The South Pole Telescope: A white paper for the Dark Energy Task Force

• Main Authors: J. E. Carlstrom, C. Chang, T. Crawford, C. H. Greer, E. M. Leitch, J. Mcmahon, S. S. Meyer, S. Padin, C. Pryke, M. C. Runyan, M. K. Sharp, J. Leong, T. Montroy, W. Lu, J. E. Ruhl, Z. Staniszewski, B. Benson, H. M. Cho, N. W. Halverson, W. L. Holzapfel, T. M. Lanting, A. T. Lee, M. Lueker, J. Mehl, T. Plagge, D. Schwan, M. Dobbs, H. Spieler, A. A. Stark, Y-t Lin, J. J. Mohr, P. A. R. Ade
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.532.9906; http://pole.uchicago.edu/spt/depot/pdf/force.pdf

The primary goal of the South Pole Telescope (SPT) project is to set constraints on the nature of dark energy by measuring its impact on the growth of structure, specifically the evolution of the number density of massive galaxy clusters. The SPT will conduct a deep, large solid angle (4000 deg2) galaxy cluster survey by exploiting the redshift-independence of the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect (SZE). The SPT is a 10-meter submillimeter-wave telescope designed to conduct large surveys with high sensitivity to low surface brightness emission such as SZE measurements and CMB temperature and polarization anisotropy. To this goal the telescope uses an off-axis optical design, has a large field of view, employs three levels of shielding including an enormous ground shield, and is sited under the exceptionally clear and stable atmosphere at the South Pole. The SZE survey will be conducted with a 1000 element bolometric focal plane array configured