Galaxy clusters represent the top of hierarchical structure formation with the largest dark matter halos. Their abundance with respect to mass and redshift can be used to constrain cosmological parameters. The most extensive ...

Comprising the most massive gravitationally bound and relaxed structures in the Universe, galaxy clusters are essential in providing a deeper understanding of the properties of dark matter. Being cosmologically young ...

Evolution in the mass function of galaxy clusters sensitively traces both the expansion history of the Universe and cosmological structure formation. Hence, measuring the number density of galaxy clusters as a function of ...

In the last decade weak gravitational lensing by the large-scale structure of the Universe, also called cosmic shear, has become an important tool to constrain cosmological parameters. Despite this success there remain ...

In recent years, the distribution of galaxies in the Universe could be measured up to large distances and over a significant part of the sky. The analysis of this large-scale structure contains a wealth of cosmological ...

Weak gravitational lensing, i.e. the distortion of images of distant galaxies due to the deflection of light rays in gravitational fields, is a powerful method to study the matter distribution in the Universe. It can be ...

Cosmology has recently entered an era of increasingly rich observational data sets, all being in agreement with a cosmological standard model that features only a small number of free parameters. One of the most powerful ...

Following from the theory of General Relativity, light-bundles are deflected and differentially distorted while passing through the gravitational potential of matter inhomogeneities. The gravitational lensing effect caused ...

In the past years cosmology, the science of the universe as a whole, has seen tremendous progress. The Lambda-Cold-Dark-Matter scenario is widely accepted as the standard model of cosmology describing the evolution of the ...