Search

We cross-correlate positions of galaxies measured in data from the first three years of the Dark Energy Survey with Compton-y maps generated using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck mission. We model this cross-correlation measurement together with the galaxy autocorrelation to constrain the distribution of gas in the Universe. We measure the hydrostatic mass bias or, equivalently, the mean halo bias-weighted electron pressure (bh Pe), using large-scale information. We find (bh Pe) to be [0.16+−000403, 0.28+−000504, 0.45+−001006, 0.54+−000708, 0.61+−000608, 0.63+−000807] meV cm−3 at redshifts z ∼ [0.30, 0.46, 0.62, 0.77, 0.89, 0.97]. These values are consistent with previous work where measurements exist in the redshift range. We also constrain the mean gas profile using small-scale information, enabled by the high-resolution of the SPT data. We compare our measurements to different parametrized profiles based on the cosmo-OWLS hydrodynamical simulations. We find that our data are consistent with the simulation that assumes an AGN heating temperature of 108.5 K but are incompatible with the model that assumes an AGN heating temperature of 108.0 K. These comparisons indicate that the data prefer a higher value of electron pressure than the simulations within r500c of the galaxies’ haloes.

Abstract Including millimeter-wave data in multiwavelength studies of the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) can provide insights into AGN physics that are not easily accessible at other wavelengths. We demonstrate in this work the potential of cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes to provide long-term, high-cadence millimeter-wave AGN monitoring over large fractions of sky. We report on a pilot study using data from the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which was designed to observe the CMB at arcminute and larger angular scales. Between 2013 and 2016, SPTpol was used primarily to observe a single 500 deg2 field, covering the entire field several times per day with detectors sensitive to radiation in bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We use SPT 150 GHz observations to create AGN light curves, and we compare these millimeter-wave light curves to those at other wavelengths, in particular γ-ray and optical. In this Letter, we focus on a single source, PKS 2326-502, which has extensive, day-timescale monitoring data in gamma-ray, optical, and now millimeter-wave between 2013 and 2016. We find PKS 2326-502 to be in a flaring state in the first 2 yr of this monitoring, and we present a search for evidence of correlated variability between millimeter-wave, optical R-band, and γ-ray observations. This pilot study is paving the way for AGN monitoring with current and upcoming CMB experiments such as SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4, including multiwavelength studies with facilities such as Vera C. Rubin Observatories Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

We search for the signature of cosmological shocks in stacked gas pressure profiles of galaxy clusters using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT). Specifically, we stack the latest Compton-y maps from the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ survey on the locations of clusters identified in that same data set. The sample contains 516 clusters with mean mass 〈 M 200m〉 = 1014.9\, M⊙ and redshift z= 0.55. We analyse in parallel a set of zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations from the three hundred project. The SPT-SZ data show two features: (i) a pressure deficit at R/R200m = 1.08 ± 0.09, measured at 3.1σ significance and not observed in the simulations, and; (ii) a sharp decrease in pressure at R/R200m = 4.58 ± 1.24 at 2.0σ significance. The pressure deficit is qualitatively consistent with a shock-induced thermal non-equilibrium between electrons and ions, and the second feature is consistent with accretion shocks seen in previous studies. We split the cluster sample by redshift and mass, and find both features exist in all cases. There are also no significant differences in features along and across the cluster major axis, whose orientation roughly points towards filamentary structure. As a consistency test, we also analyse clusters from the Planck and Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter surveys and find quantitatively similar features in the pressure profiles. Finally, we compare the accretion shock radius (R sh,\, acc) with existing measurements of the splashback radius (Rsp) for SPT-SZ and constrain the lower limit of the ratio, R sh,\, acc/R sp\> 2.16\± 0.59.

We show the improvement to cosmological constraints from galaxy cluster surveys with the addition of cosmic microwave background (CMB)-cluster lensing data. We explore the cosmological implications of adding mass information from the 3.1σ detection of gravitational lensing of the CMB by galaxy clusters to the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) selected galaxy cluster sample from the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ survey and targeted optical and X-ray follow-up data. In the ΛCDM model, the combination of the cluster sample with the Planck power spectrum measurements prefers σ8ωm/0.30.5=0.831±0.020 . Adding the cluster data reduces the uncertainty on this quantity by a factor of 1.4, which is unchanged whether the 3.1σ CMB-cluster lensing measurement is included or not. We then forecast the impact of CMB-cluster lensing measurements with future cluster catalogs. Adding CMB-cluster lensing measurements to the SZ cluster catalog of the ongoing SPT-3G survey is expected to improve the expected constraint on the dark energy equation of state w by a factor of 1.3 to σ(w) = 0.19. We find the largest improvements from CMB-cluster lensing measurements to be for σ 8, where adding CMB-cluster lensing data to the cluster number counts reduces the expected uncertainty on σ 8 by respective factors of 2.4 and 3.6 for SPT-3G and CMB-S4.

