Project description
Mapping the dark universe
Galaxies hold the key to the universe's biggest mysteries. Their shapes change slightly due to the gravitational pull of invisible dark matter, offering clues about how the cosmos came to be and what it is really made of. Yet, even after decades of research, dark matter and dark energy remain largely unexplained. The ERC-funded OCAPi project aims to dig deep into data from the Euclid mission. The result will be a detailed cosmic map, showing the complex structures that dark matter forms. Project work will sharpen our understanding of dark energy, bringing us closer to uncovering the hidden forces that shape the universe.
Objective
Distorted by the gravity of cosmic structures, galaxy shapes can answer the biggest questions in cosmology: How do cosmic structures form? What is the nature of dark energy and dark matter?
While the cosmological model succeeds at explaining a wide range of observations, it relies on two components whose nature remains unknown: dark matter and dark energy. Moreover, weak lensing surveys have found that the Universe is more homogeneous than expected from the cosmic microwave background, indicating a tension between observations. Resolving this tension and understanding the dark components of the Universe are the most pressing challenges of cosmology today.
The Euclid mission and the Rubin Observatory will observe the positions and shapes of billions of galaxies with unprecedented precision. These data have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of dark energy and detect deviations from the cosmological model. However, standard analyses discard large amounts of information in the data. To realise the full potential of these surveys, we urgently need more advanced data analysis techniques.
The OCAPi project will develop cutting-edge methods to make optimal use of these surveys, delivering the most precise constraints on the cosmological parameters from Euclid data. By analysing lensing maps at the pixel level, OCAPi will capture all the information in the data and increase the precision of the cosmological constraints, yielding marginal errors up to a factor 5 better than standard techniques. OCAPi will move this innovative approach from its proof-of-concept to the full application to Euclid data to investigate the cosmology tension, constrain dark energy models and generate probabilistic mass maps of the Universe. Making optimal use of one of the most powerful cosmological datasets, OCAPi will advance our understanding of the dark components of the Universe and the formation of cosmic structures, setting new benchmarks for cosmological analysis.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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75015 Paris
France
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