Going Nonlinear with Dark Energy Cosmologies

The formation of large scale structure in the universe is a central element of astrophysics. Apart from the structure itself, it also offers a incisive tool for probing cosmology and particle physics. Since structure formation is a competition between expansion and gravity, the growth as a function of redshift is intimately tied to the expansion of the universe. Studies of matter density fluctuations can thus shed light on the physics responsible for the accelerating expansion, i.e. dark energy. The growth of large scale structure also provides one of the few tests of general relativity on cosmological scales.