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Abstract THE 10-METER SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE: UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF DARK ENERGY John E. Carlstrom The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10-meter diameter millimeter- and submillimter-wave telescope. The telescope and a novel 960 element bolometric camera were successfully deployed to the South Pole during the 2006-2007 austral Summer. Every aspect of the telescope, from its unique off-axis optical design, large field of view, to its location under the superb skies of the South Pole was designed for ultra low-noise survey observations of large regions of the sky. The first SPT key project is a sensitive survey covering 4000 square degrees of the southern sky (1/10th of the entire sky) at frequencies of 90, 150 and 220 GHz. The survey will lead to the discovery of many thousands of clusters of galaxies, which will be detected as small spectral distortions against the Cosmic Microwave Background. Many of these clusters will be very distant, and we will therefore see them as they were billions of years ago. Our current understanding of the universe suggests it is filled with a mysterious Dark Energy that currently dominates the mass-energy content of the universe and causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. The Dark Energy therefore acts like a force causing distant objects to move apart.. Meanwhile in direct opposition to Dark Energy, the gravitational attraction of Dark Matter pulls sources together. The formation of clusters of galaxies – the largest bound objects in the universe –is highly sensitive to this Dark Energy—Dark Matter tug of war. With the SPT survey cluster survey, we will see the results of this tug of war over cosmic time and thereby understand how the Dark Energy has evolved. Dark Energy is new physics. Understanding evolution of Dark Energy will bring a substantial advance in our knowledge of the physics and the universe.
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