The Dark Energy Survey J
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Cosmology, Galaxy Formation and Astroparticle Physics on the pathway to the SKA Kl¨ockner, H.-R., Jarvis, M. & Rawlings, S. (eds.) April 10th-12th 2006, Oxford, United Kingdom The Dark Energy Survey J. Weller1, J. Frieman2,3, O. Lahav1 and Z. Ma4 for the DES collaboration 1 Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, U.K. 2 Particle Astrophysics Center, Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL-60510-0500, USA 3 Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 4 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104 Abstract. The Dark Energy Survey is proposing to constrain dark energy with four complementary probes: galaxy cluster counts, weak lensing, galaxy clustering and Type Ia Supernovae. In order to achieve this a new 3 deg2 CCD camera will be mounted on the Blanco 4-m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). The camera will be sensitive up to 24th magnitude in the g,r,i and z bands. The proposed observation will cover 5,000 deg2 of the sky and overlap with the field of the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which will perform a blind survey of galaxy clusters, selected by their Sunyaev-Zel’dovich decrement. The specifications of DES will allow to constrain the equation of state parameter of dark energy to better then a few percent. accuracy. 1. Introduction luminosity distance dL = (1+z)r(z), standard rulers with probes of the angular diameter distance d = (1+z)−1r(z) One of the biggest challenges in modern cosmology is A or probes of the volume dV/(dz dΩ) = r2(z)H(z). to reveal the cause for the accelerated expansion of the Secondly there are probes of the growth factor Universe. There are three possible explanations for the ob- served accelerated expansion: Firstly there is an additional 3 H0 3 H2 D00 + D0 + = 0 a−5Ω D , (2) component in the energy-momentum tensor, namely dark a H 2 H2 m energy, which has a pressure pDE ρDE/3, secondly gravity could be modified on large scales≤ − and thirdly an with D the fluctuation in the matter component and inhomogeneous Universe. The ’simplest’ model to fit the primes denoting derivatives with respect to the scale fac- data is a Universe with a Cosmological Constant, although tor a. Note that usually in modified gravity scenarios the this comes then with the problem of the need to explain term on the right is modified. the origin of the observed value with fundamental physics. The majority of the material presented in the follow- The first question surveys need to answer is if the ing sections is discussed in detail in the report (The Dark dark energy is observationally distinguishable from a Energy Survey Collaboration, 2005) submitted to the Cosmological Constant? In order to decide this one has to Dark Energy Task Force (DETF)(Albrecht et al., 2006). measure the equation of state w = pDE/ρDE possibly at The international DES collaboration includes universities different redshifts. A Cosmological Constant corresponds from the US, the UK, Spain, and Brazil. The DES:UK con- to w = 1. A further question is if it is possible to dis- sortium (UCL, Portsmouth, Cambridge, Edinburgh and tinguish− modifications of gravity from a dark energy com- Sussex) has now received support from PPARC towards ponent and finally in case w = 1 if it is evolving with the wide field optical corrector for DES. 6 − redshift? In the following we choose w = w0 + wa(1 a) as the parameterization for the equation of state (Linder,− 2. The Instrument and Survey 2003). There are many means to probe cosmology in the The main challenge for the DES collaboration is to build Universe, but the majority of them fall in two categories. a new camera and corrector for the 4m Blanco telescope. First there are geometrical probes, which mainly probe The major components are a 519 megapixel CCD camera the different weights of the comoving distance a wide field optical corrector with 2.2 deg field of view, a dz four band filter system with g,r,i and z filters, guide and r(z)= (1) focus sensors mounted on the focal plane, low-noise CCD H(z) Z readout, a cryogenic cooling system to maintain the focal where H(z) is the Hubble parameter given in plane at 180 K, as well as a data acquisition and instru- standard gravity at late times by H2(z) = ment control system to connect to the Blanco observatory 2 3 3(1+w) H0 Ωm(1 + z) +ΩDE(1 + z) , in a flat Universe infrastructure. The camera focal plane will consist of sixty- with a constant equation of state factor w. Geometrical two 2k x 4k CCDs (0.27”/pixel) arranged in a hexagon probes