MERATE (LC) – PhD – Dark energy – Euclid – Optimising Euclid galaxy clustering measurements

The ESA Euclid mission launching in summer 2023 is a state-of-the-art cosmological observatory that is designed to answer fundamental questions about the origin of the accelerated expansion of the Universe, the nature of dark energy and the validity of General Relativity on cosmological scales. It will couple an efficient survey strategy with a novel spectroscopic technique to map the spatial distribution of tens of millions H-alpha emission line galaxies from redshift 0.9 to 1.8. To extract the cosmological signal it will be necessary to model the complex selection function of this survey with high accuracy to account for incompleteness and for the presence of interloper galaxies.

The goal of this project is to analyse data from the first year of observations (Data Release 1) and evaluate the impact of the selection function and systematic observational effects on the galaxy clustering statistics that we use to trace the expansion history of the Universe and the evolution of its cosmic structures.

The interested student will construct galaxy samples in the early data from the Euclid Wide survey, measure spatial clustering statistics including the two-point correlation function, and perform validation tests to demonstrate the robustness of the measurements. The repeated observations from the Euclid calibration and Deep fields will be used to assess the survey selection function.

The student will join the international Euclid Consortium and participate in the galaxy clustering science working group and the science ground segment.

This project is integrated in the Milan Euclid cosmology group, including Prof. L. Guzzo (UniMi), Dr. M. Scodeggio (IASF Milano) and will be supervised by Dr. B. Granett (INAF OA Brera-Merate).

[Crediti immagine: ESA]