Dancing in the Dark: Non-Parameteric Dark Energy Degeneracies with Cosmological Parameters
Renée Hlozek^1,3, Marina Cortes², Chris Clarkson³, Bruce Bassett^3,4,5
¹Astrophysics in Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; ²Physics, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA, United States; ³Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa; ⁴Astrophysics and Cosmology Group, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cape Town, South Africa; ⁵South African Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa

We will discuss the degeneracies between dynamical dark energy, dark matter and curvature in a non-parametric and non-perturbative approach. We highlight how incorrect assumptions about the flatness or matter content of the Universe can lead to inferred dark energy models with spurious dynamics, and underline the importance of using unbiased estimators for cosmological parameter estimation.

Biography: Renée Hlozek is currently completing her DPhil in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Pretoria, a BSc (Hons) degree as part of the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme from the University of Cape Town, and an MSc in Applied Mathematics (Cosmology) from the University of Cape Town. The work she will be presenting was part of her Masters thesis.