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Tour Dark Matter | Dark Energy | 3D mass Dark energy is a mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. The expansion has slowed the clustering of dark matter, one of the universe's main building blocks. If we could measure the precise history of the Hubble expansion, and chart the development of mass structure, we could test theories of the physics of dark energy. Diffrent theories predict different scenarios. The LSST will enable scientists to study the dark energy in four different and complementary ways: 1. The telescope will image dark matter over cosmic time, via a "gravitational mirage." All the galaxies behind a clump of dark matter are deflected to a new place in the sky, causing their images to be distorted. This is effectively 3-D mass tomography of the universe. 2. Galaxies clump in a non-random way, guided by the natural scale that was imprinted in the fireball of the Big Bang. This angular scale will be measured over cosmic time by LSST, yielding valuable information on the changing Hubble expansion. 3. The numbers of huge clusters of dark matter are a diagnostic of the underlying cosmology. By charting the numbers of these (via their graviational mirage) over cosmic time, LSST will place another sensitive constraint on the physics of dark energy. 4. Finally, a million supernovae will be monitored by LSST, giving yet another complemtary view of the history of the Hubble expansion. Something Is Ripping The Universe Apart Recently the composition of the universe has become even more puzzling: observations imply an acceleration of the universe's expansion over the past few billion years. In order to explain such an acceleration, we need "dark energy" with large negative pressure to generate a repulsive gravitational force. The evidence comes from studies of the total energy density of the universe and from supernova observations. Precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background have shown that the total energy density of the universe is very near the critical density needed to make the universe flat (i.e. the curvature of space-time, defined in General Relativity, goes to zero on large scales). Since energy is equivalent to mass (Special Relativity: E = mc2), this is usually expressed in terms of a critical mass density needed to make the universe flat. Ordinary matter such as stars, dust, and gas account for only 5% of the necessary mass density. Observations have shown that dark matter cannot account for more than ~25% of the critical mass density. Both the microwave background and supernova observations suggest that dark energy should make up ~70% of the critical energy density. When added to the mass-

energy of matter, the total energy density is consistent with what is needed to make the universe flat.

Over the expansion history of our universe, densities have fallen by factors of trillions. Why is the dark energy density today within a factor of three of that of dark matter, whereas it evolves very differently with time? Moreover, the dark matter density is only a factor of five larger than that of ordinary matter. Understanding this may lead to advances in fundamental physics. It is possible that what we call dark matter and dark energy arise from some unknown aspect of gravity. Thus, the highest energies and the universe on the largest scales are connected. Today the worlds of particle physics and cosmology are coming together in a transformed world view. Now, even the notion that the galaxies and stars comprise most of our universe has been abandoned. Emerging is a universe largely governed by dark matter and an even stranger dominance of a smoothly distributed and pervasive dark energy. Dark Energy And The Fate Of The Universe Cosmologists understand almost nothing about dark energy even though it appears to comprise about 70 percent of the universe. They are desperately seeking to uncover its fundamental properties: its strength, its permanence, and any variation with direction. The evolution of the universe is governed by the amount of dark matter and dark energy. The densities of dark matter and dark energy scale differently with cosmic scale as the universe expands. This evolution in cosmic scale is schematically shown in the figure below for several cosmologies. In a universe with a high density of dark matter, the

Hubble expansion continues to decelerate due to the gravitation attraction of the dark matter filling the universe, ending in a big crunch. In a universe with a lower critical density of dark matter, the expansion coasts. In a universe with dark energy as well as dark matter, the initial deceleration is reversed at late times by the increasing dominance of the dark energy.

