Leiden University Student Repository

Kortmann, Stan (2026)

Recovering w0 and wa using BAO analysis of dynamical dark energy models in FLAMINGO hydrodynamical simulations

Master thesis | Physics (MSc)

Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) provide a probe of cosmic expansion and dark energy. Using FLAMINGO hydrodynamical simulations, we construct DESI-like luminous red galaxy mock catalogues with forward modeled realistic observational effects, measure the anisotropic two point correlation function across redshifts, and fit linear theory BAO templates to constrain Chevallier–Polarski–Linder parameters w0 and wa of dynamical dark energy equation of state. We validate the pipeline by recovering fiducial cosmology and testing departures from ΛCDM, finding the BAO scale robust to baryonic effects and galaxy selection, with residual systematics subdominant to statistical uncertainties, yielding w0–wa constraints consistent with DESI expectations.

BAO, cosmology, simulation, FLAMINGO, dark energy, models, forward-modelling, statistics

Author

Kortmann, Stan

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Specialisation

Cosmology

Supervisors

Matthieu Schaller

ECTS Credits

30

Language

en