October 25 - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)
The Supernova Acceleration Probe (SNAP)
The Supernova / Acceleration Probe (SNAP) is a space experiment to measure the properties of the accelerating universe and study both the dark energy and the dark matter of the universe. Each year, SNAP will discover and obtain high-quality data for $\sim 2500$ Type Ia supernovae in the redshift range $0.1 < z <1.7$. The Hubble diagram of these calibrated candles will determine the cosmological parameters with high precision: mass density ($\Omega_M$) to $\pm0.02$, vacuum energy density ($\Omega_\Lambda$) to $\pm0.05$, and curvature ($\Omega_K$) to $\pm0.06$. The data set can test the nature of the "dark energy" that is accelerating the expansion of the universe by measuring the ratio of the dark energy's pressure to its density to $\pm 0.05$, and by studying this ratio's time dependence. I will describe an instrument suite which is designed to meet our stringent observational requirements.
http://supernova.lbl.gov/~akim
I attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate from 1987-1991 where I did research on the D0 experiment under Homer Neal. In 1996 I obtained my PhD from the University of California, Berkeley on the cosmological implications of high-redshift supernovae with Richard Muller and Saul Perlmutter serving as my advisors. I spent two years at the College de France (CNRS/IN2P3) working on gravitational microlensing, supernovae, and the Planck cosmic microwave background experiment. Since 1999 I have been at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the SNAP experiment.