From: Kyle Dawson (kdawson@lbl.gov)
Date: Fri Jan 27 2006 - 13:23:15 PST
Our Cycle 14 program has now proved a new extremely efficient approach
to obtain z>1 dust-free Type Ia supernovae, and we here propose to
capitalize on this new technique. We will collect a total sample of ~20
z>1 SNe Ia in cluster ellipticals, each of which will carry the weight
of 9 color-corrected z>1 SNe hosted by spiral galaxies, and yielding
dark energy measurements that do not suffer from the major systematic
uncertainty at these redshifts, that of the extinction correction with a
prior. By targeting massive galaxy clusters at z>1, we obtain more than
five-times higher efficiency in detection of Type Ia supernovae in
elliptical galaxies, and provide a well-understood host galaxy
environment. These same deep cluster images then also yield fundamental
mass calibrations required for ongoing and future studies which aim to
measure dark energy via the evolution of cluster abundances, as well as
an entire program of cluster studies. The data will make possible a
factor of two improvement on supernova constraints on dark energy time
evolution dynamics, and much larger improvement in systematic
uncertainty, taking advantage of the uniquely well-controlled host
environment that clusters provide. They will provide both a cluster
dataset and a SN Ia data set that will be a longstanding scientific
resource.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Jan 27 2006 - 13:24:03 PST