If the hypothetical dark energy continues to dominate the universe's energy balance, then the current expansion of space will continue to accelerate, exponentially. Structures which are not already gravitationally bound will ultimately fly apart. The Earth and the Milky Way would remain undisturbed while the rest of the universe appears to run away from us. The nature of dark energy is currently a matter of speculation. Some believe that dark energy might be "vacuum energy", represented by the "cosmological constant" () in general relativity, a constant uniform density of dark energy throughout all of space that is independent of time or the universe's expansion. This notion was introduced by Einstein, and is consistent with our limited observations to date. Alternatively, dark energy might vary with cosmic time. Only new kinds of observations can settle the issue. PROBING THE NATURE OF DARK ENERGY What kind of universe do we live in? To test theories of dark energy we would like to measure the way the expansion of our universe changes with cosmic time. For a universe with a given mass density, the time history of the expansion encodes information on the amount and nature of dark energy. Dark energy affects two things: distances and the growth of mass structure. Measuring how dark matter structures and ratios of distances grow with cosmic time -- via LSST weak gravitational lensing observations -- will provide clues to the nature of dark energy. A key strength of the LSST is its ability to image huge volumes of the universe. Such a probe will be a natural part of the all-sky imaging survey.

Billions of distant galaxies will have their shapes and colors measured. Sufficient color data will be obtained for an estimate of the distance to each galaxy. This will enable a unique probe of the physical nature of the dark energy that appears to fill the universe. If, due to this dark energy, the expansion of the universe has been accelerating the development of mass structures via ordinary gravitational infall will be impeded. The time development of mass concentrations is sensitive to the physical nature of the dark energy itself: the so-called equation of state (pressure divided by energy density). In its deep wide-angle survey the LSST will be able to pin down the equation of state of dark energy to better than a few percent, at high confidence. Due to its wide coverage of the sky, LSST is uniquely capable of detecting any variation in the dark energy with direction. In turn, this will tell us something about physics at the earliest moments of our universe, setting the course for its future evolution. The world of quantum gravity at a fraction of a second after the big bang, when the universe was so hot and dense that even protons and neutrons were broken up into a hot soup of quarks, connects to the world as we now see it - a vast expanding cosmos extending out 14 billion light-years. Dark energy and dark matter are relics of the first moments when unfamiliar physics of quantum gravity ruled. A route to understanding dark matter and probing the nature of dark energy is to measure cosmic shear over the last half of the age of the universe - at a time when dark energy apparently had its greatest influence. LSST does this in several independent ways. These probes of the nature of dark energy by LSST are complimentary to those of space missions measuring the cosmic microwave background and very distant supernovae. Indeed, since we understand so little about dark energy, it is prudent to pursue all these lines of investigation. How Do You Measure This, Exactly? Observable distortions of the distant universe due to weak gravitational lensing (cosmic mirage) are predictable given a cosmological model. LSST will do this in a variety of ways. Because of the redshift-distance effect of the Hubble expansion, LSST's multi-color deep imaging survey will provide distances to galaxies out to redshift 3. We can subdivide these galaxies into many redshift or distance bins and then perform lensing tomography: measure how the cosmic mirage effect changes with distance. If the galaxies can be separated into n multiple redshift bins, then we can create n shear maps. The most interesting statistical properties of these maps are the shear-shear correlation functions. These n(n+1)/2 unique shear power spectra can be written as projections of the matter power spectrum along the line of sight out to some redshift. The resulting tens of shear cross correlations vs redshift are very powerful independent probes of the expansion history (see the figure). It is clear that the unparalleled survey area of LSST allows a significant detection of the power spectra over a wide range of angular scales, from degree scales to arcminute scales. Jointly, these correlations contain enough information to determine cosmological parameters, including dark energy parameters..

Weak lensing has high information content. If we know distances to source galaxies, the mass distribution and cosmic geometry can be measured as a function of redshift. Weak lensing thus has sensitivity to the evolution of dark energy. The light deflection by a foreground mass is given by a product of the mass inside the impact radius and a dimensionless ratio of distances. Both of these terms are affected by dark energy and other cosmological parameters. Combining lensing data with CMB data enables separate direct investigations of the growth of dark matter structure and multiple probes of the geometry from z~1 to the present. Testing the Foundation Combining many new observations of our universe (multiple cosmic shear probes over a wide range of cosmic look-back times with the LSST, distant supernova data, and studies of the cosmic microwave background at high angular resolution with the Wilkinson MAP satellite and the upcoming Planck satellite) will lead to precision cosmology. More importantly, the combination holds the promise of testing the entire foundation of the theory. What if different tests of dark energy yield conflicting results? Then we may be onto something even more interesting: a hint that we do not fully understand the nature of spacetime-gravity. Thus, LSST will play a key role in probing new physics beyond the standard model.

