# Programme

MONDAY

• 9:00 am — Henk Hoekstra, Leiden
Weak lensing by large-scale structure as an accurate probe of cosmology and much more
Weak lensing by large-scale structure is one of the most promising techniques to learn more about the nature of dark energy by mapping the dark matter distribution in the Universe as a function of distance. Weak lensing has also developed into the main tool to determine cluster masses, critical for their use for cosmology. I will review the recent progress in this active area of research in preparation for Euclid.

[pdf]
• 10:00 am — Francisco Castander, ICE, IEEC/CSIC, Barcelona
MICE cosmological simulations
I will present the MICE cosmological simulations that have been developed to help design and analyse current and future cosmological surveys. In particular, they contain lensing and clustering observables computed in a self-consistent way. I will present how they are being used to analyse the first LSS results coming from the DES and being optimized to interpret future surveys like PAU, DESI and Euclid.

[pdf]
• 10:40 am — break
• 11:00 am — Richard Shaw, CITA
Probing Dark Energy with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)
CHIME will use the 21cm emission line of neutral hydrogen to map large-scale
structure between redshifts of 0.8 and 2.5. By measuring BAO we will place
constraints on the dark energy equation of state as it begins to dominate the
expansion of the Universe, particularly at redshifts poorly probed by current
BAO surveys.

In this talk I will introduce CHIME, a transit radio interferometer designed
specifically for this purpose. I will discuss its goals and describe the
powerful new analysis techniques we have developed to confront the many
challenges of such observations, in particular removal of astrophysical
foregrounds which are six orders of magnitude larger than the 21cm signal.
Commissioning a 40m x 37m pathfinder telescope is finished at the DRAO in
Penticton, BC, and the construction of the full-sized 100m x 100m instrument
will commence in 2015. I will report on current progress, and the lessons

[pdf]
• 11:45 am — Jonathan Sievers, UKZN
HIRAX
[pdf]
• 11:55 am — Norman Murray, CITA
The relation between galaxy stellar mass and halo mass in the FIRE simulations
The FIRE simulations are high resolution (baryonic SPH particle mass ~10^4 M_\odot, force softening ~10pc) cosmological zoom-in calculations starting from z~100, using physically motivated sub-grid models for radiation pressure, supernovae, HII regions, and stellar winds appropriate for a standard initial (stellar) mass function, and an explicit treatment of the multi-phase interstellar medium. The stellar feedback is found to drive large scale galactic winds, removing gas from the disk and even from the halo, with the result that the calculated stellar mass-halo mass relation is found to be consistent with that inferred from observations. It is worth stressing that none of the feedback mechanisms is tuned to achieve this result. I will also present estimates of the cover factor and column density of gas in the circum-galactic medium, which can be compared to absorption line studies of galaxies along quasar sight lines.

[pdf]
• 12:40 pm — lunch
• 2:00 pm — Jeffrey Peterson, Carnegie Mellon University
Mapping the Universe with a Ten-Inch Optical Telescope.
By using integral field spectroscopy scaled to very wide field-of-view, cosmic structure can be mapped, via Lyman Alpha emission. SInce we are proposing that very wide instantaneous fields-of-view be observed, we do not need a large aperture. We will argue that a ten inch aperture is all that is needed. Experimental technique, along with constriants that arise due to foreground emission will be discussed.

[pdf 1] and [pdf 2]
• 2:50 pm — Sergio Colafrancesco, Wits University
SZ effect probes of the early cosmic history: from Recombination to Dark Matter, Dark Ages and the Epoch of Reionization
[pdf]
• 3:40 pm — break
• 4:00 pm — Markus Boettcher, North-West University
Gamma-Ray Observations of Extragalactic Sources at Cosmological Distances
In this talk, I will present results from high-energy (Fermi-LAT) and
very-high-energy (H.E.S.S.) observations of gamma-ray sources at cosmological
distances. Such observations can place constraints on the Extragalactic
Background Light, which encodes the star and galaxy formation history
through cosmic time, on Intergalactic Magnetic Fields, and possibly on
particle physics beyond the standard model. I will also discuss prospects
of detecting gravitationally lensed very-high-energy gamma-ray blazars,
which may be detectable to much larger redshifts than unlensed sources.

