Mapping missing matter with the South Pole Telescope and other mm/submm-wave telescopes

Tue, March 01, 2016

There are issues of dark or missing matter on scales ranging over 12 orders of magnitude that can be addressed with CMB experiments. 

On cosmological scales, we can make mass maps using lensing of the CMB. I'll show recent results from the South Pole Telescope using these mass maps to investigate the connection between dark matter and galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey. 

On galaxy scales, these CMB maps (and other mm/submm wave maps) are very effective at discovering star-forming galaxies that are strongly gravitationally lensed. Follow-up with ALMA has allowed us to use these lenses to search for dwarf-galaxy scale substructure in the galaxy that is doing the lensing. I'll show our recent detection of a 10^9 solar mass object using this method. 
On solar system scales, CMB experiments are now sensitive enough over a wide enough area that it should be possible to detect planets and dwarf planets in the outer solar system using their thermal radiation.