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arXiv · 0906.2955

Dark Energy Survey Supernovae: Simulations and Survey Strategy

J. P. Bernstein·R. Kessler·S. Kuhlmann·H. Spinka
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Abstract

We present simulations for the Dark Energy Survey (DES) using a new code suite (SNANA) that generates realistic supernova light curves accounting for atmospheric seeing conditions and intrinsic supernova luminosity variations using MLCS2k2 or SALT2 models. Errors include stat-noise from photo-statistics and sky noise. We applied SNANA to simulate DES supernova observations and employed an MLCS-based fitter to obtain the distance modulus for each simulated light curve. We harnessed the light curves in order to study selection biases for high-redshift supernovae and to constrain the optimal DES observing strategy using the Dark Energy Task Force figure of merit.

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J. P. Bernstein, R. Kessler, S. Kuhlmann, H. Spinka. 2009-06-16. Dark Energy Survey Supernovae: Simulations and Survey Strategy. https://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2955

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