[pdf]

TUESDAY

• 8:00 am — Kenda Knowles, UKZN
Radio Halos in ACT Galaxy Clusters
[pdf]
• 8:20 am — Joel Meyers, CITA
Cosmic Neutrino Background
The standard model of cosmology makes definite and robust predictions about the existence and properties of the cosmic neutrino background. These neutrinos carry a wealth of information about both cosmology and particle physics. I will discuss the current status and future prospects for observation of cosmic neutrinos.

[pdf]
• 8:50 am — Elena Giusarma, University of Rome ‘Sapienza’
Implications of cosmological observations on Hot Dark Matter properties
The nature of the dark matter components is one of the most important problems in physics nowadays. In particular, dark matter has important consequences in the evolution of the Universe and in the structure formation processes. While the major contribution to the dark matter component should arise from cold dark matter (CDM), a small component of hot dark matter (HDM) can also be present. In standard cosmology, hot, thermal relics are identified with the three light, active neutrinos but the existence of extra hot relic components, as sterile neutrino species and/or thermal axions are also possible. In this work I will illustrate the implications of neutrino properties on cosmological observables and I will analyse the constraints on the three active neutrino masses, extending the analyses to possible scenarios with additional hot thermal relics, as sterile neutrino species or axions, using the available cosmological data.

[pdf]
• 9:15 am — Martina Gerbino, University of Rome ‘Sapienza’
Neutrino properties from cosmology and particle physics
I will talk about how a combination of different datasets from both cosmology and particle physics can constrain neutrino properties. Neutrino physics is one of the most promising area for scientific research. We know from oscillation experiments that they have a mass; however, oscillations are insensitive to the absolute mass scale. On the other hand, cosmological experiments like Planck are sensitive enough to put the tightest constraints on the total mass of neutrino species. Encouraging results on this topic are also coming from the combination of different cosmological datasets, such as cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS) observations. A recent analysis of galaxy survey dataset from BOSS collaboration shows a preference for nonzero neutrino mass at the 3.3 sigma. Constraining precisely the neutrino mass will shed light on neutrino physics, helping investigate properties such as the mass hierarchy, the absolute mass scale, the origin of neutrino masses and the Dirac or Majorana nature of neutrinos. Moreover, future experiments are expected to put more stringent constraints on other parameters, like the number of neutrino families, or the possible existence of non-standard interactions. Finally, combining cosmological data directly with particle physics experiments could further boost our knowledge in neutrino sector. As an example, if neutrinos were Majorana particles, the joint combination of cosmology and double-beta decay experiments will be able to constrain the Majorana effective mass, the CP violating phase and one of the two Majorana phases in the very near future.

[pdf]
• 9:40 am — break
• 10:00 am — Marilena Loverde, University of Chicago
Testing Neutrino Properties with Large-scale Structure
The large-scale structure of our universe (the distribution of galaxies on very large-scales for instance) contains a wealth of information about the origin, evolution, and matter content of the universe. I will discuss physical effects of the cosmic neutrino background on the process of structure formation and present new signatures of massive cosmic background neutrinos that may be used to constrain their properties from large galaxy surveys.

[pdf]
• 10:30 am — Neal Dalal, University of Illinois
Probing dark matter substructure with ALMA
[pdf]
• 11:30 am — lunch

Tuesday afternoon – trip to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi

