Sep 23 (Wed), 14:15 in A315
Cold imprint of supervoids in SDSS, Pan-STARRS1, and DES
Large-scale structures at low redshift leave their mark on the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation via the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe and Rees-Sciama effects, providing direct probes of the late time cosmic acceleration and the physics of Dark Energy. In practice, however, these imprints are small enough to be measurable sufficiently with currently available galaxy catalogues. Yet, striking correlations have been observed between cosmic super-structures in SDSS and the CMB, and there is evidence for a supervoid at redshift z~0.2 aligned with the Cold Spot suggesting a causal relationship. Accounting for these anomalies, N-body simulations and theoretical studies suggest that the signal can only arise from a different physical mechanism or is a statistical fluke. I will discuss an important piece of the puzzle that remains out of place: the effect of photometric redshift uncertainties. I will present the recent characterization of the three-dimensional properties of the SDSS super-structures using BOSS spectroscopy, details about the density mapping of the Cold Spot region, and specific void finding strategies designed for the Dark Energy Survey.