Multi-wavelength studies of the luminous and dark mass profiles of galaxy-clusters in wide-field imaging surveys

• Applicant: Dr. Thomas Erben
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2005 to 2009
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5449189

• Final Report Year: 2012

Final Report Abstract

After the recent determination of the fundamental cosmological constants, a profound understanding of the dark and luminous matter distribution in the Universe is one of the key problems in modern cosmology. Hereby, clusters of galaxies provide well-defined laboratory environments to study the mass distribution and galaxy evolution over wide ranges of matter and galaxy densities. Today’s widefield imaging cameras offer a unique opportunity to obtain large and statistically very well understood samples of clusters, with a selection based solely on their mass properties, using their weak gravitational lensing imprint on the shape of faint (background) galaxies. Our SPP project primarily aimed at exploiting optical wide-field imaging surveys for cluster science. It consisted of significant technical developments in the fields of data processing from state-of-the art optical wide-field imaging instruments and the extraction of photometric and morphological information from astronomical sources. Our technical developments were the basis for a great many of important scientific results. Most important are the extraction of significant samples of shear-selected galaxy-cluster candidates and the collection of large sets of high-redshift z ≈ 3 Lyman-Break galaxies.

Publications

• (2005): GaBoDS: the Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: A&A 441 (3), S. 905–914
  Hildebrandt, H., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20042544)
• (2005): GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: Astron. Nachr. 326 (6), S. 432–464
  Erben, T., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.200510396)
• (2005): Searching for galaxy clusters using the aperture mass statistics in 50 VLT fields. In: A&A 442 (1), S. 43–61
  Hetterscheidt, M., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20053339)
• (2006): GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: A&A 452 (3), S. 1121–1128
  Hildebrandt, H., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20054278)
• (2007). Cosmological constraints from the 100-deg2 weak-lensing survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 381(2), 702-712
  Benjamin, J., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12202.x)
• (2007): GaBoDS: the Garching-Bonn deep survey. In: A&A 462 (3), S. 865–873
  Hildebrandt, H., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20065880)
• (2007): GaBoDS: the Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: A&A 462 (3), S. 875–887
  Schirmer, M., et al.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20065955)
• (2008): A blind test of photometric redshifts on ground-based data. In: A&A 480 (3), S. 703–714
  Hildebrandt, H., Wolf, C., Benítez, N.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20077107)