Final Report for "Non-Accelerator Physics – Research in High Energy Physics: Dark Energy Research on DES"
- Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
One of the greatest mysteries in modern cosmology is the fact that the expansion of the universe is observed to be accelerating. This acceleration may stem from dark energy, an additional energy component of the universe, or may indicate that the theory of general relativity is incomplete on cosmological scales. The growth rate of large-scale structure in the universe and particularly the largest collapsed structures, clusters of galaxies, is highly sensitive to the underlying cosmology. Clusters will provide one of the single most precise methods of constraining dark energy with the ongoing Dark Energy Survey (DES). The accuracy of the cosmological constraints derived from DES clusters necessarily depends on having an optimized and well-calibrated algorithm for selecting clusters as well as an optical richness estimator whose mean relation and scatter compared to cluster mass are precisely known. Calibrating the galaxy cluster richness-mass relation and its scatter was the focus of the funded work. Specifically, we employ X-ray observations and optical spectroscopy with the Keck telescopes of optically-selected clusters to calibrate the relationship between optical richness (the number of galaxies in a cluster) and underlying mass. This work also probes aspects of cluster selection like the accuracy of cluster centering which are critical to weak lensing cluster studies.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0007093
- OSTI ID:
- 1333939
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-UCSC-07093
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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