We present component-separated maps of the primary cosmic microwave background/kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) amplitude and the thermal SZ Compton-y parameter, created using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck satellite. These maps, which cover the a1/42500 deg2 of the southern sky imaged by the SPT-SZ survey, represent a significant improvement over previous such products available in this region by virtue of their higher angular resolution ( 1.′25 for our highest-resolution Compton-y maps) and lower noise at small angular scales. In this work we detail the construction of these maps using linear combination techniques, including our method for limiting the correlation of our lowest-noise Compton-y map products with the cosmic infrared background. We perform a range of validation tests on these data products to test our sky modeling and combination algorithms, and we find good performance in all of these tests. Recognizing the potential utility of these data products for a wide range of astrophysical and cosmological analyses, including studies of the gas properties of galaxies, groups, and clusters, we make these products publicly available at http://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/sptsz_ymap and on the NASA/LAMBDA website.

We perform the first simultaneous Bayesian parameter inference and optimal reconstruction of the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), using 100 deg2 of polarization observations from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. These data reach noise levels as low as 5.8 µK arcmin in polarization, which are low enough that the typically used quadratic estimator (QE) technique for analyzing CMB lensing is significantly suboptimal. Conversely, the Bayesian procedure extracts all lensing information from the data and is optimal at any noise level. We infer the amplitude of the gravitational lensing potential to be A f =0.949\,\pm \,0.122 using the Bayesian pipeline, consistent with our QE pipeline result, but with 17% smaller error bars. The Bayesian analysis also provides a simple way to account for systematic uncertainties, performing a similar job as frequentist "bias hardening"or linear bias correction, and reducing the systematic uncertainty on A f due to polarization calibration from almost half of the statistical error to effectively zero. Finally, we jointly constrain A f along with A L, the amplitude of lensing-like effects on the CMB power spectra, demonstrating that the Bayesian method can be used to easily infer parameters both from an optimal lensing reconstruction and from the delensed CMB, while exactly accounting for the correlation between the two. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the Bayesian approach on real data, and pave the way for future analysis of deep CMB polarization measurements with SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4, where improvements relative to the QE can reach 1.5 times tighter constraints on A f and seven times lower effective lensing reconstruction noise.

We report a B-mode power spectrum measurement from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropy observations made using the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope. This work uses 500 deg2 of SPTpol data, a five-fold increase over the last SPTpol B-mode release. As a result, the bandpower uncertainties have been reduced by more than a factor of two, and the measurement extends to lower multipoles: 52< 320.

We present a catalog of galaxy cluster candidates detected in 100 square degrees surveyed with the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The catalog contains 89 candidates detected with a signal-to-noise ratio greater than 4.6. The candidates are selected using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect at 95 and 150 GHz. Using both space- and ground-based optical and infrared telescopes, we have confirmed 81 candidates as galaxy clusters. We use these follow-up images and archival images to estimate photometric redshifts for 66 galaxy clusters and spectroscopic observations to obtain redshifts for 13 systems. An additional two galaxy clusters are confirmed using the overdensity of near-infrared galaxies only and are presented without redshifts. We find that 15 candidates (18% of the total sample) are at redshift z ≥ 1.0, with a maximum confirmed redshift of zmax = 1.38 ± 0.10. We expect this catalog to contain every galaxy cluster with M500c = 2.6 ×1014M⊙ h70-1 and z > 0.25 in the survey area. The mass threshold is approximately constant above z = 0.25, and the complete catalog has a median mass of approximately M500c = 2.7 ×1014M⊙ h70-1. Compared to previous SPT works, the increased depth of the millimeter-wave data (11.2 and 6.5 μK-arcmin at 95 and 150 GHz, respectively) makes it possible to find more galaxy clusters at high redshift and lower mass.

