Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: Pioneering methods to connect galaxies with large-scale structure

Claire Lamman is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the Ohio State University. Lamman will use observational data and statistical methods to map the Universe's large-scale structure and contribute to making precise measurements of how this map has changed over cosmic time. This map will then be used to explore properties of the galaxies within. Lamman will promote public interaction with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration and develop tools for summarizing scientific papers for broad accessibility. The intrinsic alignment of galaxies to the large-scale structure can be used to trace several cosmological effects. However, directly detecting the alignments is challenging because of the inherent difficulties in measuring galaxy shapes. Lamman will use a new approach which circumvents common challenges as it makes measurements on small groups of galaxies, so-called multiplets, rather than individual galaxies. The project will focus on refining the method and applying it to upcoming observations and simulations. This work will help advance our understanding of how galaxy alignments change over cosmic time and whether simulations of the Universe accurately capture galaxy clustering at all scales. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.