TR-33: “The Dark Universe”

The TAP group participates in the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre TRR 33 “The Dark Universe”, funded by the DFG. In the standard cosmological model, normal baryonic matter contributes only roughly 5% to the overall density of our universe, the rest being in the form of dark matter (27%) and dark energy (68%). Whereas dark matter has already been postulated by Zwicky in 1933, the existence and dominance of dark energy was unexpected and raised fundamental questions such as the range of validity of Einstein’s gravity, the role of extra dimensions, the existence of new forces, the nature of vacuum, the relation to the inflationary field and to the particle physics models.

The TAP group carries out numerical simulations of structure formation with the goal to pin down theoretical predictions for different cosmological models, including non-standard dark energy scenarios and modified gravity theories.