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Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
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Acoustic oscillations arise from the competition between gravitational
attraction and gas pressure in the primordial plasma. These
oscillations leave their imprint on structures at every epoch of the
evolution of the Universe, providing a robust standard ruler from
which the expansion history of the Universe can be inferred. Baryon
acoustic oscillations were recently discovered by the SDSS, a
spectacular confirmation of the current model of cosmology. The
oscillations leave their imprint on very large scales, ~100 Mpc/h (the
distance between two galaxies is ~1 Mpc/h). This poses a tremendous
challenge to observations, as surveys must cover large volumes of the
Universe. The very large scale of baryon oscillations also confers
certain advantages. Structure formation on these scales is rather well
understood, and galaxy formation details do not hinder the extraction
of accurate results. As part of this project we will investigate
baryon acoustic oscillations as precision probe of dark energy.
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