WEDNESDAY

• 9:00 am — Romeel Dave, UWC
Models of Galaxy Formation: From Complex to Simple
[pdf]
• 9:50 am — Ignacio Jesus Araya Quezada, University of Southern California
Dark matter annihilation effects on the high redshift intergalactic medium
We study the case of DM self annihilation, in order to assess its importance as an energy injection mechanism, to the IGM in general, and to the medium within particular DM haloes. We consider thermal relic WIMP particles with masses of 10GeV and 1TeV and we analyse in detail the clustering properties of DM in a ΛCDM cosmology, on all hierarchy levels, from haloes and their mass function, to subhaloes and the DM density profiles within them, considering adiabatic contraction by the presence of a SMBH. We then compute the corresponding energy output, concluding that DM annihilation does not constitute an important feedback mechanism. We also calculate the effects that DM annihilation has on the IGM temperature and ionization fraction, and we find that assuming maximal energy absorption, at z ~ 10, for the case of a 1TeV WIMP, the ionization fraction could be raised to 6×10^−4 and the temperature to 10K, and in the case of a 10GeV WIMP, the IGM temperature could be raised to 200K and the ionization fraction to 8×10^−3. We conclude that DM annihilations cannot be regarded as an alternative reionization scenario. Regarding the detectability of the WIMP through the modifications to the 21 cm differential brightness temperature signal (δTb), we conclude that a thermal relic WIMP with mass of 1TeV is not likely to be detected from the global signal alone, except perhaps at the 1-3mK level in the frequency range 30MHz < ν < 35MHz corresponding to 40 < z < 46. However, a 10GeV mass WIMP may be detectable at the 1-3mK level in the frequency range 55MHz < ν < 119MHz corresponding to 11 < z < 25, and at the 1-10mK level in the frequency range 30MHz < ν < 40MHz corresponding to 35 < z < 46.[/expand]
[pdf]
• 10:40 am — break
• 11:00 am — Aurélie Pénin, UKZN
The Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) anisotropiesThe integrated emission of star-forming galaxies since the decoupling, is a privileged probe of star formation within the large scale structure as well as being one of the foreground of the Cosmic Microwave Background. Therefore the knowledge of their statistical properties is crucial for both galaxy evolution and cosmological issues.

[pdf]
• 11:50 am — Fabien Lacasa, ICTP-SAIFR
Non-Gaussian tools for the Large Scale Structure information : Planck and DES
I will present how non-Gaussianity is involved in extracting as much information as possible from cosmological observations. Be it through a deeper statistical description of the observable or through combination of probes. As an introduction I will discuss how extragalactic point-sources affect the estimation of primordial non-Gaussianity in Planck CMB data. I will then present Planck measurements of the non-Gaussianity of two extragalactic foregrounds : the Cosmic Infrared Background, which traces star formation and the large scale structure at high redshifts, and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, which traces the ionised gas of galaxy clusters. I will also show work in progress to model the tSZ bispectrum, depending on statistic of the large scale structure, with the goal to constrain cosmological parameters and cluster physics. Finally, I will present ongoing work for the Dark Energy Survey to combine cosmological constraints from the galaxy correlation function and from cluster number counts. Combining these probes indeed involves non-Gaussianity, at the modelisation level (the covariance is a 3-point function) as well as the likelihood level (Poissonianity of the counts). I will show how the modelisation can be tackled with a diagrammatic formalism, and the likelihood can be approached with a Gram-Charlier series method. This will conclude that non-Gaussianity is one of the key tools needed to extract the most science out of our present and future datasets.

[pdf]
• 12:40 pm — lunch
• 2:00 pm — Max Pettini, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
I propose to review the latest developments in the determination of the primordial abundances of the light elements created in the first few minutes of our Universe history, with particular emphasis on deuterium whose measurement has seen much improved precision in the last few years. I will show how estimates of the cosmic density of baryons from (D/H)_p and from the temperature fluctuation of the Cosmic Microwave Background measured with the Planck mission have now reached comparable precision, in both cases of order of a few percent. The excellent agreement between these two measures at widely different cosmic epochs places interesting limits on the existence of relativistic particles beyond the standard model of physics, such as putative `dark radiation’.

[pdf]
• 2:50 pm — Laura Salvati, University of Rome, ‘Sapienza’
BBNS
The baryon abundance is now strongly constrained from the most recent cosmological data. Assuming standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, it is possible to derive primordial abundances of light elements as 4He, 2H, 7Li. We compute the BBN abundances with the PArthENoPE (Pisanti et al, 2008) code and compare these results with the ones obtained from direct observations. We considering different possible scenarios. first of all we analyze extensions to the LCDM model, considering the variation of the curvature parameter or of lensing amplitude Afterwards, we assume the possibility of systematics in current experimental data for the rate of the radiative capture process d(p,y)3He, because theoretical calculations predict a rate about 5-10% higher than what has been measured.
• 3:15 pm — Chun Yin Ricky Chue, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dark matter constraints from shapes of haloes
Studying shapes of dark matter (DM) halos can give us some information about the nature of DM, such as the DM self-interaction. One of the methods of probing DM halos is by galaxy-galaxy lensing. However, previous results on probing DM halo shapes have been inconclusive, they are often associated with large uncertainties. In this talk, I will present a new method to probe shapes of DM halos using the 3-point correlation function. This method has been shown to improve the error estimates from previous works by an order of magnitude when tested on simulation data. At the end, I will conclude by talking about the possibility of applying my method to actual observations in future surveys.

