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ABSTRACT The Merian survey is mapping ∼ 850 deg2 of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Strategic Survey Program (HSC-SSP) wide layer with two medium-band filters on the 4-m Victor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, with the goal of carrying the first high signal-to-noise (S/N) measurements of weak gravitational lensing around dwarf galaxies. This paper presents the design of the Merian filter set: N708 (λc = 7080 Å, Δλ = 275 Å) and N540 (λc = 5400 Å, Δλ = 210 Å). The central wavelengths and filter widths of N708 and N540 were designed to detect the $$\rm H\alpha$$ and $$\rm [OIII]$$ emission lines of galaxies in the mass range $$8\lt \rm \log M_*/M_\odot \lt 9$$ by comparing Merian fluxes with HSC broad-band fluxes. Our filter design takes into account the weak lensing S/N and photometric redshift performance. Our simulations predict that Merian will yield a sample of ∼ 85 000 star-forming dwarf galaxies with a photometric redshift accuracy of σΔz/(1 + z) ∼ 0.01 and an outlier fraction of $$\eta =2.8~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$$ over the redshift range 0.058 < z < 0.10. With 60 full nights on the Blanco/Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the Merian survey is predicted to measure the average weak lensing profile around dwarf galaxies with lensing S/N ∼32 within r < 0.5 Mpc and lensing S/N ∼90 within r < 1.0 Mpc. This unprecedented sample of star-forming dwarf galaxies will allow for studies of the interplay between dark matter and stellar feedback and their roles in the evolution of dwarf galaxies. 

Abstract We present measurements of cosmic shear two-point correlation functions (TPCFs) from Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC) first-year data, and derive cosmological constraints based on a blind analysis. The HSC first-year shape catalog is divided into four tomographic redshift bins ranging from $z=0.3$ to 1.5 with equal widths of $$\Delta z =0.3$$. The unweighted galaxy number densities in each tomographic bin are 5.9, 5.9, 4.3, and $$2.4\:$$arcmin$$^{-2}$$ from the lowest to highest redshifts, respectively. We adopt the standard TPCF estimators, $$\xi _\pm$$, for our cosmological analysis, given that we find no evidence of significant B-mode shear. The TPCFs are detected at high significance for all 10 combinations of auto- and cross-tomographic bins over a wide angular range, yielding a total signal-to-noise ratio of 19 in the angular ranges adopted in the cosmological analysis, $$7^{\prime }<\theta <56^{\prime }$$ for $$\xi _+$$ and $$28^{\prime }<\theta <178^{\prime }$$ for $$\xi _-$$. We perform the standard Bayesian likelihood analysis for cosmological inference from the measured cosmic shear TPCFs, including contributions from intrinsic alignment of galaxies as well as systematic effects from PSF model errors, shear calibration uncertainty, and source redshift distribution errors. We adopt a covariance matrix derived from realistic mock catalogs constructed from full-sky gravitational lensing simulations that fully account for survey geometry and measurement noise. For a flat $$\Lambda$$ cold dark matter model, we find $$S\,_8 \equiv \sigma _8\sqrt{\Omega _{\rm m}/0.3}=0.804_{-0.029}^{+0.032}$$, and $$\Omega _{\rm m}=0.346_{-0.100}^{+0.052}$$. We carefully check the robustness of the cosmological results against astrophysical modeling uncertainties and systematic uncertainties in measurements, and find that none of them has a significant impact on the cosmological constraints. 

PFS (Prime Focus Spectrograph), a next generation facility instrument on the Subaru telescope, is now being tested on the telescope. The instrument is equipped with very wide (1.3 degrees in diameter) field of view on the Subaru's prime focus, high multiplexity by 2394 reconfigurable fibers, and wide waveband spectrograph that covers from 380nm to 1260nm simultaneously in one exposure. Currently engineering observations are ongoing with Prime Focus Instrument (PFI), Metrology Camera System (MCS), the first spectrpgraph module (SM1) with visible cameras and the first fiber cable providing optical link between PFI and SM1. Among the rest of the hardware, the second fiber cable has been already installed on the telescope and in the dome building since April 2022, and the two others were also delivered in June 2022. The integration and test of next SMs including near-infrared cameras are ongoing for timely deliveries. The progress in the software development is also worth noting. The instrument control software delivered with the subsystems is being well integrated with its system-level layer, the telescope system, observation planning software and associated databases. The data reduction pipelines are also rapidly progressing especially since sky spectra started being taken in early 2021 using Subaru Nigh Sky Spectrograph (SuNSS), and more recently using PFI during the engineering observations. In parallel to these instrumentation activities, the PFS science team in the collaboration is timely formulating a plan of large-sky survey observation to be proposed and conducted as a Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) from 2024. In this article, we report these recent progresses, ongoing developments and future perspectives of the PFS instrumentation.