APEC Seminar (Astronomy - Particle Physics - Experimental Physics - Cosmology)

Speaker: Tijmen de Haan (UC Berkeley)
Title: Cluster Cosmology with the South Pole Telescope
Date (JST): Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 15:30 - 16:30
Place: Seminar Room A
Abstract: The South Pole Telescope (SPT) team recently completed the cosmological analysis of the galaxy cluster sample from the five-year SPT-SZ survey, which covered 2500 square degrees of the southern sky and discovered hundreds of galaxy clusters. These clusters are uniformly selected in a way that is nearly redshift-independent. I will show how comparing their abundance to theoretical predictions provides powerful cosmological constraints on parameters such as the dark energy equation of state and the species-summed neutrino mass. I will also discuss SPT-3G, the third-generation camera that employs several technological advances to increase the mapping speed of the SPT by an order of magnitude. SPT-3G was deploying to the South Pole during the past austral summer, and is expected to discover many thousands of new galaxy clusters, as well as providing an invaluable statistical measurement of their mass through CMB-halo lensing.