3:30–4:30 pm Zoom Room (online)
Lindsey Bleem, Argonne, "Galaxy Cluster Cosmology with the South Pole Telescope"
The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10-meter millimeter-wave (mm-wave) telescope located at the geographic South Pole, one of the world’s premier sites for millimeter-wave observations. It has been used to survey approximately 1/8 of the sky with arcminute-scale resolution over the course of the 3 surveys: SPT-SZ, SPTpol, and the ongoing SPT-3G survey. One of the primary objectives of these wide-area surveys has been the construction of a mass-limited sample of galaxy clusters identified via the thermal Sunyaev- Zel’dovich (SZ) effect, through which massive clusters imprint subtle temperature distortions on the cosmic microwave background. This rich SPT dataset (>1,000 SPT clusters published-to-date!) provides numerous opportunities for cosmological and astrophysical studies of clusters. Here I will present the latest results from a few such efforts including: cosmological results from abundance constraints using the SPT sample, joint characterization of optical (redMaPPER) and SZ clusters in the Dark Energy Survey (DES)-SPT common survey region and the implications of this work in the latest DES cluster cosmology analysis, and, finally, I will detail our extensive characterization of the strong gravitational lensing properties of the SPT systems in both observations and simulations which will further provide a number of novel tests of both the LCDM model and astrophysical feedback processes in clusters. Looking to the future, the results presented in this talk will be significantly improved with data from the ongoing SPT-3G survey that will identify an order of magnitude more clusters than previous generation SZ surveys.