Birrer et al. 2018, MNRAS submitted
H0LiCOW - IX. Cosmographic analysis of the doubly imaged quasar SDSS 1206+4332 and a new measurement of the Hubble constant
Personal website of Simon Birrer
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the department of Physics and Astronomy. Before joining UCLA, I was a PhD student at ETH Zurich in the cosmology research group. My current research focus on dark matter and dark energy. I am using strong gravitational lensing to probe the imprint of dark matter on the structure in our universe and measuring the expansion rate of our universe with time-delay cosmography to probe dark energy. My scientific expertise is the interface between the exquisite data sets available on one side and the fundamental theory predictions on the other side. I am actively developing advanced computational and statistical tools - publicly available - to contribute the community in pushing the boundaries of our knowlege sphere.
Recent Work
Birrer and Amara 2018, Physics of the Dark Universe, submitted
Lenstronomy: multi-purpose gravitational lens modelling software package
Birrer et al. 2018, ApJL 852, 1, L14
Cosmic Shear with Einstein Rings
Birrer et al. 2017, JCAP 05, 037
Lensing substructure quantification in RXJ1131-1231: a 2 keV lower bound on dark matter thermal relic mass
Birrer et al. 2017, JCAP 04, 049
Line-of-sight effects in strong lensing: putting theory into practice
Birrer et al. 2016, JCAP 08, 020
The mass-sheet degeneracy and time-delay cosmography: analysis of the strong lens RXJ1131-1231
Birrer et al. 2015, ApJ 813, 2, 102
Gravitational Lens Modeling with Basis Sets
Birrer et al. 2014, ApJ 793, 1, 12
A Simple Model Linking Galaxy and Dark Matter Evolution