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项卓有成效的国际合作，以解决当今最引人注目的问题之一：似乎主导宇宙并导致宇宙加速膨胀的暗能量的本质是什么？更具体地说，暗能量是否反映了真空的物理性质，或者它是一种具有奇异性质的全新材料？DES将通过使用一台仪器应用四项互补技术来实现这一步：星系团的红移分布；大尺度结构的弱引力透镜；重子声振荡的演化；以及超新星距离。为了执行该项目，DES合作将为Cerro Tololo美洲天文台(CTIO)的Blanco 4米望远镜建造一台新的广视场光学CCD相机，并建立一个高度自动化的网格数据管理系统来处理所产生的数据。作为执行其基础科学的一部分，DES将创建暗能量相机(DECAM)和一条相关的社区需求管道，从今以后将成为CTIO的设施仪器，从而广泛供天文学界使用。宽视场和高通量的结合使DECAM的功能是现有设备仪器的十倍。DES数据档案将作为基础天文工作的丰富遗产向公众开放，特别是与其他数据集相结合，用于协同研究，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在智力和国际边界的团队中工作。该项目将分阶段进行，沿途有重要的里程碑，随着每个阶段的进展，需要一些单独的奖项来进一步支持。本奖项主要是对数据管理系统(DESDM)的支持，该系统将与能源部支持的DECAM工作同时开发。这项合作的负责人是Dr People，他的奖项包括帮助管理这个复杂的、多机构的国际项目的支持。莫尔博士获得的非牵头奖构成了为可持续发展部的发展工作提供的大部分资金。

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.