Surfing the High Density Universe

Abstract

The central theme of the proposed research is to link what we know about galaxy clusters and large-scale structure in the local Universe at z less than 0.1 to what we know about the original fluctuations that led to this structure as observed in the cosmic microwave background. The simple-minded approach to this question (the kind I always take) is to took at structure in the regime 0.1 less than z less than 1000. We have a unique resource to help us in this task in the form of the VLA FIRST radio survey in which, to date, we have completed mapping nearly 5000 deg2 of the northern sky to a 20 cm flux density limit of 1.0 mJy. The 435,000 radio sources detected all have positions accurate to better than 1. As this report is written, we are obtaining the next - 1000 deg 2 of data; the goal of the survey is to complete the full 10,000 deg 2 to be covered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.