DES Science Portal: Creating Science-Ready Catalogs

Kavli Affiliate: Rafe Schindler | Summary:We present a novel approach for creating science-ready catalogs through a software infrastructure developed for the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We integrate the data products released by the DES Data Management and additional products created by the DES collaboration in an environment known as DES Science Portal. Each step involved […]


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Linear feature detection algorithm for astronomical surveys – II. Defocusing effects on meteor tracks

Kavli Affiliate: Andrew Rasmussen | Summary:Given the current limited knowledge of meteor plasma micro-physics and its interaction with the surrounding atmosphere and ionosphere, meteors are a highly interesting observational target for high-resolution wide-field astronomical surveys. Such surveys are capable of resolving the physical size of meteor plasma heads, but they produce large volumes of images […]


Continue.. Linear feature detection algorithm for astronomical surveys – II. Defocusing effects on meteor tracks

Extreme variability quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Survey

Kavli Affiliate: Rafe Schindler | Summary:We perform a systematic search for long-term extreme variability quasars (EVQs) in the overlapping Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and 3-Year Dark Energy Survey (DES) imaging, which provide light curves spanning more than 15 years. We identified ~1000 EVQs with a maximum g band magnitude change of more than 1 […]


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A Probabilistic Framework for Quantifying Biological Complexity

Kavli Affiliate: Stuart Marshall | Summary:One thing that discriminates living things from inanimate matter is their ability to generate similarly complex or non-random architectures in a large abundance. From DNA sequences to folded protein structures, living cells, microbial communities and multicellular structures, the material configurations in biology can easily be distinguished from non-living material assemblies. […]


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Core or cusps: The central dark matter profile of a redshift one strong lensing cluster with a bright central image

Kavli Affiliate: Rafe Schindler | Summary:We report on SPT-CLJ2011-5228, a giant system of arcs created by a cluster at $z=1.06$. The arc system is notable for the presence of a bright central image. The source is a Lyman Break galaxy at $z_s=2.39$ and the mass enclosed within the 14 arc second radius Einstein ring is […]


Continue.. Core or cusps: The central dark matter profile of a redshift one strong lensing cluster with a bright central image

An automated system to measure the quantum efficiency of CCDs for astronomy

Kavli Affiliate: Homer Neal | Summary:We describe a system to measure the Quantum Efficiency in the wavelength range of 300 nm to 1100 nm of 40×40 mm n-channel CCD sensors for the construction of the 3.2 gigapixel LSST focal plane. The technique uses a series of instrument to create a very uniform flux of photons […]


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Massively Parallel Computation of Accurate Densities for N-body Dark Matter Simulations using the Phase-Space-Element Method

Kavli Affiliate: Ralf Kaehler | Summary:This paper presents an accurate density computation approach for large dark matter simulations, based on a recently introduced phase-space tessellation technique and designed for massively parallel, heterogeneous cluster architectures. We discuss a memory efficient construction of an oct-tree structure to sample the mass densities with locally adaptive resolution, according to […]


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SuperCDMS SNOLAB Low-Mass Detectors: Ultra-Sensitive Phonon Calorimeters for a Sub-GeV Dark Matter Search

Kavli Affiliate: Blas Cabrera | Summary:We present the technical design for the SuperCDMS high-voltage, low-mass dark matter detectors, designed to be sensitive to dark matter down to 300 MeV/$c^2$ in mass and resolve individual electron-hole pairs from low-energy scattering events in high-purity Ge and Si crystals. In this paper we discuss some of the studies […]


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The DESI Experiment Part II: Instrument Design

Kavli Affiliate: Kevin Reil | Summary:DESI (Dark Energy Spectropic Instrument) is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment that will study baryon acoustic oscillations and the growth of structure through redshift-space distortions with a wide-area galaxy and quasar redshift survey. The DESI instrument is a robotically-actuated, fiber-fed spectrograph capable of taking up to 5,000 simultaneous […]


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The DESI Experiment Part I: Science,Targeting, and Survey Design

Kavli Affiliate: Kevin Reil | Summary:DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment that will study baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the growth of structure through redshift-space distortions with a wide-area galaxy and quasar redshift survey. To trace the underlying dark matter distribution, spectroscopic targets will be selected in four […]


Continue.. The DESI Experiment Part I: Science,Targeting, and Survey Design