Overview of the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP)

Abstract

The SuperNova / Acceleration Probe (SNAP) is a space-based experiment to measure the expansion history of the Universe and study both its dark energy and the dark matter. The experiment is motivated by the startling discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. A 0.7 square-degree imager comprised of 36 large format fully-depleted n-type CCD's sharing a focal plane with 36 HgCdTe detectors forms the heart of SNAP, allowing discovery and lightcurve measurements simultaneously for many supernovae. The imager and a high-efficiency low-resolution integral field spectrograph are coupled to a 2-m three mirror anastigmat wide-field telescope, which will be placed in a high-earth orbit. The SNAP mission can obtain high-signal-to-noise calibrated light-curves and spectra for over 2000 Type Ia supernovae at redshifts between z=0.1 and 1.7. The resulting data set can not only determine the amount of dark energy with high precision, but test the nature of the dark energy by examining its equation of state. In particular, dark energy due to a cosmological constant can be differentiated from alternatives such as "quintessence", by measuring the dark energy's equation of state to an accuracy of +/-0.05, and by studying its time dependence.

This paper will be published in SPIE Proceedings Vol 4835 and is made available as an electronic preprint with permission of SPIE

References in corpus (8)

• Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
• The Cosmic Triangle: Revealing the State of the Universe
• Constraining dark energy with SNe Ia and large-scale structure
• First Estimations of Cosmological Parameters From BOOMERANG
• Future Supernovae observations as a probe of dark energy
• A Search for Environmental Effects on Type Ia Supernovae
• Opportunities for future supernova studies of cosmic acceleration
• Metallicity Effects in NLTE Model Atmospheres of Type Ia Supernovae

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Observational Probes of Cosmic Acceleration
• Probing Dark Energy with Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations from Future Large Galaxy Redshift Surveys
• The collimation--corrected GRB energies correlate with the peak energy of their $\nu F_{\nu }$ spectrum
• Probing dark energy using baryonic oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum as a cosmological ruler
• MaxBCG: A Red Sequence Galaxy Cluster Finder
• A Model-Independent Determination of the Expansion and Acceleration Rates of the Universe as a Function of Redshift and Constraints on Dark Energy
• Gamma Ray Bursts as standard candles to constrain the cosmological parameters
• A first application of the Alcock-Paczynski test to stacked cosmic voids
• Measuring the cosmic evolution of dark energy with baryonic oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum
• Cosmic acceleration vs axion-photon mixing
• Revealing the Nature of Dark Energy Using Bayesian Evidence
• Weak Lensing from Space II: Dark Matter Mapping
• 3D Spectrophotometry of Planetary Nebulae in the Bulge of M31
• Observation of small scale structure using sextupole lensing
• Reciprocity Failure in HgCdTe Detectors: Measurements and Mitigation
• The Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey (SXDS) - V. Optically Faint Variable Object Survey
• Spatial gradients in the cosmological constant
• Observational Constraints on Dynamical Dark Energy Models
• Response of distance measures to the equation of state
• Difference Imaging of Lensed Quasar Candidates in the SDSS Supernova Survey Region
• A Modified Generalized Chaplygin Gas as the Unified Dark Matter-Dark Energy Revisited
• On Friedmann-Lema\^ıtre-Robertson-Walker cosmologies in non-standard gravity
• Accelerating Universe: Observational Status and Theoretical Implications
• Perturbations with bulk viscosity in modified chaplygin gas cosmology
• ELT Observations of Supernovae at the Edge of the Universe