We present cosmological constraints based on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential power spectrum measurement from the recent 500 deg2 SPTpol survey, the most precise CMB lensing measurement from the ground to date. We fit a flat ΛCDM model to the reconstructed lensing power spectrum alone and in addition with other data sets: baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), as well as primary CMB spectra from Planck and SPTpol. The cosmological constraints based on SPTpol and Planck lensing band powers are in good agreement when analyzed alone and in combination with Planck full-sky primary CMB data. With weak priors on the baryon density and other parameters, the SPTpol CMB lensing data alone provide a 4% constraint on. Jointly fitting with BAO data, we find away from the central values preferred by Planck lensing + BAO. However, we recover good agreement between SPTpol and Planck when restricting the analysis to similar scales. We also consider single-parameter extensions to the flat ΛCDM model. The SPTpol lensing spectrum constrains the spatial curvature to be and the sum of the neutrino masses to be eV at 95% C.L. (with Planck primary CMB and BAO data), in good agreement with the Planck lensing results. With the differences in the signal-to-noise ratio of the lensing modes and the angular scales covered in the lensing spectra, this analysis represents an important independent check on the full-sky Planck lensing measurement.

We study the polarization properties of extragalactic sources at 95 and 150 GHz in the SPTpol 500 deg2 survey. We estimate the polarized power by stacking maps at known source positions, and correct for noise bias by subtracting the mean polarized power at random positions in the maps. We show that the method is unbiased using a set of simulated maps with similar noise properties to the real SPTpol maps. We find a flux-weighted mean-squared polarization fraction 〈p2〉= [8.9 ± 1.1] × 10−4 at 95 GHz and [6.9 ± 1.1] × 10−4 at 150 GHz for the full sample. This is consistent with the values obtained for a subsample of active galactic nuclei. For dusty sources, we find 95 per cent upper limits of 〈p2〉95 < 16.9 × 10−3 and 〈p2〉150 < 2.6 × 10−3. We find no evidence that the polarization fraction depends on the source flux or observing frequency. The 1σ upper limit on measured mean-squared polarization fraction at 150 GHz implies that extragalactic foregrounds will be subdominant to the CMB E and B mode polarization power spectra out to at least ℓ ≲ 5700 (ℓ ≲ 4700) and ℓ ≲ 5300 (ℓ ≲ 3600), respectively, at 95 (150) GHz.

We study the polarization properties of extragalactic sources at 95 and 150 GHz in the SPTpol 500 deg2 survey. We estimate the polarized power by stacking maps at known source positions, and correct for noise bias by subtracting the mean polarized power at random positions in the maps. We show that the method is unbiased using a set of simulated maps with similar noise properties to the real SPTpol maps. We find a flux-weighted mean-squared polarization fraction 〈p2〉= [8.9 ± 1.1] × 10−4 at 95 GHz and [6.9 ± 1.1] × 10−4 at 150 GHz for the full sample. This is consistent with the values obtained for a subsample of active galactic nuclei. For dusty sources, we find 95 per cent upper limits of 〈p2〉95 < 16.9 × 10−3 and 〈p2〉150 < 2.6 × 10−3. We find no evidence that the polarization fraction depends on the source flux or observing frequency. The 1σ upper limit on measured mean-squared polarization fraction at 150 GHz implies that extragalactic foregrounds will be subdominant to the CMB E and B mode polarization power spectra out to at least ℓ ≲ 5700 (ℓ ≲ 4700) and ℓ ≲ 5300 (ℓ ≲ 3600), respectively, at 95 (150) GHz.

We report the first detection of gravitational lensing due to galaxy clusters using only the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The lensing signal is obtained using a new estimator that extracts the lensing dipole signature from stacked images formed by rotating the cluster-centered Stokes QU map cutouts along the direction of the locally measured background CMB polarization gradient. Using data from the SPTpol 500  deg^{2} survey at the locations of roughly 18 000 clusters with richness λ≥10 from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year-3 full galaxy cluster catalog, we detect lensing at 4.8σ. The mean stacked mass of the selected sample is found to be (1.43±0.40)×10^{14}M_{⊙} which is in good agreement with optical weak lensing based estimates using DES data and CMB-lensing based estimates using SPTpol temperature data. This measurement is a key first step for cluster cosmology with future low-noise CMB surveys, like CMB-S4, for which CMB polarization will be the primary channel for cluster lensing measurements.

