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Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment

The upgraded HET. Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment. You are Here. Dark Energy Dominates. Inflation??. Big Bang. What Controls the Expansion Rate. An Equation is worth a 1000 pictures:. Expansion Rate Radiation Matter Universe Shape Dark Energy.

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Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment

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  1. The upgraded HET Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment

  2. You are Here Dark Energy Dominates Inflation?? Big Bang

  3. What Controls the Expansion Rate An Equation is worth a 1000 pictures: Expansion Rate Radiation Matter Universe Shape Dark Energy Observing different epochs in the Universe allows us to see the influence of different components. HETDEX probes early epochs, where shape is important. time

  4. Artist Rendition of the Multiverse

  5. Dark Energy Ideas • Cosmological constant • Modification of General Relativity • Quintessence; a fifth force • Leaking dimensions • Big Bang is modified • Hubble Bubble • Leaking energy from other universes

  6. HETDEX is: • blind spectrographic survey on 9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope • 300 square degrees in 1400 hours (140 nights) over 3 years (taken in 4000 pointings of 20 minutes each); at 1/5 fill, this provides 60 sq deg of sky with spectra • about 0.7 million redshifts from 1.9<z<3.5 (Ly-alpha emitters) • about 1 million redshifts from 0<z<0.5 (OII emitters) • upgraded HET with new top-end, including 22’ field • new instrument VIRUS which is 150 spectrographs (R=750 from 350nm – 550nm), covering 1/5th of the focal plane with 33,500 fibers • one unit spectrograph has been in use since 2006 TIMELINE: 2016-2019

  7. HETDEX Funding and Budget Funding Budget Schedule

  8. Wide Field Corrector Focal Plane Tracker Optical Fibers Spectrographs (VIRUS) Primary Mirror

  9. ESSENCE of HETDEX 380,000 years after the Big Bang • There is a characteristic scale imprinted in the distribution of matter. • It acts like a fingerprint that we use to trace over cosmic time. • Requires about one million galaxies in order to see it. Today: 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang

  10. Example data from a week ago!

  11. The Instrument for HETDEX: VIRUS Funded by the George & Cynthia Mitchell Foundation, McDonald Observatory, MPE, and AIP • Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph • Uses idea of industrial replication • 150 copies of a simple spectrograph • We’re the only ones doing this • Huge advantages • Cost savings, schedule, low risk • Build a prototype VIRUS Prototype

  12. Integral Field Unit production Each IFU is a bundle of 448 fibers split into two slits to feed a VIRUS pair Simple design maximizes throughput and minimizes cost Development in collaboration with AIP nine already delivered IFU input heads IFU input IFU output

  13. Example data frame (2.9 million of these in total)

  14. What Can HETDEX Do For You • Detection of dark energy • Shape of Universe (curvature) to 0.1% • Best measure of shape of matter distribution early in the Universe. • Best measure of total neutrino mass • Detection of cosmic web in emission • Nature of early galaxies • Black Hole-Galaxy correlations • Star formation at late times • Dark matter in nearby galaxies • Stellar populations at large radii • Map nearby clusters • Galactic structure from stellar kinematics • Study of the first stars

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