Cosmostatistics

My field of research is cosmostatistics, the discipline aiming at the most accurate and instructive confrontation of large cosmological data sets with fundamental physical theories. This research area is at the interface between theory and observational data:

  • It consists of predicting cosmological observables from stochastic quantities as seeds of structure in the Universe (from theory to data). Theoretical hypotheses are used to model, predict and anticipate results.
  • It uses the departures from homogeneity and isotropy, observed in astronomical surveys, to distinguish between cosmological models (from data to theory). Data sets are used to infer parameters of the theoretical models and to compare their relative suitability.

More specifically, my recent research focuses on the large-scale structure of the Universe: analysing the non-linear phenomena at play during cosmic structure formation, reconstructing the initial conditions and formation history of the large-scale structure, and describing the morphology of the cosmic web. In am also interested in the propagation of photons in this inhomogeneous Universe (weak gravitational lensing) and the link between the large-scale structure of the Universe and theories describing the early Universe (cosmological inflation).

In order to address these scientific questions, I develop and apply advanced statistical and information-theoretic methods for the analysis and interpretation of cosmological data.