We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background lensing potential using 500 deg2 of 150 GHz data from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The lensing potential is reconstructed with signal-to-noise per mode greater than unity at lensing multipoles L ≲ 250, using a quadratic estimator on a combination of cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization maps. We report measurements of the lensing potential power spectrum in the multipole range of 100 < L < 2000 from sets of temperature-only (T), polarization-only (POL), and minimum-variance (MV) estimators. We measure the lensing amplitude by taking the ratio of the measured spectrum to the expected spectrum from the best-fit Λ cold dark matter model to the Planck 2015 TT + low P + lensing data set. For the minimum-variance estimator, we find =0.944 0.025 (Sys.) SRC=restricting to only polarization data, we find POL=0.906\pm 0.090 0.040. Considering statistical uncertainties alone, this is the most precise polarization-only lensing amplitude constraint to date (10.1σ) and is more precise than our temperature-only constraint. We perform null tests and consistency checks and find no evidence for significant contamination.

We present three maps of the millimeter-wave sky created by combining data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Planck satellite. We use data from the SPT-SZ survey, a survey of 2540 deg2 of the the sky with arcminute resolution in three bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, and the full-mission Planck temperature data in the 100, 143, and 217 GHz bands. A linear combination of the SPT-SZ and Planck data is computed in spherical harmonic space, with weights derived from the noise of both instruments. This weighting scheme results in Planck data providing most of the large-angular-scale information in the combined maps, with the smaller-scale information coming from SPT-SZ data. A number of tests have been done on the maps. We find their angular power spectra to agree very well with theoretically predicted spectra and previously published results.

We report constraints on cosmological parameters from the angular power spectrum of a cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential map created using temperature data from 2500 deg2 of South Pole Telescope (SPT) data supplemented with data from Planck in the same sky region, with the statistical power in the combined map primarily from the SPT data. We fit the lensing power spectrum to a model including cold dark matter and a cosmological constant (λCDM), and to models with single-parameter extensions to λCDM. We find constraints that are comparable to and consistent with those found using the full-sky Planck CMB lensing data, e.g., σ8ωm0.25 = 0.598 ± 0.024 from the lensing data alone with weak priors placed on other parameters. Combining with primary CMB data, we explore single-parameter extensions to λCDM. We find or ωk = -0.012-0.0230.021 or Mv < 0.70 eV at 95% confidence, in good agreement with results including the lensing potential as measured by Planck. We include two parameters that scale the effect of lensing on the CMB: AL, which scales the lensing power spectrum in both the lens reconstruction power and in the smearing of the acoustic peaks, and Aφφ, which scales only the amplitude of the lensing reconstruction power spectrum. We find Aφφ × AL = 1.01 ± 0.08 for the lensing map made from combined SPT and Planck data, indicating that the amount of lensing is in excellent agreement with expectations from the observed CMB angular power spectrum when not including the information from smearing of the acoustic peaks.

Clusters of galaxies gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, resulting in a distinct imprint in the CMB on arcminute scales. Measurement of this effect offers a promising way to constrain the masses of galaxy clusters, particularly those at high redshift. We use CMB maps from the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) survey to measure the CMB lensing signal around galaxy clusters identified in optical imaging from first year observations of the Dark Energy Survey. The cluster catalogue used in this analysis contains 3697 members with mean redshift of z = 0.45. We detect lensing of the CMB by the galaxy clusters at 8.1s significance. Using the measured lensing signal, we constrain the amplitude of the relation between cluster mass and optical richness to roughly 17 per cent precision, finding good agreement with recent constraints obtained with galaxy lensing. The error budget is dominated by statistical noise but includes significant contributions from systematic biases due to the thermal SZ effect and cluster miscentring.

