Talks

Two puzzling periods of accelerated expansion are thought to bookend the timeline of our Universe: cosmic inflation in the beginning, and dark energy domination in recent times. New observations from experiments such as DESI and the Simons Observatory are enabling unprcedented insights into both of these epochs. In this talk, I will highlight the critical and cross-cutting role of gravitational lensing in realizing this scientific promise, focusing on recent joint analyses of CMB lensing and galaxy clustering in redshift space, as well as delensing of CMB B-mode polarization. Along the way, I will discuss several enabling methodological developments, including a new understanding of extragalactic CMB foregrounds, fingers-of-god, pixel-free estimators, and more.

Minimal surfaces in the round 3-sphere enjoy a number of attractive and influential rigidity properties, particularly in low genus. Progress has been made in extending these results to certain analogous settings, such as free boundary minimal surfaces in the Euclidean ball. We will propose perspectives by which these other settings may be studied within a continuous family starting with the round 3-sphere. In this talk, we’ll discuss (half-space) intersection properties, connections with capillary minimal surfaces and other free boundary problems. This is based on joint work (including some in progress) with Keaton Naff.