How can gravity be repulsive? Consider a little region within a larger massive medium. In Newtonian gravity, the gravitational force exerted by this little region is proportional to its mass density. Since this density is always positive, the force never changes sign and classical gravity is always attractive. Any relativistic generalization of the gravitational force must not only involve the energy density (instead of the mass density) but also the momentum density (since energy and momentum can be transformed into each other by changing the reference frame). Within Einstein's framework of General Relativity, the gravitational force exerted by an element of an isotropic medium is proportional to the sum of its energy density and three times its local pressure (which measures the momentum flow). A medium can have a negative pressure: a common example is a rubber ball that is forced to expand beyond its equilibrium radius. If this negative pressure is large enough (greater in magnitude than a third of the energy density), it can thus produce a repulsive gravitational force! In particular, vacuum energy where the pressure is equal and opposite to the energy density (Einstein's cosmological constant is an example) will produce such repulsive force. If such vacuum energy is dominant, it would generate an accelerated expansion of the universe. Another important example is the case of a particle field that is highly out of equilibrium. This is the mechanism believed to have produced the inflation in the early universe.

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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/M.Markevitch et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. About 90% of the Universe is darkwe can't see it except through its gravitational pull. Although this was suspected more than 60 years ago, we are just now in a position to explore the dark matter in large areas of the Universe through a technique called weak gravitational lensing. As the light from a distant source passes by a mass concentration its ray path is bent, causing the distant source to appear at an altered place on the sky and resulting in a telltale distortion of its shape. This gravitational lensing effect provides the first, and currently only, way to directly "weigh" cosmic mass. Lensing in its strong form results in some striking images, but it is relatively rare. To learn about more typical parts of the Universe, we use weak lensing. At the faint magnitudes reached by large telescopes, the sky is studded with tens of billions of faint distant blue galaxies. In recent years astronomers have become adept at mapping the dark matter associated with known galaxy clusters using these background galaxies as a cosmic wallpaper for weak gravitational lensing analyses.

This is an image of dark matter in a 2 degree by 2 degree field of the sky from the Deep Lens Survey. Many mass clusters may be seen in projection. With color redshift information on the background galaxies, three-dimensional maps can be constructed. The

LSST is needed to make these tomographic mass maps over a cosmologically significant area. With multi-wavelength deep imaging of the faint blue galaxies, we can construct photometric redshifts for them and go beyond a simple foreground/background paradigm. Photometric redshifts enable tomographic analysis of slices of the projected sky in redshift bins. By obtaining weak lensing maps for sources at a variety of redshifts, we can obtain a three-dimensional mass map of the universe back to half its current age. Only the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with its combination of huge field and large light grasp would enable such a survey in our lifetimes. Structures as large as 500 million light-years are known to exist. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will for the first time map the evolution of these mass structures over cosmic time. This will directly test theories of the evolution of our universe and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

32-Mpc simulation of large-scale structure in a standard cold-dark matter Universe. Courtesy R. Cen, Princeton University.