We present measurements of the E-mode polarization angular auto-power spectrum (EE) and temperature-E-mode cross-power spectrum (TE) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using 150 GHz data from three seasons of SPTpol observations. We report the power spectra over the spherical harmonic multipole range 50 < ℓ ≤ 8000 and detect nine acoustic peaks in the EE spectrum with high signal-to-noise ratio. These measurements are the most sensitive to date of the EE and TE power spectra at ℓ > 1050 and ℓ > 1475, respectively. The observations cover 500 , a fivefold increase in area compared to previous SPTpol analyses, which increases our sensitivity to the photon diffusion damping tail of the CMB power spectra enabling tighter constraints on ΛCDM model extensions. After masking all sources with unpolarized flux mJy, we place a 95% confidence upper limit on residual polarized point-source power of at Dℓ = ℓ(ℓ+1)ℓℓ/2π < 0.107 μK2 at ℓ = 3000, suggesting that the EE damping tail dominates foregrounds to at least ℓ= 4050 with modest source masking. We find that the SPTpol data set is in mild tension with the ΛCDM model (2.1 δ), and different data splits prefer parameter values that differ at the ∼ 1 δ level. When fitting SPTpol data at ℓ < 1000, we find cosmological parameter constraints consistent with those for Planck temperature. Including SPTpol data at ℓ> 1000 results in a preference for a higher value of the expansion rate (H071.3 ± 2.1 Km s-1 Mpc-1) and a lower value for present-day density fluctuations (δ8 =0.77 ±0.02).

The Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO) is a NASA-funded study of a Probe-class mission concept. The toplevel science objectives are to probe the physics of the Big Bang by measuring or constraining the energy scale of inflation, probe fundamental physics by measuring the number of light particles in the Universe and the sum of neutrino masses, to measure the reionization history of the Universe, and to understand the mechanisms driving the cosmic star formation history, and the physics of the galactic magnetic field. PICO would have multiple frequency bands between 21 and 799 GHz, and would survey the entire sky, producing maps of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation, of galactic dust, of synchrotron radiation, and of various populations of point sources. Several instrument configurations, optical systems, cooling architectures, and detector and readout technologies have been and continue to be considered in the development of the mission concept. We will present a snapshot of the baseline mission concept currently under development.

The Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO) is a probe-class mission concept currently under study by NASA. PICO will probe the physics of the Big Bang and the energy scale of inflation, constrain the sum of neutrino masses, measure the growth of structures in the universe, and constrain its reionization history by making full sky maps of the cosmic microwave background with sensitivity 80 times higher than the Planck space mission. With bands at 21-799 GHz and arcmin resolution at the highest frequencies, PICO will make polarization maps of Galactic synchrotron and dust emission to observe the role of magnetic fields in Milky Way's evolution and star formation. We discuss PICO's optical system, focal plane, and give current best case noise estimates. The optical design is a two-reflector optimized open-Dragone design with a cold aperture stop. It gives a diffraction limited field of view (DLFOV) with throughput of 910 cm2sr at 21 GHz. The large 82 square degree DLFOV hosts 12,996 transition edge sensor bolometers distributed in 21 frequency bands and maintained at 0.1 K. We use focal plane technologies that are currently implemented on operating CMB instruments including three-color multi-chroic pixels and multiplexed readouts. To our knowledge, this is the first use of an open-Dragone design for mm-wave astrophysical observations, and the only monolithic CMB instrument to have such a broad frequency coverage. With current best case estimate polarization depth of 0.65 μKCMB-arcmin over the entire sky, PICO is the most sensitive CMB instrument designed to date.

The Planck cosmic microwave background temperature data are best fit with a ΛCDM model that mildly contradicts constraints from other cosmological probes. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2540 SPT-SZ survey offers measurements on sub-degree angular scales (multipoles ) with sufficient precision to use as an independent check of the Planck data. Here we build on the recent joint analysis of the SPT-SZ and Planck data in Hou et al. by comparing ΛCDM parameter estimates using the temperature power spectrum from both data sets in the SPT-SZ survey region. We also restrict the multipole range used in parameter fitting to focus on modes measured well by both SPT and Planck, thereby greatly reducing sample variance as a driver of parameter differences and creating a stringent test for systematic errors. We find no evidence of systematic errors from these tests. When we expand the maximum multipole of SPT data used, we see low-significance shifts in the angular scale of the sound horizon and the physical baryon and cold dark matter densities, with a resulting trend to higher Hubble constant. When we compare SPT and Planck data on the SPT-SZ sky patch to Planck full-sky data but keep the multipole range restricted, we find differences in the parameters n s and Ase-2τ. We perform further checks, investigating instrumental effects and modeling assumptions, and we find no evidence that the effects investigated are responsible for any of the parameter shifts. Taken together, these tests reveal no evidence for systematic errors in SPT or Planck data in the overlapping sky coverage and multipole range and at most weak evidence for a breakdown of ΛCDM or systematic errors influencing either the Planck data outside the SPT-SZ survey area or the SPT data at ℓ >.