[pdf]
• 3:40 pm — break
• 4:00 pm — Jack Hughes, Rutgers
El Gordo and Beyond
First I will present some results on the massive, merging galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915 (“El Gordo”) discovered by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope through the Sunyaev Zel’dovich (SZ) effect. New results from a deep Chandra observation include a temperature map on sub-arcminute scales that shows significant variations from a low of 5 keV near the location of the brightest cluster galaxy to a high of 25 keV. These two temperature features are associated with the two mass peaks identified in gravitational lensing analyses of El Gordo. Toward the southeast the cold core shows evidence for a cold front, an interface across which the temperature decreases while the density rises. At the locations of the merger shocks in El Gordo traced by radio relics are significant jumps in the density and temperature of the hot cluster gas, confirming the presence of a gas shock and providing independent constraints on the shock properties. Next I will summarize a new dynamical study of El Gordo that has refined the dynamical state of the merger. Finally I will conclude with a status report on our on-going effort to find massive high-redshift clusters from among the unconfirmed candidates in the Planck SZ catalog.
• 4:50 pm — Olof Lundberg, Stockholm University
Dark Matter searches with the ATLAS detector
ATLAS is a multi-purpose detector aimed at fully exploiting the discovery potential of the proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy of 8-14 TeV provided by CERN Large Hadron Collider. It is able to precisely identify and measure the properties of electrons, muons, photons, taus and hadronic jets. Thanks to an excellent hermeticity it is able to infer the production of neutrinos and dark matter particles from conservation of momentum using the missing energy observable. This talk will focus on the results of several dedicated searches for WIMP Dark Matter using the ATLAS detector. Among these searches are the so called “Mono-X” searches looking for signatures with large missing momentum recoiling against a gauge boson. We also present searches for decays of the Higgs boson into invisible states and searches for final states with missing transverse energy and third generation quarks. The results are interpreted in terms of Effective Field Theories as well as Simplified Models, and limits on nucleon-WIMP cross sections are inferred for both spin-dependent and spin-independent scenarios. Finally some prospects for the upcoming LHC Run 2 with collisions at the unprecedented 13-14 TeV center-of-mass energies will be presented.

[pdf]
• THURSDAY

• 9:00 am — Lyman Page, Princeton
ACTPol
[pdf]
• 9:50 am — Kyle Story, University of Chicago
SPTpol
SPTpol is a polarization-sensitive receiver installed in early 2012 on the South Pole Telescope (SPT). SPTpol is being used in an on-going survey to map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in temperature and polarization. These observations have been used to detect B-mode polarization power in the CMB, measure the EE and TE CMB power spectra, and measure the CMB gravitational lensing potential. Measurements of gravitational lensing of the CMB directly probe the projected mass in the universe out to high redshifts. Gravitational lensing encodes a wealth of information in the CMB about the growth and geometry of large-scale structure which is sensitive to cosmic acceleration (dark energy), the expansion history of the universe, and the properties of neutrinos. Additionally, measurements of gravitational lensing can be used to improve inflationary gravitational wave searches in the CMB and constrain the relationship between dark and luminous matter at high redshifts. I will present the current status of SPTpol, including the recently published EE and TE power spectra and the measurement of the CMB gravitational lensing potential.

[pdf]
• 10:40 am — break
• 11:00 am — Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschenes, IAS
Dust with Planck
[pdf]
• 11:50 am — Christopher Sheehy, University of Chicago
BICEP2
In this talk I will present results from the BICEP2 experiment, a microwave polarimeter that observed at the South Pole from 2010-2012 and that in March 2014 reported a high-significance detection of degree scale B-mode polarization . I will discuss the instrument, analysis and results, and review recent progress made toward understanding the origin of the signal.