are then standard candles, i.e. probes of the covering an imaging area of 3 square degrees. Smaller for- J. Weller, J. Frieman,, O. Lahav and Z. Ma for the DES collaboration: The Dark Energy Survey bolometer array in its focal plane (Ruhl et al., 2004). It consists of a 1 arcminute beam and operates in 3-4 fre- quency bands at (90), 150, 250 and 270 GHz. This will allow blind observations of galaxy clusters selected by the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich decrement. Given the complemen- tary redshift information from DES it is then possible to count clusters of galaxies in bins of redshift. This can be compared to theoretical predictions of structure formation with dV ∞ dn ∆N = ∆Ω dz dM , (3) dzdΩ dM Zzbin ZMlim(z) where ∆Ω is the survey area, dn/dM the mass func- Fig. 1. Model of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). tion and Mlim(z) the selection function depending on the survey parameters, cosmological parameters and the gas mat CCDs for guiding and focusing will be located at the physics in the cluster. The sensitivity of the SPT is about edges of the focal plane. 1.5 mJy for a 4-σ detection threshold of a cluster. This cor- 14 responds to a limiting mass of 1.7 10 M , also this num- To carry out the Dark Energy Survey, we have re- × quested 525 nights of observing on the Blanco tele- ber is varying slightly with redshift. Typically the mass scope over 5 years, concentrated between September and function is established with N-body simulations (Jenkins February, beginning in Sept. 2009. With that time, we et al., 2001) and fit to analytical expression like for ex- expect to reach photometric limits of g=24.6, r=24.1, ample the Sheth-Tormen mass function (Sheth & Tormen, i=24.3, and z=23.9 over 5000 square degrees of sky. These 2002). The most commonly used mass function by Jenkins are 10σ limits in 1.5” apertures assuming 0.9” seeing and et al. (2001) is given by are appropriate for faint galaxies; the corresponding 5σ m dn (z,M) = 0.316 ρ (t0) dσM 1 limit for point sources is 1.5 mags fainter. These limits dM − M dM σM (4) exp 0.67 log [D(z)σ ] 3.82 , and the adopted median delivered seeing are derived from × −| − M | detailed survey simulations that incorporate weather and with σM the rms fluctuation on mass scale M, D (z) the seeing data at CTIO over a 30-year baseline. growth factor of linear perturbations and ρm(t0) the mat- The survey strategy is designed to optimize the pho- ter density today. In order to predict the number of clus- tometric calibration by tiling each region of the survey ter in redshift bins we require to convert the Sunyaev- with at least four overlapping pointings in each band. This Zel’dovich flux limit of the survey to a mass limit. For provides uniformity of coverage and control of systematic this we assume a relation between mass and tempera- photometric errors via relative photometry on scales up ture, which allows deviations from hydrostatic equilibrium to the survey size. This strategy will enable us to de- (Verde et al., 2002; Battye & Weller, 2003) with a tem- termine photometric redshifts (photo-z’s) of galaxies to perature relation of an accuracy of σ(z) 0.07 , with some dependence on ∼ 1/3 2/3 1− 1/ξ redshift and galaxy type, cluster photometric redshifts to Te = T∗∆c H(z) (1 + z) Mvir , (5) σ(z) 0.02 or better out to z 1.3, and shapes for approximately∼ 200 million galaxies;∼ these measurements where T∗ is the normalization, ∆c the spherical over- will be sufficient to meet the survey science requirements. density of the cluster at virialization, the redshift de- 4000 deg2 of the survey region will overlap the South Pole pendence and ξ the power-law for the variation with Telescope (Ruhl et al., 2004) Sunyaev-Zel’dovich survey mass. Assuming virialization would result in = 1 and region; the remainder will provide coverage of spectro- ξ = 1.5. We use T∗ = 1.6 as motivated by hydro sim- scopic redshift training sets, including the SDSS southern ulations (Battye & Weller, 2003). Also a deviation from virialization might be expected it turns out that clusters equatorial stripe, and more complete coverage near the 14 South Galactic pole. In order to extract cosmology from with masses larger than 10 M follow relatively closely the dark energy survey a certain accuracy in the photo- the scaling relation from virialization (Motl et al., 2005; metric redshifts is required. This is achieved by measuring Nagai, 2006). We include the parameters T∗, ξ and as free the relative flux in the g,r,i and z filters and observe the parameters in the cluster count analysis, which leads to a 4000A˚ break.