Our program contains several interconnected strands. Easther has a long-standing interest in the inflationary phase and the dynamics of the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, which would set the stage for the subsequent evolution of the universe.

Gravitational waves provide a unique perspective on the evolving universe and we work to understand their possible production in the very early universe and by black holes in the current epoch.  

A key focus for the Auckland group is the behaviour of matter described by a wave function and which responds to its own gravitational potential. This scenario can arise in both the very early universe and present-day dark matter models, and we explore this resulting dynamics in these widely separated epochs.

Cosmology provides a coherent account of the universe from the Big Bang through to the present day but at the cost of hypothesising the existence of dark matter and dark energy and we work to understand the properties of different proposals for the dark sector and test their predictions against data. 

Finally, many cosmological theories suggest that our universe could be part of a larger multiverse, and we have developed approaches to quantifying discussions of multiverse proposals