Lake Como Schools on Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravitation

The Schools are directed to PhD students and young Post-Docs in Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics who are interested in widening their knowledge in the fields of Physical Cosmology, Relativistic Astrophysics, General Relativity, Experimental Gravity and the Modern Quantum Theories of Gravitation. The Schools wish to introduce students to current problems, highlighting their importance and potential scientific impact. Lecturers will report on theoretical, observational and experimental aspects of the research, reviewing the latest achievements in the field.

This School

Today, cosmology and astrophysics are experiencing a dilemma: on one side, we have a very successful model, the ΛCDM model, able to adjust to almost all observations. On the other hand, such a model requires 96% of stuff about whose nature we have yet no certain knowledge: 26% of dark matter and 70% of dark energy, with only 4% left for the known matter, mostly in the form of hydrogen and helium nuclei. While dark matter seems to be necessary to explain the formation and the dynamics of galaxies and of larger structures, such as galaxy clusters and super clusters, dark energy is required to explain why our universe is in a state of accelerated expansion. The school aims at providing master’s and doctoral students and young post doctoral researchers with a perspective on the most important proposals on the nature of the dark components of the universe, not only from the theoretical point of view, but also from the experimental and observational one.