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DESI: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Lead Research Organisation: University of Portsmouth
Department Name: Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation

Abstract

We request support here for £0.5M (at the 100% funding level) which will be used to allow scientists at the University of Portsmouth to join the DESI collaboration, as part of the overall UK buy-in to the project.

Planned Impact

DESI is a ground-based experiment to study the expansion rate of the universe and the growth of cosmological structure with a wide-angle spectroscopic galaxy and quasar redshift survey. The 5000-fibre DESI spectrograph will allow an order of magnitude improvement in the distance scale over the redshifts 0.8

Publications

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DESI Collaboration (2016) The DESI Experiment Part I: Science,Targeting, and Survey Design

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DESI Collaboration (2016) The DESI Experiment Part II: Instrument Design

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Gualdi D (2019) Enhancing BOSS bispectrum cosmological constraints with maximal compression in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Gualdi D (2020) GEOMAX: beyond linear compression for three-point galaxy clustering statistics in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Gualdi Davide (2018) Maximal compression of the redshift space galaxy power spectrum and bispectrum in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Lahav O (2020) Dark Energy: is it 'just' Einstein's Cosmological Constant ?? in Contemporary Physics

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Loureiro A (2019) Cosmological measurements from angular power spectra analysis of BOSS DR12 tomography in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Naidoo K (2020) Beyond two-point statistics: using the minimum spanning tree as a tool for cosmology in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Soumagnac MT (2016) Large-Scale Distribution of Total Mass versus Luminous Matter from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations: First Search in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Data Release 10. in Physical review letters

 
Description This grant was used to buy the Universities of Portsmouth, Durham, UCL and other UK universities into the DESI collaboration. DESI is a next generation physics experiment to understand the Universe. The outputs are feasibility studies for the survey, which had its first light in 2019.

Science Verification observations have been successful.
The Covid situation has slowed down observations, to resume soon towards the planned survey.

The catalogue of DESI targets (obtained with DECam and other facilities) has been used by collaborators for various studies.
Exploitation Route DESI will lead to a better understanding of the contents of the Universe, through the development of specialist hardware and software.
Sectors Education
URL http://desi.lbl.gov/
 
Description The DESI First light was reported in October 2019 on BBC TV News at 10, BBC World Service and other media 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The DES First light was reported in October 2019 on BBC TV News at 10, BBC World Service and other media
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019