Collaborative Research: The Dark Energy Survey

暗能量调查（DES）汇集了物理学家和天文学家的一个有成就的国际合作，以解决当今最引人注目的问题之一：似乎主宰宇宙并导致宇宙膨胀加速的暗能量的本质是什么？更具体地说，暗能量反映的是真空的物理性质，还是某种具有奇异性质的全新物质？DES将通过在一台仪器上应用四种互补技术来迈出这一步：星系团的红移分布；大尺度结构的弱引力透镜效应；重子复合前后声学振荡的演化还有超新星的距离。为了实施该项目，DES合作将为Cerro Tololo美洲天文台（CTIO）的Blanco 4米望远镜建造一个新的宽视场光学CCD相机，以及一个高度自动化的网格数据管理系统来处理结果数据。作为实施其基础科学的一部分，DES将创建暗能量相机（DECam）和相关的社区需求管道，这将成为CTIO的设施仪器，从而广泛提供给天文学界。宽视场和高通量的结合使DECam比现有的设施仪器强大十倍。DES数据档案将作为基础天文学工作的丰富遗产向公众开放，特别是与其他数据集结合起来进行协同研究，有望开辟新的研究领域。DES合作还将培训和教育年轻科学家，使他们能够在跨越智力和国际边界的团队中工作。该项目将分阶段进行，每个阶段都有重要的里程碑，需要一些单独的奖励来进一步支持。该奖项主要用于支持数据管理系统（DESDM），该系统将与DECam的工作同时开发，DECam正在得到能源部的支持。这一合作的负责人是Peoples博士，他获得的奖项包括为帮助管理这一复杂的多机构国际项目提供支持。Mohr博士的非领导奖构成了DESDM发展工作的大部分资金。

AST-0715596/0715036Peoples/MohrThe Dark Energy Survey (DES) brings together an accomplished international collaboration of physicists and astronomers to address one of today's most compelling questions: What is the nature of the Dark Energy that appears to dominate the Universe and cause the cosmic expansion to accelerate? More specifically, does the Dark Energy reflect the physics of the vacuum, or is it some completely new kind of material with bizarre properties? DES will take this step by applying four complementary techniques with a single instrument: the redshift distribution of galaxy clusters; weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structure; the evolution of the baryon acoustic oscillations imprinted around the time of recombination; and supernova distances. To carry out this project, the DES Collaboration will build a new wide-field optical CCD camera for the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), and a highly automated, grid-enabled data management system to process the resulting data.As part of carrying out its fundamental science, DES will create the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) and an associated community-needs pipeline, which will henceforth be a facility instrument at CTIO and thus widely available to the astronomy community. The combination of wide field and high throughput makes DECam ten times more powerful than existing facility instruments. The DES data archive will be publicly available as a rich legacy for fundamental astronomical work, especially in combination with other data sets for synergistic studies that can be expected to open up new areas of research. The DES collaboration will also train and educate young scientists to work in teams across intellectual and international boundaries.This project will proceed in stages with major milestones along the way, requiring a number of separate awards for further support as each stage progresses. This present award is for support primarily of the Data Management System (DESDM), to be developed simultaneously with work on DECam, which is being supported by the Department of Energy. The lead of this collaboration is Dr Peoples, whose award covers support to help manage this complex, multi-institution, international project. The non-lead award for Dr Mohr constitutes the bulk of the funding, for development work towards the DESDM.