The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) is designed to document the first third of galactic evolution, over the approximate redshift (z) range 8-1.5. It will image >250,000 distant galaxies using three separate cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, from the mid-ultraviolet to the near-infrared, and will find and measure Type Ia supernovae at z > 1.5 to test their accuracy as standardizable candles for cosmology. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive ancillary data. The use of five widely separated fields mitigates cosmic variance and yields statistically robust and complete samples of galaxies down to a stellar mass of 10 9 M to z ≈ 2, reaching the knee of the ultraviolet luminosity function of galaxies to z ≈ 8. The survey covers approximately 800 arcmin 2 and is divided into two parts. The CANDELS/Deep survey (5σ point-source limit H = 27.7 mag) covers ∼125 arcmin 2 within Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS)-N and GOODS-S. The CANDELS/Wide survey includes GOODS and three additional fields (Extended Groth Strip, COSMOS, and Ultra-deep Survey) and covers the full area to a 5σ pointsource limit of H 27.0 mag. Together with the Hubble Ultra Deep Fields, the strategy creates a three-tiered "wedding-cake" approach that has proven efficient for extragalactic surveys. Data from the survey are nonproprietary and are useful for a wide variety of science investigations. In this paper, we describe the basic motivations for the survey, the CANDELS team science goals and the resulting observational requirements, the field selection and geometry, and the observing design. The Hubble data processing and products are described in a companion paper.

This paper describes the Hubble Space Telescope imaging data products and data reduction procedures for the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). This survey is designed to document the evolution of galaxies and black holes at z ∼ 1.5 − 8, and to study Type Ia SNe beyond z > 1.5. Five premier multi-wavelength sky regions are selected, each with extensive multiwavelength observations. The primary CANDELS data consist of imaging obtained in the Wide Field Camera 3 / infrared channel (WFC3/IR) and UVIS channel, along with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The CANDELS/Deep survey covers ∼ 125 square arcminutes within GOODS-N and GOODS-S, while the remainder consists of the CANDELS/Wide survey, achieving a total of ∼ 800 square arcminutes across GOODS and three additional fields (EGS, COSMOS, and UDS). We summarize the observational aspects of the survey as motivated by the scientific goals and present a detailed description of the data reduction procedures and products from the survey. Our data reduction methods utilize the most up to date calibration files and image combination procedures. We have paid special attention to correcting a range of instrumental effects, including CTE degradation for ACS, removal of electronic bias-striping present in ACS data after SM4, and persistence effects and other artifacts in WFC3/IR. For each field, we release mosaics for individual epochs and eventual mosaics containing data from all epochs combined, to facilitate photometric variability studies and the deepest possible photometry. A more detailed overview of the science goals and observational design of the survey are presented in a companion paper.

We present the first computation of the cosmological perturbations generated during inflation up to second order in deviations from the homogeneous background solution. Our results, which fully account for the inflaton self-interactions as well as for the second-order fluctuations of the background metric, provide the exact expression for the gauge-invariant curvature perturbation bispectrum produced during inflation in terms of the slow-roll parameters or, alternatively, in terms of the scalar spectral nS and and the tensor to adiabatic scalar amplitude ratio r. The bispectrum represents a specific non-Gaussian signature of fluctuations generated by quantum oscillations during slow-roll inflation. However, our findings indicate that detecting the non-Gaussianity in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies emerging from the second-order calculation will be a challenge for the forthcoming satellite experiments.

We present results from the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CAN-DELS) photometric redshift methods investigation. In this investigation, the results from eleven participants, each using a different combination of photometric redshift code, template spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and priors, are used to examine the properties of photometric redshifts applied to deep fields with broad-band multi-wavelength coverage. The photometry used includes U -band through mid-infrared filters and was derived using the TFIT method. Comparing the results, we find that there is no particular code or set of template SEDs that results in significantly better photometric redshifts compared to others. However, we find codes producing the lowest scatter and outlier fraction utilize a training sample to optimize photometric redshifts by adding zero-point offsets, template adjusting or adding extra smoothing errors. These results therefore stress the importance of the training procedure. We find a strong dependence of the photometric redshift accuracy on the signal-to-noise ratio of the photometry. On the other hand, we find a weak dependence of the photometric redshift scatter with redshift and galaxy color. We find that most photometric redshift codes quote redshift errors (e.g., 68% confidence intervals) that are too small compared to that expected from the spectroscopic control sample. We find that all codes show a statistically significant bias in the photometric redshifts. However, the bias is in all cases smaller than the scatter, the latter therefore dominates the errors. Finally, we find that combining results from multiple codes significantly decreases the photometric redshift scatter and outlier fraction. We discuss different ways of combining data to produce accurate photometric redshifts and error estimates. 1 2 Dahlen et al.

We present cosmological parameters derived from the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation observed at 148 GHz and 218 GHz over 296 deg 2 with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) during its 2008 season. ACT measures fluctuations at scales 500 < < 10,000. We fit a model for the lensed CMB, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ), and foreground contribution to the 148 GHz and 218 GHz power spectra, including thermal and kinetic SZ, Poisson power from radio and infrared point sources, and clustered power from infrared point sources. At = 3000, about half the power at 148 GHz comes from primary CMB after masking bright radio sources. The power from thermal and kinetic SZ is estimated to be B 3000 = 6.8 ± 2.9 μK 2 , where B ≡ ( + 1)C /2π . The IR Poisson power at 148 GHz is B 3000 = 7.8 ± 0.7 μK 2 (C = 5.5 ± 0.5 nK 2 ), and a clustered IR component is required with B 3000 = 4.6 ± 0.9 μK 2 , assuming an analytic model for its power spectrum shape. At 218 GHz only about 15% of the power, approximately 27 μK 2 , is CMB anisotropy at = 3000. The remaining 85% is attributed to IR sources (approximately 50% Poisson and 35% clustered), with spectral index α = 3.69 ± 0.14 for flux scaling as S(ν) ∝ ν α . We estimate primary cosmological parameters from the less contaminated 148 GHz spectrum, marginalizing over SZ and source power. The ΛCDM cosmological model is a good fit to the data (χ 2 /dof = 29/46), and ΛCDM parameters estimated from ACT+Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are consistent with the seven-year WMAP limits, with scale invariant n s = 1 excluded at 99.7% confidence level (CL) (3σ ). A model with no CMB lensing is disfavored at 2.8σ . By measuring the third to seventh acoustic peaks, and probing the Silk damping regime, the ACT data improve limits on cosmological parameters that affect the small-scale CMB power. The ACT data combined with WMAP give a 6σ detection of primordial helium, with Y P = 0.313 ± 0.044, and a 4σ detection of relativistic species, assumed to be neutrinos, with N eff = 5.3 ± 1.3 (4.6 ± 0.8 with BAO+H 0 data). From the CMB alone the running of the spectral index is constrained to be dn s /d ln k = −0.034 ± 0.018, the limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio is r < 0.25 (95% CL), and the possible contribution of Nambu cosmic strings to the power spectrum is constrained to string tension Gμ < 1.6 × 10 −7 (95% CL).