Report of the Dark Energy Task Force

Technical Report · Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/897600· OSTI ID:897600

Albrecht, Andreas ^[1]; Bernstein, Gary ^[2]; Cahn, Robert ^[3]; Freedman, Wendy L. ^[4]; Hewitt, Jacqueline ^[5]; Hu, Wayne ^[6]; Huth, John ^[7]; Kamionkowski, Marc ^[8]; Kolb, Edward W. ^[9]; Knox, Lloyd ^[1]; Mather, John C. ^[10]; Staggs, Suzanne ^[11]; Suntzeff, Nicholas B. ^[12]

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1. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
2. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
4. Carnegie Inst. of Washington, Washington, DC (United States). Observatories
5. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
6. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics (KICP)
7. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
8. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
9. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Astronomy Astrophysics Center
10. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
11. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
12. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)

Dark energy appears to be the dominant component of the physical Universe, yet there is no persuasive theoretical explanation for its existence or magnitude. The acceleration of the Universe is, along with dark matter, the observed phenomenon that most directly demonstrates that our theories of fundamental particles and gravity are either incorrect or incomplete. Most experts believe that nothing short of a revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics will be required to achieve a full understanding of the cosmic acceleration. For these reasons, the nature of dark energy ranks among the very most compelling of all outstanding problems in physical science. These circumstances demand an ambitious observational program to determine the dark energy properties as well as possible.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 897600
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-FN-0793-A; arXiv eprint number astro-ph/0609591; TRN: US1106001
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ACCELERATION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PHYSICS
UNIVERSE
Astrophysics