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Dark matter & dark energy from gravitational lensingThe quality of large scale deep optical surveys has reached a level of precision that it is now possible to produce maps of the dark matter underlying the observed galaxies and galaxy clusters through the use of gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing is the distortion of distant images by foreground matter bending spacetime. This causes the distortion of galaxy images around massive galaxy clusters, which can be used to make an image of the 3-dimensional distribution of the dark matter in the Universe. The distortion can also yield valuable information concerning the nature of dark energy - the mysterious ingredient of the Universe which appears to be responsible for its acceleration. These techniques have been used to map the dark matter in clusters detected in the COMBO-17 survey. Currently methods are being developed to map the dark matter in the Pan-STARRS lensing survey. |