We present a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing map produced from a linear combination of South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Planck temperature data. The 150 GHz temperature data from the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ survey is combined with the Planck 143 GHz data in harmonic space to obtain a temperature map that has a broader ℓ coverage and less noise than either individual map. Using a quadratic estimator technique on this combined temperature map, we produce a map of the gravitational lensing potential projected along the line of sight. We measure the auto-spectrum of the lensing potential CLφφ, and compare it to the theoretical prediction for a ΛCDM cosmology consistent with the Planck 2015 data set, finding a best-fit amplitude of 0.95-0.06+0.06(stat.)0.01+0.01(sys.). The null hypothesis of no lensing is rejected at a significance of 24σ. One important use of such a lensing potential map is in cross-correlations with other dark matter tracers. We demonstrate this cross-correlation in practice by calculating the cross-spectrum, CLφG, between the SPT+Planck lensing map and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) galaxies. We fit CLφG to a power law of the form PL = a(L/L0)-b with a, L 0, and b fixed, and find ηφG = CLφG/PL = 0.94-0.04+0.04, which is marginally lower, but in good agreement with ηφG = 1.00-0.01+0.02, the best-fit amplitude for the cross-correlation of Planck-2015 CMB lensing and WISE galaxies over ∼67% of the sky. The lensing potential map presented here will be used for cross-correlation studies with the Dark Energy Survey, whose footprint nearly completely covers the SPT 2500 deg2 field.

Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of CMB and large-scale structure (LSS) experiments are poised to test the leading paradigm for these earliest moments-the theory of cosmic inflation-and to detect the imprints of the inflationary epoch, thereby dramatically increasing our understanding of fundamental physics and the early universe. A future CMB experiment with sufficient angular resolution and frequency coverage that surveys at least 1% of the sky to a depth of 1 uK-arcmin can deliver a constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio that will either result in a 5σ measurement of the energy scale of inflation or rule out all large-field inflation models, even in the presence of foregrounds and the gravitational lensing B-mode signal. LSS experiments, particularly spectroscopic surveys such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will complement the CMB effort by improving current constraints on running of the spectral index by up to a factor of four, improving constraints on curvature by a factor of ten, and providing non-Gaussianity constraints that are competitive with the current CMB bounds.

This is a report on the status and prospects of the quantification of neutrino properties through the cosmological neutrino background for the Cosmic Frontier of the Division of Particles and Fields Community Summer Study long-term planning exercise. Experiments planned and underway are prepared to study the cosmological neutrino background in detail via its influence on distance-redshift relations and the growth of structure. The program for the next decade described in this document, including upcoming spectroscopic galaxy surveys eBOSS and DESI and a new Stage-IV CMB polarization experiment CMB-S4, will achieve σ(σmν) = 16 meV and σ(Neff) = 0.020. Such a mass measurement will produce a high significance detection of non-zero σmν, whose lower bound derived from atmospheric and solar neutrino oscillation data is about 58 meV. If neutrinos have a minimal normal mass hierarchy, this measurement will definitively rule out the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy, shedding light on one of the most puzzling aspects of the Standard Model of particle physics - the origin of mass. This precise a measurement of Neff will allow for high sensitivity to any light and dark degrees of freedom produced in the big bang and a precision test of the standard cosmological model prediction that Neff = 3.046.

A new 10 meter diameter telescope is being constructed for deployment at the NSF South Pole research station. The telescope is designed for conducting large-area millimeter and sub-millimeter wave surveys of faint, low contrast emission, as required to map primary and secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. To achieve the required sensitivity and resolution, the telescope design employs an off-axis primary with a 10 m diameter clear aperture. The full aperture and the associated optics will have a combined surface accuracy of better than 20 microns rms to allow precision operation in the submillimeter atmospheric windows. The telescope will be surrounded with a large reflecting ground screen to reduce sensitivity to thermal emission from the ground and local interference. The optics of the telescope will support a square degree field of view at 2mm wavelength and will feed a new 1000-element micro-lithographed planar bolometric array with superconducting transition-edge sensors and frequency-multiplexed readouts. The first key project will be to conduct a survey over 4000 degrees for galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel dovich Effect. This survey should find many thousands of clusters with a mass selection criteria that is remarkably uniform with redshift. Armed with redshifts obtained from optical and infrared follow-up observations, it is expected that the survey will enable significant constraints to be placed on the equation of state of the dark energy.