Clusters of Galaxies as Cosmic Laboratories

Session

SZ Surveys, Mass Calibration and Cosmology

13 Sept 2011, 14:00

FD51 (AlbaNova main building)

256. The Santa Barbara Cluster Standards Project

Mark Voit

13/09/2011, 14:00

Talk

Cluster of galaxies have an excellent track record as probes of cosmology.  However, if they are to remain competitive with other methods for constraining cosmological parameters, we will need to calibrate the relationships between cluster masses and the observable quantities used to trace mass to better than a few percent accuracy.  If we are to succeed in that effort, we will need...

250. The South Pole Telescope Galaxy Cluster Survey

Joe Mohr

13/09/2011, 14:45

Talk

We have carried out a multi-wavelength mm-wave survey of 2500 deg^2 in the southern extragalactic sky in search of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect signatures from galaxy clusters. More than 600 cluster candidates have been selected from the mm-wave data, and we are currently characterizing these candidates to determine their redshifts and improve our understanding of their masses. This...

252. APEX SZ observations of galaxy clusters

Cathy Horellou

13/09/2011, 16:00

Talk

I will present results from a Large Programme with APEX to map the Sunyaev-Zeldovich decrement at 2 mm with an angular resolution of 1 arcminute in about 50 galaxy clusters distributed over a large range of redshifts. The observations were done between 2007 and 2010. Both isolated and merging clusters were observed, as well as part of the XMM-LSS field. Individual clusters are studied...

258. The cosmological implications of massive clusters

Ben Hoyle

13/09/2011, 16:45

Talk

The existence of high redshift massive clusters is a good test of cosmology, because the theoretical cluster mass function is well known from simulations. After a brief overview of the history of this test, I describe the tension these clusters cause with LCDM and possible explanations.

259. Constraining Dark Energy with Cluster Strong Lensing

Priyamvada Natarajan

13/09/2011, 17:30

Talk

Current efforts in observational cosmology are focused on characterizing the mass-energy content of the Universe. We present results from a geometric test based on strong lensing in galaxy clusters. Based on Hubble Space Telescope images and extensive ground-based spectroscopic follow-up of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, we used a parametric model to simultaneously constrain the...