Understanding the Fundamental Properties of Dark Matter and Dark Energy in Structure formation and Cosmology

This program is concerned with developing and verifying the validity of observational methods for constraining the properties of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Excellent progress has been made in comparing observational projects involving weak gravitational lensing using both ground and space-based instruments, in further constraining the nature of dark matter via precise measures of its distribution in clusters of galaxies using strong gravitational lensing, in demonstrating the possible limitations of using distant supernovae in future dark energy missions, and in investigating the requirement for ground-based surveys of baryonic acoustic oscillations.