Oliver Zahn
Inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow

Physics Division, MS 50R5004
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1 Cyclotron Rd.
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 486-5604

OZahn@lbl.gov

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I am a theoretical astrophysicist at the Center for Cosmological Physics. I hope to become a general purpose cosmologist, understanding the large scale structure and evolution of the universe using the methods of physics.


Before coming to Berkeley, I did my PhD research at Harvard (2003-2007) under the supervision of Matias Zaldarriaga, also working closely with Lars Hernquist. Prior to that I was a student at the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in Garching (2002-2003), Germany, where I did my undergraduate research under the supervision of Matthias Bartelmann on the effect of variations of fundamental atomic physics on the primary Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which originated at the time the universe became neutral, around 400,000 years after the Big Bang.

In my more recent research (using analytic and numerical techniques) I have tried to model how Large Scale Structure affects what we see when we look deep into the early ages of the universe. The Large Scale Structure is a network of galaxy clusters, filaments, sheets around voids in the universe. For example, the supposed Secondary Anisotropy is imprinted on the "primary" Cosmic Microwave Background by the scattering of photons off hot electrons. Another type of anisotropy (at an emitted wavelength of 21 cm) was produced before the neutrality stopped, and while everything became ionized again - around 100 Million years into the universe's history. I have developed analytic and numerical models to describe this epoch, called Reionization. En route to us, photons of both the CMB and 21 cm were deflected in the presence of large masses, a process called gravitational lensing. I have worked on developing and applying methods to measure this lensing effect, and using it to constrain properties of the dark matter and dark energy.