The Local Cluster Substructure Survey (LoCuSS) aims to measure the relationship between the structure of galaxy clusters and the evolution of the hot gas and galaxies that inhabit them. Our main science goals include the following:

1. to find out whether/how the shape, normalization and scatter of the cluster mass-observable scaling relations depend on the dynamical state of clusters;

2. to characterize the systematic uncertainties in dark energy experiments that rely on counting galaxy clusters as a function of mass and redshift;

3. to probe the astrophysics of galaxy cluster assembly, e.g. whether/how cluster assembly modifies the cooling of intracluster gas in cluster cores;

4. to measure and understand physically the cluster-to-cluster scatter in obscured, unobscured and recently quenched star formation within clusters;

5. to build a large sample of well-characterized gravitational telescopes with which to search for the sources responsible for cosmic re-ionization.

We are using gravitational lensing data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Subaru Telescope to map the distribution of dark matter in the clusters. These data are complemented by extensive observations at X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared and radio wavelengths. More information about these observations is available here.

LoCuSS was originally motivated by the results published in Smith et al., (2003; 2005). Images from this "pilot study" of 10 clusters are available here.

In LoCuSS itself we aim to observe an all-sky sample of 100 massive galaxy clusters at 0.15<=z<=0.3 drawn from the REFLEX and (e)BCS samples. Further technical details of the survey can be found in our publications.

Please contact us if you would like to know more about our survey.