Euclid is a wide-field space telescope. In 6 years it will observe over a third of the sky, obtaining images of over a billion galaxies and measuring redshifts of 30 million galaxies. The result will be a 3D map and catalogue of the distribution of galaxies and dark matter (based on its gravitational lensing effect on galaxy images). The survey is optimized for the primary cosmology goal of the mission: solving the mystery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. Is the acceleration caused by a new form of energy, “dark energy”, filling the universe, or must the law of gravity perhaps be modified at large distance scales? At the same time the survey provides a wealth of data, which will have a huge impact on most areas of cosmology and astrophysics, and will form a basis for future research in these fields. Euclid launched in July 2023.
We provide one of nine national Euclid science data centres, facilitated by the Helsinki Institute of Physics Planck-Euclid project.
LISA will be the first gravitational wave observatory in space, consisting of three satellites separated by 2.5 million kilometers. Laser pulses sent between the spacecraft allow the detection of gravitational waves at far lower frequencies than is possible on earth. LISA will for example be able to observe supermassive black holes merging in distant galaxies, as well as neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes falling into supermassive black holes. These phenomena will allow us to test our theoretical understanding of gravity in previously unexplored regimes at a very high precision, as well as placing new constraints on the Cosmological Standard Model. LISA is also ideally designed to observe backgrounds of gravitational waves from physical processes operating in the very early Universe, such as the `turning-on’ of the Higgs field. This provides an important, complementary probe of particle physics beyond the reach of current and future particle accelerators. LISA will launch in the mid-2030s, but source modelling, mock data simulation and analysis is already underway to support the detailed design phases.
Our anticipated contribution to LISA is to provide one of the distributed Data Computing Centres (DCC) that make up the LISA data processing system. We will also contribute to software development and system engineering. In addition, two groups in Helsinki and one in Turku carry out basic research related to LISA: