Schedule Mar 17, 2011
The South Pole Telescope: Cluster Catalog and Cosmological Results
Brad Benson (KICP)

The 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a millimeter wavelength telescope designed to conduct sensitive measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at arc-minute resolution. Currently the SPT is conducting a 2500 square degree survey to find clusters of galaxies from their distortion of the CMB, known as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. The surface brightness of the SZ effect is redshift independent which allows a SZ survey to provide a nearly mass limited cluster sample out to the earliest epochs of cluster formation. Currently, the SPT has surveyed over 1500 square degrees to full survey depth, and has identified hundreds of cluster candidates. Of these, over 300 have been optically confirmed, with the majority being newly discovered clusters at z > 0.5. We will summarize the first results from the SPT cluster survey, including cosmological constraints from their measurement of the growth of structure.

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