ABSTRACT

The accelerating expansion of the Universe imposes one of the most challenging questions for modern physics. Except for a missing dark energy component, modified gravity on large scales is another popular perspective to tackle the puzzle of cosmic acceleration, for our standard theory of gravity, i.e., general relativity, is only stringently tested on astrophysical systems. It is possible that the accelerating expansion is a signature for modified behavior of gravity on scales so large that we were unable to observe before. Probes of cosmic acceleration thus provide a chance to test theories of gravity. I will talk about some typical examples of such modified gravity models and their cosmological probes, including a new probing method we currently develop that uses the morphological properties of the Universe’s large-scale structure.

BIO
Dr. Wenjuan Fang is a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). She got her B.S. in Physics from Peking University in 2003, and Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia University in 2009. After that, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the Astronomy Department of USTC in the Fall of 2016, and was awarded the National 1000 Youth Talents Program of China in 2018. Dr. Fang’s research interests are mainly cosmological probes of fundamental physics including dark energy, modified gravity, neutrinos, inflation etc.