To undertake tomographic gravitational lens reconstruction of dark matter images at high redshift and large look-back times requires superb imaging of distant background galaxies. At 29th magnitude per square arcsecond surface brightness, there is a distant blue galaxy every several arcseconds on the sky. One requires good angular resolution over a 10 square degree field of view, coupled with the light gathering power of an 8-meter class mirror. Dark Matter: Strong Gravitational Lensing Dark Universe / Transient Universe | Outer Solar System | Near Earth Objects | Milky Way | LSST Tour Dark Matter | Dark Energy | 3D mass

Illustration of strong gravitaional lensing. Click for full-size image. Strong gravitational lensing happens when there is so much mass contrast in the lens that the light rays from a distant source bend around both sides of the lens and cross near Earth. Then multiple images of the source may be seen. This was first seen in a quasar

lensed by a galaxy in 1979. More commonly, the huge dark matter concentrations in clusters of galaxies create typical bending angles of 30 arcseconds, and multiple highly distorted images of a source galaxy. Clicking on each image below will bring up MPEG movies (800 kB) showing the evolution of the distortion as the clusters move against the background over half billion years. A full description of the simulation process is available. Courtesy J. A. Tyson, UC Davis.

A lensing simulation [MPEG 0.8 MB], (A full resolution version [MPEG 7.3 MB])

A shorter simulation [MPEG 0.8 MB] (A Full resolution [MPEG 10.4 MB] version.

Two simulations of strong lensing by a massive cluster of galaxies. In the upper image, all the dark matter is clumped around individual cluster galaxies (orange), causing a particular distortion of the background galaxies (white and blue). In the lower image, the same amount of mass is more smoothly distributed over the cluster, causing a very different distortion pattern.

Learn Outreach Universe in Depth Links Transient Events App Public FAQ SCIENTISTS GALLERY FAQ ABOUT NEWS EMPLOYMENT Dark Matter - Mass in Three Dimension

Dark Universe | Transient Universe | Outer Solar System | Near Earth Objects | Milky Way | LSST Tour Dark Matter | Dark Energy | 3D mass

A glimpse of a universe of mass. Shown here is a map of mass obtained by gravitational lens mass tomography. This 2x2 degree field of mass, obtained in 15 hours of 4-meter telescope exposures in the Deep Lens Survey, would fit easily inside LSST's single snapshot field of view. LSST will find hundreds of thousands of these massive clusters in a stunning 3-D view of the universe of mass extending over 20,000 square degrees of sky and back to half the age of the universe. Sharp constraints on cosmology and the physics of dark energy will result. (Wittman etal 2003 ApJ 579, 218) The faintest galaxies have a range of colors, each one's color depending on its type and its distance from us. The most distant galaxies have their spectra shifted to longer, redder wavelengths by the Hubble expansion, and their light has taken up to ten billion years to travel to us. Using the colors of the galaxies, it is possible to gauge the distance to the background galaxies. Mirages also rely on distance. This is the clue that unlocks the universe of mass in three dimensions; the more distant the source, the more warped its image. If there is a foreground mass, the mirage effect on the background galaxies is stronger for more distant galaxies. Take a look at mass tomography images in this Power Point Presentation. By measuring both the warp and the distances to the background galaxies, it is possible to reconstruct the mass map and also to place the mass at its correct distance. This enables the exploration of mass in the universe, independent of light, since only the light from the background galaxies is used. By exploring mass in the universe in three dimensions we are also exploring mass at various cosmic ages. This is because mass seen at great distance is mass seen at a much earlier time. So we can chart the evolution of dark matter structure with cosmic time. Surveying the numbers of cosmic mass clusters in our universe will ultimately lead to precision tests of theories of dark energy. To fully open this novel window of the three-

dimensional universe of mass history, we need a new telescope and camera very unlike what we have now. We need LSST. Advances in technology have equipped us to mine the distant galaxies for data in industrial quantity. LSST's wide-angle gravitational lens survey will generate millions of gigabytes of data and intriguing opportunities for unique understanding of the development of cosmic structure. Our challenge is twofold. These galaxies are faint, and we need to capture images of billions of them. LSST's combination of large light-collecting capability and unprecedented field of view will for the first time open this unique window on the physics of our universe. LSST will provide a wide and deep view of the universe, allowing us to conduct full 3-D mass tomography to chart not only dark matter, but the presence and influence of dark energy. Do we trust our current view of the universe? Combining these results with other cosmic probes will lead to multiple tests of the foundations of our model for the universe. What will our concept of the universe be when those answers are in? Perhaps the most interesting outcome will be the unexpected; a clash between different precision measurements might prove to be a hint of a grander structure, possibly in higher dimensions. LSST provides that opportunity.

