Ramon Miquel 

Institute for High Energy Physics, IFAE, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

Title: Precise imaging of distant galaxies: mapping the invisible Universe with weak gravitational lensing

There is overwhelming evidence that most of the matter in the Universe is in a “dark” form that neither emits nor absorbs light, and is therefore invisible to even the largest telescopes. While the detailed nature of this “dark matter” remains a mystery, the gravitational attraction that it exerts on light distorts the shapes of distant galaxies, and these minuscule distortions can be measured precisely and used to detect the dark matter and map its distribution in the Universe. In the talk, I will present the largest dark-matter map ever made, carried out by the DES international collaboration, formed by about 400 scientists from seven countries and 25 institutions, including IFAE.

Biography

Ramon Miquel (Gelida (Barcelona), 1962) graduated in physics at Universitat de Barcelona (UB) in 1985, and in 1989 obtained his PhD in experimental particle physics at Autonomous University of Barcelona. In 1990 he joined the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva as a post-doctoral researcher, where he worked mainly in the ALEPH experiment (1990-1996). “Professor titular” at UB since 1997, Dr. Miquel continued his career as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley, USA (2001-2006). In 2006, he became ICREA research professor at IFAE, where he has led the observational cosmology group since 2007. He was associate director of IFAE from 2008 to 2014 and director since 2015. He works mainly in big international projects that seek to unveil the nature of the mysterious “dark energy” that comprises 70% of the energy-matter of the Universe, counteracts the gravitational attraction of all other forms of matter and energy, and is responsible for the current accelerated expansion of the Universe.