Speaker
Description
Ultra-light axions with masses $10^{-33} < m_\phi/{\rm eV} < 10^{-22}$ , even as a small fraction of the observed dark matter abundance, may yet produce a visible impact on the cosmology due to their macroscopic quantum scale. Next generation galaxy survey data are poised to challenge this possibility, but in order to do so, all aspects of structure formation in this quasi-linear regime must be accounted for consistently and precisely. This includes modeling not only the effect of these axions on the background cosmology and matter fluctuations, but also on the halo bias that governs the tracers we observe, namely galaxies. In this work we discuss the effect of ultra-light axions on cosmological observables, and present a prescription for computing the growth-induced scale-dependent bias in their presence.
