The Case for Deep, Wide-Field Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper argues for the importance of deep, wide-field surveys in cosmology, emphasizing their versatility in addressing fundamental questions beyond just dark energy, and highlighting their broader scientific impact.

Contribution

It advocates for the strategic use of wide-field surveys to explore a broad range of cosmological questions, not limited to dark energy, and stresses their role in enabling community science.

Findings

Wide-field surveys are versatile tools for fundamental cosmological measurements.

Current surveys have successfully addressed evolving scientific questions.

Data accessibility broadens scientific contributions beyond survey teams.

Abstract

Much of the science case for the next generation of deep, wide-field optical/infrared surveys has been driven by the further study of dark energy. This is a laudable goal (and the subject of a companion white paper by Zhan et al.). However, one of the most important lessons of the current generation of surveys is that the interesting science questions at the end of the survey are quite different than they were when the surveys were being planned. The current surveys succeeded in this evolving terrain by being very general tools that could be applied to a number of very fundamental measurements. Likewise, the accessibility of the data enabled the broader cosmological and astronomical community to generate more science than the survey collaborations could alone. With that in mind, we should consider some of the basic physical and cosmological questions that surveys like LSST and JDEM-Wide will be able to address.