South Pole Telescope: A new probe of cluster cosmology ...

• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Perimeter Institute 2009
• Subjects: Cosmology; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48660/09040043; https://pirsa.org/09040043

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10-meter diameter telescope with a 960 element millimeter-wavelength bolometric receiver, which is in the midst of its third season of observations at the South Pole. The SPT has been optimized for measurements of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect in galaxy clusters. With this instrument, we are surveying the southern sky to create a mass limited catalog of galaxy clusters out to the epoch of their formation. This program of observations will also produce significant detections of the kinetic SZ effect and weak gravitational lensing of the CMB, a multi-band millimeter-wavelength point source catalog, and images of the SZ effect in known galaxy clusters with unprecedented sensitivity. In this talk, I will discuss the design, construction, and deployment of the SPT telescope and receiver, progress of the observations, and conclude with a discussion of future plans. ...