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.; Bomans, D. J.; Erben, T.; Schneider, P.; Schirmer, M.; Czoske, O.; Dietrich, J. P.; Schrabback, T.; Simon, P.; Dettmar, R. J.; Haberzettl, L.; Hetterscheidt, M. & Cordes, O.
  
• (2005): GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: Astron. Nachr. 326 (6), S. 432–464
  Erben, T.; Schirmer, M.; Dietrich, J. P.; Cordes, O.; Haberzettl, L.; Hetterscheidt, M.; Hildebrandt, H.; Schmithuesen, O.; Schneider, P.; Simon, P.; Deul, E.; Hook, R. N.; Kaiser, N.; Radovich, M.; Benoist, C.; Nonino, M.; Olsen, L. F.; Prandoni, I.; Wichmann, R.; ... & Miralles, J. M.
  
• (2005): Searching for galaxy clusters using the aperture mass statistics in 50 VLT fields. In: A&A 442 (1), S. 43–61
  Hetterscheidt, M.; Erben, T.; Schneider, P.; Maoli, R.; Van Waerbeke, L. & Mellier, Y.
  
• (2006): GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: A&A 452 (3), S. 1121–1128
  Hildebrandt, H.; Erben, T.; Dietrich, J. P.; Cordes, O.; Haberzettl, L.; Hetterscheidt, M.; Schirmer, M.; Schmithuesen, O.; Schneider, P.; Simon, P. & Trachternach, C.
  
• (2007): GaBoDS: the Garching-Bonn deep survey. In: A&A 462 (3), S. 865–873
  Hildebrandt, H.; Pielorz, J.; Erben, T.; Schneider, P.; Eifler, T.; Simon, P. & Dietrich, J. P.
  
• (2007): GaBoDS: the Garching-Bonn Deep Survey. In: A&A 462 (3), S. 875–887
  Schirmer, M.; Erben, T.; Hetterscheidt, M. & Schneider, P.
  
• (2007). Cosmological constraints from the 100-deg2 weak-lensing survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 381(2), 702-712
  Benjamin, Jonathan; Heymans, Catherine; Semboloni, Elisabetta; Van Waerbeke, Ludovic; Hoekstra, Henk; Erben, Thomas; Gladders, Michael D.; Hetterscheidt, Marco; Mellier, Yannick & Yee, H. K. C.
  
• (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.