Measuring the Growth of Structure with Spectroscopically Identified Groups and Clusters

• Main Authors: Davis, M, Gerke, BF, Coil, AL, Cooper, MC, Yan, R, Newman, JA, Faber, SM, Koo, D, Guhathakurta, P
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2005
• Subjects: astro-ph; South pole
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9p20m5nm

Number counts of galaxy clusters offer a very promising probe of the Dark Energy (DE) equation-of-state parameter, $w$. The basic goal is to measure abundances of these objects as a function of redshift, compare this to a theoretical prediction, and infer the values of cosmological parameters. Various teams have proposed such a measurement, including the South Pole Telescope, the Dark Energy Survey and the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey. The specific study discussed here detects clusters and smaller galaxy groups in the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies inferred from a large spectroscopic redshift survey. This method allows the abundance, $N$, of groups and clusters to be measured as a function of \emph{velocity dispersion}, as well as of redshift, permitting a more sensitive test of cosmology.