Dr. Alexey Vikhlinin
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Monday, February
16, 2009
4:00 pm in SPL 57
The present and the future of growth of structure studies with galaxy clusters
Abstract: I will present Chandra observations of ROSAT-selected galaxy clusters which allow us to reconstruct the evolution of the galaxy cluster mass function between z = 0 and z = ~0.7. The statistical and systematic errors in this measurement are sufficiently small, so that we can now confidently observe how the growth of structure at z < 1 is suppressed by the effects of dark energy; we can also improve constraints on the dark energy equation of state and the mass of light neutrinos. I will also discuss strategies for improving the accuracy of the cluster mass function measurements so that they provide useful cosmological information in the JDEM era.
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