[pdf]
• 12:15 pm — Alexandra Rahlin, Princeton University
SPIDER
We present the results of integration and characterization of the SPIDER instrument after the 2013 pre-flight campaign. SPIDER is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to probe the primordial gravitational wave signal in the degree-scale B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. With six independent telescopes housing over 2000 detectors in the 94 GHz and 150 GHz frequency bands, SPIDER will map 7.5% of the sky with a depth of 11 to 14 uK-arcmin at each frequency, which is a factor of about 5 improvement over Planck. We discuss the integration of the pointing, cryogenic, electronics, and power sub-systems, as well as pre-flight characterization of the detectors and optical systems. SPIDER is currently in the field for a December 2014 flight from Antarctica, and is expected to be limited by astrophysical foreground emission, and not instrumental sensitivity, over the survey region.

[pdf]
• 12:40 pm — lunch
• 2:00 pm — Dmitri Pogosyan, University of Alberta
Topology of the Universe from Planck CMB data
Cosmic Microwave Background provides us data on the structure of our Universe from the largest
observable distances. In this talk I will discuss what limits are placed by the recent Planck data on the possibility that our Universe has complex multi-connected space, and how this analysis is performed.

[pdf]
• 2:25 pm — Alexander van Engelen, CITA
Lensing of the CMB with ACTPol
The gravitational lensing of the CMB has recently emerged as an important cosmological probe. The lensing signal is sensitive to matter fluctuations on larger scales and at higher redshifts than are accessible through other means. It can also be used in cross-correlation with other surveys to highlight properties of tracer populations. I will show the first results of the measurement of the lensing of the CMB polarization from the ACTPol survey, based on cross-correlation with maps of the cosmic infrared background from the Planck satellite. I will also discuss the constraints on cosmology that will be possible using data from future surveys.

[pdf]
• 2:50 pm — Heather Prince, UKZN
Real Space Lensing Reconstruction using CMB Temperature and Polarisation
Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) probes the distribution of matter in our universe, of which dark matter forms a dominant part. It also allows us to delens the CMB and obtain an accurate picture of its primordial fluctuations. We explore methods of reconstructing the lensing field from the lensed CMB temperature and polarisation in real space, as an alternative to the harmonic space estimators currently in use. Real space estimators have the advantage of being local in nature and they are thus equipped to deal with the nonuniform sky coverage, galactic cuts and point source excisions found in experimental data. These estimators can be applied to CMB temperature and polarisation maps to reconstruct the lensing convergence and shear, which are directly related to the matter distribution.

[pdf]
• 3:15 pm — Heiko Heilgendorff, UKZN
C-BASS
The C-Band All-Sky Survey (C-BASS) is a radio telescope experiment that will measure polarised Galactic synchrotron emission over the entire sky. Maps from C-BASS will be used to remove Galactic foreground contamination in CMB polarisation experiments. The C-BASS experiment consists of two receivers, both operating at 5 GHz with a 1 GHz bandwidth and ~0.7 deg angular resolution. The northern telescope, operating at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in California, will end its observations early in 2015 while the southern telescope, operating at the SKA Support Site in Klerefontein, is in the final stages of commissioning. In this talk, I will give an overview of the C-BASS experiment and present some preliminary results from the Northern Survey.

[pdf]
• 3:40 pm — break

Thursday evening – hippo cruise and conference banquet

FRIDAY

• 9:00 am — Veeresh Singh, UKZN
High-redshift radio galaxies and associated overdensities
Ultra steep spectrum (USS) radio sources are one of the efficient tracers of powerful High-z radio galaxies (HzRGs). Fainter USS samples derived from deeper radio surveys can be useful in finding HzRGs at even higher redshifts and in unveiling a population of obscured weaker radio−loud AGN at moderate redshifts. We study properties of a USS sample derived from deep 325 MHz and 1.4 GHz observations. Our study shows that the criterion of ultra steep spectral index remains a reasonably efficient method to select high-z sources even at sub-mJy flux densities. We find that the powerful HzRGs in our sample tend to reside in (proto)cluster environments.

[pdf]
• 9:30 am — Lee Whittaker, University of Manchester
Separating weak lensing and intrinsic alignments using polarization information
Using the polarization position angle of an observed galaxy as a tracer of it’s intrinsic orientation, we develop techniques for cleanly separating weak gravitational lensing signals from intrinsic alignment contamination in forthcoming radio surveys. Errors on the intrinsic orientation estimates introduce biases into the shear estimates, however, we demonstrate that these biases can be corrected for if the error distribution is accurately known. We demonstrate our methods using simulations, where we reconstruct the shear and intrinsic alignment auto and cross spectra in three distinct redshift bins. We find that the polarization position angle information can be used to successfully reconstruct both the lensing and intrinsic alignment spectra with negligible residual biasing.

