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L. Wang (UCB), P.A. Pinto (U. Arizona), H. Zhan (UC Davis)
In its normal survey mode, LSST will discover more than 200,000 Type Ia supernovae (SNe) per year across the visible sky to a redshift of ~0.8. With a deep, pointed search in several 10-deg2 fields, it will discover and closely monitor more than 10,000 SNe annually to a redshift of z ~1.2. Applications of these SNe for cosmological studies rely on the capability of spectroscopic followups and novel methods of deducing photometric redshifts from multi-band supernova light curves. In this poster, we examine how these SNe will be used for cosmology. A primary goal will be to detect systematics affecting the supernova cosmology program and, at the same time, to constrain cosmological parameters. This will be feasible because LSST's extremely large sample size will allow for multiple parameter fits that can self-calibrate the systematics that are not yet accessible to current surveys. The systematic relations deduced from these SNe will be helpful for current and future space-based projects targeting SNe at even higher redshifts. Such a large number of SNe will also enable discoveries of SNe Ia affected by foreground gravitational lensing. We then explore the use of LSST's SNe in constraining the behavior of dark energy and show how their combination with weak lensing and baryonic oscillation investigations will make LSST a particularly powerful experiment to this end. Finally, we show how the distribution of so many well-observed SNe across the sky will constrain the angular variation of cosmological parameters.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.