Project Level: PhD

State-of-the-art observations constrained with high precision, the properties that Dark Energy must have on Cosmological scales, where its behaviour is very close to the one of a cosmological constant. Whilst several Dark Energy candidates are capable of mimicking such a behaviour within the experiments' precision, they may be very distinguishable on smaller scales.  A rather common feature is that they couple with the gravitational field or other particles, from which an effective variation of some fundamental constants of nature arise. The latter become space and time dependent, making it possible to constrain Dark Energy on a very broad range of Astrophysical scales.         

Several projects are available under this theme: a first one is to assess the constraining power of astrophysical observables which depend on the Newton constant, like the time delay between strongly lensed signals or the size of a Black Hole shadow. A second one is related to the coupling of Dark Energy with the Maxwell field in the proximity of a massive object, which results in a space and time dependent fine structure constant. A third one aims to study Dark Energy models on anisotropic but homogeneous spacetimes, used as toy models for non-spherical structures. 

Project members

Dr Leonardo Giani

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Physics