The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) at the University of Portsmouth will host a one day workshop, 20 July 2006, on "Galaxy Redshift Surveys of the Future". The workshop is organised in honour of Jim Gunn, who will receive an Honorary Degree from the University of Portsmouth on 19 July 2006. The workshop also follows on from last year's workshop on "Surveys of Dark Energy", which was organised to coincide with the SDSS collaboration meeting held in Portsmouth in June 2005.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss future redshifts surveys using the next generation of spectroscopic instruments, e.g., AAOmega (AAT), WFMOS (Gemini/Subaru), KMOS (VLT) and FMOS (Subaru). We hope to bring together the scientists working on these instruments, astronomers designing surveys and theoreticians predicting constraints from such observations. The agenda of the workshop is:

Speakers so far: Tom Shanks (ATLAS project), Will Percival (SDSS & 2dFGRS update), Gavin Dalton (FMOS survey), Carlos Frenk (BAO Predictions), Albert Stebbins, Yaoquan Chu (LAMOST), David Parkinson (WFMOS), Jochen Weller

Speakers so far: Ian Smail, Steve Phillipps, Peder Norberg (AAOmega), Claudia Maraston, Brad Gibson (Galactic Archaeology), Andrew Bunker (FMOS), Malcolm Bremer (LSS at z>5), David Wake (LRG evolution)

Speakers so far: Ofer Lahav (DES), Matt Jarvis (LOFAR), Will Sutherland (VISTA), Kathy Romer (Cluster Followup), Steven Bamford

COSMOLOGY AND THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY

The field of cosmology has evolved from an exceedingly data-starved field driven almost entirely by theoretical ideas barely a decade ago to one today in which there exist vast, rich sets of still relatively undigested data which are being used to confront theoretical models in great detail. For the first time in the history of the subject the data are good enough to constrain the cosmological model with some precision. After decades of apparent inconsistencies based on the analyses of small, poorly understood data sets, essentially all of the good current data from a vast variety of sources suggest that the universe is adequately described by a single ``concordance" model of an entirely different nature than envisaged by cosmologists a decade ago: one in which the energetics of the expansion are currently dominated by a cosmological-constant-like `dark energy', much more important at the present epoch than the dark matter which has been known for a long time to dominate the mass density. The nature of this component has joined the nature of the dark matter as the most pressing and difficult questions facing cosmology today.

The data from which these conclusions have been reached come from many sources, but the chief contributors have been studies of the cosmic microwave background, known certainly today to be the relic radiation from a hot Big Bang, optical studies of distant supernovae, and large optical surveys, most notably the Anglo-Australian 2dF survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with which the spaeker has been associated for many years.

I will describe in this talk the advances in the subject in general over the past half century, with particular emphasis on the role of the Sloan Survey, and speculate on the future of the subject.

There will be a few invited talks but most of the time will be for contributed talks and discussions. There will be no proceedings, but the talks will be posted to the website as with the Surveys of Dark Energy workshop.

The workshop will be held at the ICG and we have space for only 40 people (including locals). Therefore, we encourage people to register early (see below) and it will be on a "first come, first served" basis. There is no registration fee and lunch and refreshments will be provided during the day.

To register for the conference, simply email the following template to Bob Nichol (bob.nichol AT port.ac.uk) asap:

NAME:
EMAIL:
TALK TITLE: (leave blank if you do not wish to give a talk)
TALK LENGTH: (leave blank or indicate the time in minutes of your talk)
PROBABILITY OF COMING: (e.g. 100% or 50%)
COMMENTS: (need accommodation?)

Here is a list of the registered attendees so far