School of Physics CRA Seminar: Prof. Adam Myers, University of Wyoming

Quasars are actively accreting black holes, with masses of more than a billion suns, at the hearts of distant galaxies. Because quasars are the most luminous long-lived phenomena in cosmic history, they can be used to observe gigantic volumes of the Universe at redshifts back to almost the dawn of time. Quasars thus offer the potential to probe primordial features in large-scale-structure over the huge distances that gravity has yet to dilute. As part of the fourth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) will identify over half-a-million new quasars over a wide range of redshifts close to the faint limits of the SDSS imaging (r < 22). By the conclusion of eBOSS, SDSS will have confirmed a total of over three-quarters of a million quasars---easily the largest spectroscopic sample of quasars ever constructed. I will discuss prospects for the eBOSS quasar sample based on the Sloan Extended QUasar, ELG and LRG Survey (SEQUELS), a precursor survey that has already been completed over ~300 square degrees near the North Galactic Cap. Over the next 5 years, eBOSS will use the most voluminous maps ever made, etched in quasar-light, to probe dark matter, dark energy and the evolution of galaxies throughout cosmic history.