Cluster Mass Tomography: Technique of 3-D weak lens mass tomography.

Tomographic view of the W2001 cluster. Redder areas indicate higher density, with most bluer areas being in the noise. No significant structures are seen in the mass map made from sources at z < 0.3 (left). The cluster appears prominently in the lower left of the mass map made from sources z > 0.3 (right). The field is about 40' on a side. LSST will survey at least three orders of magnitude more area, and enable finer slicing of the redshift distribution, which will provide a detailed picture of the growth of structure with cosmic time. (Tyson 2000 Physica Scripta T85, 259, Wittman etal ApJ 557 L89 2001, Wittman etal SPIE 4836, 21 (2002)).

The cluster found by 3-d mass tomography was DLS CL 1055-05 at redshift 0.68 (Wittman etal 2003 ApJ 597, 218).

CL 1055-05 optical image showing the galaxies. Combining mass tomography with images of the galaxies yields information on the mechanisms of cosmic structure formation.

Gavazzi & Soucail, (2006) astro-ph/0605591 Hu, ApJ 522, L2 (1999) Tyson, Physica Scripta T85, 259 (2000) Wittman et al, ApJL 557, L89, (2001) Wittman et al, ApJ 597, 218 (2003) Wittman, et al, ApJ 643, 128 (2006) [First catalog of clusters discovered this way]

Lens Simulation Movie (Back to Dark Matter discussion)

Download a lensing simulation [MPEG 0.8MB] (or Full resolution version [MPEG 7.3MB] LENS0.mpg [0.8 MB] Full resolution version [10.4 MB] 100-frame short segments of MPEG movies depict our view, over the next half billion years, of a cluster of galaxies and the effects of its dark matter:LENS0.mpg and LENSMAX.mpg These simulations were made by our group, principally Ayana Holloway. They show the cluster A1689 as viewed over the next few billion years. As it moves through the Universe its alignment with the background faint blue galaxies constantly changes. The data for the cluster (the orange bright galaxies) are from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the mass model is one which we have developed for this particular cluster, based on very deep multi-color HST and ground-based imaging of A1689, via strong lens parametric techniques. [For a description of parametric strong lens mass determination, see Tyson, Kochanski,& Dell'Antonio 1998, ApJ 498, L107. ]

These first two movies are based on two extreme mass models: LENSMAX.mpg has much of the mass in the halos of the cluster galaxies, while LENS0.mpg has very little mass in the cluster galaxies (most mass residing in a single dark mass). The background galaxies are placed in six redshift sheets, out to z = 3. Fainter and bluer galaxies are at higher redshift. Some galaxies just behind the cluster (coded brighter and less blue) are only slightly distorted by the concentration of dark matter. The highest redshift faint galaxies easily form large arcs (perturbed Einstein rings) at larger radii. Our simulated mass distribution is composed of dark matter halos for individual cluster galaxies as well as the dominant diffuse mass of the cluster. This largest mass has a soft core. A non-singular lens mass produces an odd number of images of a background galaxy. When the galaxy is at large projected radius (weak lens regime) it is slightly distorted orthogonal to the radius vector. As the galaxy moves into the critical region it splits into an odd number of images, usually two arcs on opposite sides of the lens and a third, demagnified, image near the center. The details of these images and their parity and magnification are sensitive to the gradient of the lens mass. For regions near the core where the lens mass density exceeds the critical mass density, the magnification determinant is negative and the lens-focussed light bundle comes to a focus before reaching Earth. Images inside this radius (one of the odd images) appear demagnified and with opposite parity. These faint radial spokes may be seen for many of the background galaxies over a finite range of impact parameter, and are a sensitive indicator of the size of the soft mass core. Another observed feature of our lens model for this cluster is the unusually thin arcs (images if high-z galaxies); this is due to a mass profile which is steeper than isothermal.