Ricard Casas

The Dark Energy Survey and operations: Year 1

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a next generation optical survey aimed at understanding the accelerating expansion of the universe using four complementary methods: weak gravitational lensing, galaxy cluster counts, baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia supernovae. To perform the 5000 sq-degree wide field and 30 sq-degree supernova surveys, the DES Collaboration built the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a 3 square-degree, 570-Megapixel CCD camera that was installed at the prime focus of the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). DES started its first observing season on August 31, 2013 and observed for 105 nights through mid-February 2014. This paper describes DES “Year 1” (Y1), the strategy and goals for the first years data, provides an outline of the operations procedures, lists the efficiency of survey operations and the causes of lost observing time, provides details about the quality of the first years data, and hints at the “Year 2” plan and outlook.

The PAU camera and the PAU survey at the William Herschel Telescope

The Physics of the Accelerating Universe (PAU) is a project whose main goal is the study of dark energy. For this purpose, a new large field of view camera (the PAU Camera, PAUCam) is being built. PAUCam is designed to carry out a wide area imaging survey with narrow and broad band filters spanning the optical wavelength range. The PAU Camera is now at an advance stage of construction. PAUCam will be mounted at the prime focus of the William Herschel Telescope. With the current WHT corrector, it will cover a 1 degree diameter field of view. PAUCam mounts eighteen 2k×4k Hamamatsu fully depleted CCDs, with high quantum efficiency up to 1 μm. Filter trays are placed in front of the CCDs with a technologically challenging system of moving filter trays inside the cryostat. The PAU Camera will use a new set of 42 narrow band filters ranging from ~4400 to ~8600 angstroms complemented with six standard broad-band filters, ugrizY. With PAUCam at the WHT we will carry out a cosmological imaging survey in both narrow and broad band filters that will perform as a low resolution spectroscopic survey. With the current survey strategy, we will obtain accurate photometric redshifts for galaxies down to iAB~22.5 detecting also galaxies down to iAB~24 with less precision in redshift. With this data set we will obtain competitive constraints in cosmological parameters using both weak lensing and galaxy clustering as main observational probes.

DES14X3taz: A Type I Superluminous Supernova Showing a Luminous, Rapidly Cooling Initial Pre-peak Bump

We present DES14X3taz, a new hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova (SLSN-I) discovered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) supernova program, with additional photometric data provided by the Survey Using DECam for Superluminous Supernovae. Spectra obtained using Optical System for Imaging and low-Intermediate-Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS show DES14X3taz is an SLSN-I at z = 0.608. Multi-color photometry reveals a double-peaked light curve: a blue and relatively bright initial peak that fades rapidly prior to the slower rise of the main light curve. Our multi-color photometry allows us, for the first time, to show that the initial peak cools from 22,000 to 8000 K over 15 rest-frame days, and is faster and brighter than any published core-collapse supernova, reaching 30% of the bolometric luminosity of the main peak. No physical 56Ni-powered model can fit this initial peak. We show that a shock-cooling model followed by a magnetar driving the second phase of the light curve can adequately explain the entire light curve of DES14X3taz. Models involving the shock-cooling of extended circumstellar material at a distance of sime400

Test benches facilities for PAUCam: CCDs and filters characterization

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PAU camera: detectors characterization

are preferred over the cooling of shock-heated surface layers of a stellar envelope. We compare DES14X3taz to the few double-peaked SLSN-I events in the literature. Although the rise times and characteristics of these initial peaks differ, there exists the tantalizing possibility that they can be explained by one physical interpretation.

PAUCam filter interchange system

The PAUCam [1] is an optical camera with a 18 CCDs (Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.) mosaic and up to 42 narrow- and broad-band filters. It is foreseen to install it at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, Canary Islands, Spain. As required by the camera construction, a couple of test bench facilities were developed, one in Madrid (CIEMAT) that is mainly devoted to CCDs read-out electronics development and filter characterization [2], and another in Barcelona (IFAE-ICE) that has as its main task to characterize the scientific CCDs in terms of Dark Current, CTE, QE, RON and many other parameters demanded by the scientific performance required. The full CCDs characterization test bench layout, its descriptions and some optical and mechanical characterization results are summarized in this paper.

DES14X3taz: a type I supernova showing a luminous, rapidly cooling initial pre-peak bump

The PAU Camera (PAUCam) [1,2] is a wide field camera that will be mounted at the corrected prime focus of the William Herschel Telescope (Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, Canary Islands, Spain) in the next months. The focal plane of PAUCam is composed by a mosaic of 18 CCD detectors of 2,048 x 4,176 pixels each one with a pixel size of 15 microns, manufactured by Hamamatsu Photonics K. K. This mosaic covers a field of view (FoV) of 60 arcmin (minutes of arc), 40 of them are unvignetted. The behaviour of these 18 devices, plus four spares, and their electronic response should be characterized and optimized for the use in PAUCam. This job is being carried out in the laboratories of the ICE/IFAE and the CIEMAT. The electronic optimization of the CCD detectors is being carried out by means of an OG (Output Gate) scan and maximizing it CTE (Charge Transfer Efficiency) while the read-out noise is minimized. The device characterization itself is obtained with different tests. The photon transfer curve (PTC) that allows to obtain the electronic gain, the linearity vs. light stimulus, the full-well capacity and the cosmetic defects. The read-out noise, the dark current, the stability vs. temperature and the light remanence.

The PAUCam readout electronics system

The Physics of the Accelerating Universe (PAU) is a new project whose main goal is to study dark energy surveying the galaxy distribution. For that purpose we need to determine the galaxy redshifts. The most accurate way to determine the redshift of a galaxy and measure its spectral energy distribution (SED) is achieved with spectrographs. The PAU collaboration is building an instrument (PAUCam) devoted to perform a large area survey for cosmological studies using an alternative approach. SEDs are sampled and redshifts determined using narrow band filter photometry. For efficiency and manufacturability considerations, the filters need to be placed close to the CCD detector surfaces on segmented filter trays. The most innovative element of PAUCam is a set of 16 different exchangeable trays to support the filters arranged in a jukebox-like changing mechanism inside the cryostat. The device is designed to operate within the range of temperatures from 150K to 300K at the absolute pressure of 10-8mbar, being class-100 compliant.

The PAU camera at the WHT

We present DES14X3taz, a new hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova (SLSN-I) discovered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) supernova program, with additional photometric data provided by the Survey Using DECam for Superluminous Supernovae. Spectra obtained using Optical System for Imaging and low-Intermediate-Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS show DES14X3taz is an SLSN-I at z = 0.608. Multi-color photometry reveals a double-peaked light curve: a blue and relatively bright initial peak that fades rapidly prior to the slower rise of the main light curve. Our multi-color photometry allows us, for the first time, to show that the initial peak cools from 22,000 to 8000 K over 15 rest-frame days, and is faster and brighter than any published core-collapse supernova, reaching 30% of the bolometric luminosity of the main peak. No physical 56Ni-powered model can fit this initial peak. We show that a shock-cooling model followed by a magnetar driving the second phase of the light curve can adequately explain the entire light curve of DES14X3taz. Models involving the shock-cooling of extended circumstellar material at a distance of sime400

DESI-GFA testbench facilities for CCDs characterization

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