The SPT cluster survey and its cosmological implications

by Alex Saro (Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany)

Wednesday 30 Nov 2016, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - edificio G. Marconi)

The 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a millimeter wavelength  telescope designed to conduct sensitive measurements of the cosmic microwave  background (CMB) at arc-minute resolution. The SPT has successfully conducted  a 2500 square degree survey to find clusters of galaxies from their  distortion of the CMB, known as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. The  surface brightness of the SZ effect is redshift independent which allows a SZ  survey to provide a nearly mass limited cluster sample out to the earliest  epochs of cluster formation. The SPT has identified ~700 of cluster  candidates. Of these, ~500 have been optically confirmed, with the majority  being newly discovered clusters at z > 0.5. I will summarize the main results  from the SPT cluster survey, including cosmological constraints from their  measurement of the growth of structure.