The Dark UNiverse Explorer (DUNE): Proposal to ESA's Cosmic Vision

Abstract

The Dark UNiverse Explorer (DUNE) is a wide-field space imager whose primary goal is the study of dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision. For this purpose, DUNE is optimised for the measurement of weak gravitational lensing but will also provide complementary measurements of baryonic accoustic oscillations, cluster counts and the Integrated Sachs Wolfe effect. Immediate auxiliary goals concern the evolution of galaxies, to be studied with unequalled statistical power, the detailed structure of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, and the demographics of Earth-mass planets. DUNE is an Medium-class mission which makes use of readily available components, heritage from other missions, and synergy with ground based facilities to minimise cost and risks. The payload consists of a 1.2m telescope with a combined visible/NIR field-of-view of 1 deg^2. DUNE will carry out an all-sky survey, ranging from 550 to 1600nm, in one visible and three NIR bands which will form a unique legacy for astronomy. DUNE will yield major advances in a broad range of fields in astrophysics including fundamental cosmology, galaxy evolution, and extrasolar planet search. DUNE was recently selected by ESA as one of the mission concepts to be studied in its Cosmic Vision programme.

Accepted in Experimental Astronomy

References in corpus (10)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• Report of the Dark Energy Task Force
• The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. VI: Discovery and analysis of a double Einstein ring
• Optimal Surveys for Weak Lensing Tomography
• PSF calibration requirements for dark energy from cosmic shear
• Finding Evidence for Massive Neutrinos using 3D Weak Lensing
• SPACE: the SPectroscopic All-sky Cosmic Explorer
• Realistic simulations of gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters: extracting arc parameters from mock DUNE images
• Report by the ESA-ESO Working Group on Fundamental Cosmology
• Optimising large galaxy surveys for ISW detection

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Cosmology and Fundamental Physics with the Euclid Satellite
• Challenges for $\Lambda$CDM: An update
• Cosmology and fundamental physics with the Euclid satellite
• Euclid. I. Overview of the Euclid mission
• Gravitational Lensing
• ExELS: an exoplanet legacy science proposal for the ESA Euclid mission I. Cold exoplanets
• The imprint of the interaction between dark sectors in large scale cosmic microwave background anisotropies
• Effects of dark sectors' mutual interaction on the growth of structures
• Parameterizing the Effect of Dark Energy Perturbations on the Growth of Structures
• Re-capturing cosmic information
• The Impact of Magnification and Size Bias on Weak Lensing Power Spectrum and Peak Statistics
• Forecasts for Dark Energy Measurements with Future HI Surveys
• Weak lensing signal in Unified Dark Matter models
• Distance Measurements from Supernovae and Dark Energy Constraints
• A search for edge-on galaxy lenses in the CFHT Legacy Survey
• Summary of the DUNE Mission Concept
• Dark energy constraints from a space-based supernova survey
• The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect in Time Varying Vacuum Model
• Generalized Brans-Dicke theories in light of evolving dark energy
• Accelerated expansion of the universe and chasing photons from the CMB to study the late time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect over different redshift ranges
• Parameter estimation biases due to contributions from the Rees-Sciama effect to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe spectrum
• Non-Gaussian forecasts of weak lensing with and without priors
• A test of the Suyama-Yamaguchi inequality from weak lensing
• Constraining the expansion history of the universe from the red shift evolution of cosmic shear