[pdf]
• 9:50 am — Yin-Zhe Ma, University of Manchester
Detection of the missing baryons with thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect
Previous studies of galaxy formation have shown that only 10 per cent of the baryons are in compact objects, while 90 per cent of them are missing. Numerical simulation shows that the missing baryons are in a state of diffuse plasma with temperature 10^5 to 10^7 Kevlin, which is hard to be detected by X-ray observations. We will present two studies that coherently detect the missing baryons. The first is the cross-correlation between the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich maps from Planck with the linear reconstructed velocity field. We find significance (4.6 sigma) detection of the peculiar motion of gas on Mpc scales. Further studies show that this bulk motion indicates that the concentration of gas constitutes a fraction of f_b=0.8, which indicates that all baryons are detected with the Planck kSZ maps. Second, we cross-correlate the thermal Sunyaev- Zeldovich from Planck maps with gravitational lensing from the Canada France Hawaii Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) and constrain the diffuse baryon component with the various pressure profile. We find that the 1 and 2 halo terms detected at 3.96$\sigma$ and 3.67$\sigma$ confidence level (CL) respectively. The effective virial temperature of the isothermal gas is found to be in the range 7 *10^{5}–3*10^{8} K. In addition, by stacking the pairs of luminous red galaxies, we can place a constraint on the temperature of the filament in between the dark matter halos.

[pdf]
• 10:40 am — break
• 11:00 am — Michele Maggiore, University of Geneva
Nonlocal gravity and comparison with cosmological datasets
We discuss a recently proposed modification of GR, in which a mass scale is introduced as a coefficient of a suitable non-local term. Such non-localities are expected to emerge at an effective level from a fundamental local theory, as a consequence of infrared effects in curved space. The model has the same number of parameters as LCDM, with a mass parameter replacing the cosmological constant, and is very predictive. We show that at the phenomenological level it works very well: at the background level it generates a dynamical dark energy, and provides a neat prediction for the dark energy EOS, which turns out to be phantom. The cosmological perturbations are well-behaved. We have implemented the perturbations in a Boltzmann code and we find that the model fits well CMB, BAO and SNa data, with a chi2 comparable or slightly better then LCDM. From these datasets we predict a value of h0=72, which would resolve the potential discrepancy with local measurements of H0.

[pdf]
Void properties in f(R) gravity
We investigate void properties in f(R) models using N-body simulations, focusing on their differences from General Relativity (GR) and their detectability. In the Hu-Sawicki f(R) modified gravity (MG) models, the halo number density profiles of voids are not distinguishable from GR. In contrast, the same f(R) voids are more empty of dark matter, and their profiles are steeper. This can in principle be observed by weak gravitational lensing of voids, for which the combination of a spectroscopic redshift and a lensing photometric redshift survey over the same sky is required. Neglecting the lensing shape noise, the f(R) model parameter amplitudes |fR_0|=10^−5 and 10^−4 may be distinguished from GR using the lensing tangential shear signal around voids by 4 and 8σ for a volume of ~1(Gpc/h)^3. The line-of-sight projection of large-scale structure is the main systematics that limits the significance of this signal for the near future wide angle and deep lensing surveys. For this reason, it is challenging to distinguish |fR_0|=10^−6 from GR. We expect that this can be overcome with larger volume. The halo void abundance being smaller and the steepening of dark matter void profiles in f(R) models are unique features that can be combined to break the degeneracy between |fR_0| and σ8.

[pdf]
• 12:40 pm — lunch
• 2:00 pm — J. Richard Bond, CITA
Inflation from the 2014 Planck Era and Beyond
I am giving an invited talk at COS, but the organizers have not yet given me the requested topic. I am sure it will involve our Planck 2014 results, which will be released at the beginning of December, probably on inflation.

Local organising committee:

• H. Cynthia Chiang (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
• Matt Hilton (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
• Kavilan Moodley (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
• Jonathan Sievers (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
• Amanda Weltman (University of Cape Town)
• Sahal Yacoob (University of KwaZulu-Natal)