-Fernandez

• Institution:

  Faculdade de Ciências - Universidade de Lisboa

• Host Institution:

  Faculdade de Ciências - Universidade de Lisboa

• Abstract:

  The main goal of ESA's Euclid space mission, to be launched in 2022, is to understand the origin of the observed late-time accelerated expansion of the Universe. One theoretical possibility is to describe the acceleration in terms of the entanglement energy of the Universe. A promising and most economical cosmological model has been proposed in this context. It is based on general relativity and some quantum effects associated with the probabilistic description of quantum physics that become dominant at late times, accounting thus for the acceleration. The goals of the project are to study the background expansion and the evolution of cosmological structure in this quantum entanglement model, deriving its signatures in Euclid’s gravitational lensing observables and forecasting Euclid’s ability in testing this hypothesis. We will focus first on the mildly non-linear regime, studying structure formation in the spherical collapse approach. Those preliminary results will then inform the study of the full non-linear regime, where we will consider N-body simulations and lensing maps.