Abstract :
Dark matter and dark energy represent 95% of the Universe and they are still mostly unknown. Gravitational lensing is one of the most powerful tools for constraining the "dark Universe", as it can directly infer dark energy (via gravitational time delays) and dark matter (via low-mass lenses). In this seminar we will discuss these fundamental investigations and show our latest results from the combination of strong lensing and VLBI, which can reveal low-mass haloes (~10^6 M_sun) and measure time
delays at high precision.
These studies are currently limited by the paucity of lensing systems known. Finding novel and effective ways to identify strong lenses represents a new challenge that has to be addressed now, when the so-called "era of precision cosmology" is about to start with the next generation of telescopes. We will present novel methods to search for strong lenses in the time domain that, teamed-up with the SKA-MID surveys and SKA-VLBI, can shed light on these open questions at unprecedented precision.
short bio: Cristiana Spingola (https://people.ira.inaf.it/spingola/) is a staff researcher at the INAF Institute for Radioastronomy (Bologna, Italy). Her work focuses on exploiting strong gravitational lensing at high angular resolution radio observations to investigate dark matter and the structure of distant galaxies. She is actively involved in SKA, ngVLA and LSST. Her most recent work also explores strong lensing in the time domain, with the aim of constraining the nature of the dark Universe.
