Thesis

Astrophysical tests of gravitational physics

• Call:

  PT-CERN Call 2022/2

• Academic Year:

  2022

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Carlos Martins

• Co-Supervisor:

  Filipe Mena

• Institution:

  Universidade do Porto

• Host Institution:

  Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto

• Abstract:

  The observational evidence for the acceleration of the universe implies that our canonical models of particle physics and cosmology are incomplete, and new physics remains to be discovered. The search for theoretical extensions of the standard model is driven by observations, which provide strong restrictions. This thesis will draw upon ongoing and forthcoming improvements in the sensitivity of tests of several pillars of LambdaCDM, including traditional datasets but also tests of the Einstein Equivalence Principle (both locally and in astrophysical systems), the distance duality relation and the cosmological principle to quantitatively explore and constrain relevant extensions of the standard model. Our starting point will be cosmological models including torsion, which provide a physically well-motivated and comparatively simple testbed. Subsequently, the same approach can be applied to other paradigms. The goal is to provide a statistically robust testing pipeline for these paradigms, which can be applied to current and next-generation datasets, such as Euclid, which are of strategic interest to Portugal and specifically to the host institution.