[FPSPACE] VADER - A Satellite Mission Concept For High Precision Dark Energy Studies

[LARRY KLAES]

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Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0606688

From: Rene Fassbender [view email]

Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:36:50 GMT (708kb)

VADER - A Satellite Mission Concept For High Precision Dark Energy Studies

Authors: Rene Fassbender, Jutta Stegmaier, Anne-Marie Weijmans, Stefan 
Koestner, Andreas Kruselburger, Cornelia Diethart, Peter Fertl, Elisabetta 
Valiante, Matthew Hayes, Peter Schuecker, Guenther Hasinger

Comments: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in the SPIE 
conference proceedings

We present a satellite mission concept to measure the dark energy equation 
of state parameter w with percent-level precision. The Very Ambitious Dark 
Energy Research satellite (VADER) is a multi-wavelength survey mission 
joining X-ray, optical, and IR instruments for a simultaneous spectral 
coverage from 4microns (0.3eV) to 10keV over a field of view (FoV) of 1 
square degree. VADER combines several clean methods for dark energy studies, 
the baryonic acoustic oscillations in the galaxy and galaxy cluster power 
spectrum and weak lensing, for a joint analysis over an unrivalled survey 
volume. The payload consists of two XMM-like X-ray telescopes with an 
effective area of 2,800cm^2 at 1.5keV and state-of-the-art wide field DEPFET 
pixel detectors (0.1-10keV) in a curved focal plane configuration to extend 
the FoV. The X-ray telescopes are complemented by a 1.5m optical/IR 
telescope with 8 instruments for simultaneous coverage of the same FoV from 
0.3 to 4 microns. The 8 dichroic-separated bands (u,g,r,z,J,H,K,L) provide 
accurate photometric galaxy redshifts, whereas the diffraction-limited 
resolution of the central z-band allows precise shape measurements for 
cosmic shear analysis.

The 5 year VADER survey will cover a contiguous sky area of 3,500 square 
degrees to a depth of z~2 and will yield accurate photometric redshifts and 
multi-wavelength object parameters for about 175,000 galaxy clusters, one 
billion galaxies, and 5 million AGN. VADER will not only provide 
unprecedented constraints on the nature of dark energy, but will 
additionally extend and trigger a multitude of cosmic evolution studies to 
very large (>10 Gyrs) look-back times.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606688