Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a wide-field imaging camera on the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope on the summit of Maunakea in Hawaii. A team of scientists from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University is using HSC to carry out a 300-night multi-band imaging survey of the high-latitude sky. The survey includes three layers: the Wide layer will cover 1400 deg 2 in five broad bands (grizy), with a 5 σ point-source depth of r ≈ 26. The Deep layer covers a total of 26 deg 2 in four fields, going roughly a magnitude fainter, while the UltraDeep layer goes almost a magnitude fainter still in two pointings of HSC (a total of 3.5 deg 2). Here we describe the instrument, the science goals of the survey, and the survey strategy and data processing. This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, which includes a large number of technical and scientific papers describing results from the early phases of this survey.

The Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) is a three-layered imaging survey aimed at addressing some of the most important outstanding questions in astronomy today, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy. The survey has been awarded 300 nights of observing time at the Subaru Telescope, and it started in 2014 March. This paper presents the first public data release of HSC-SSP. This release includes data taken in the first 1.7 yr of observations (61.5 nights), and each of the Wide, Deep, and UltraDeep layers covers about 108, 26, and 4 square degrees down to depths of i ∼ 26.4, ∼26.5, and ∼27.0 mag, respectively (5 σ for point sources). All the layers are observed in five broad bands (grizy), and the Deep and UltraDeep layers are observed in narrow bands as well. We achieve an impressive image quality of 0${^{\prime\prime}_{.}}$6 in the i band in the Wide layer. We show that we achieve 1%–2% point spread function (PSF) photometry (root mean square) both internally and externally (against Pan-STARRS1), and ∼10 mas and 40 mas internal and external astrometric accuracy, respectively. Both the calibrated images and catalogs are made available to the community through dedicated user interfaces and database servers. In addition to the pipeline products, we also provide value-added products such as photometric redshifts and a collection of public spectroscopic redshifts. Detailed descriptions of all the data can be found online. The data release website is https://hsc-release.mtk.nao.ac.jp.

We study the environment of wet, dry, and mixed galaxy mergers at 0.75 < z < 1.2 using close pairs in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey, aiming to establish a clear picture of how the cosmic evolution of various merger types relate to the observed large-scale extra-galactic environment and its role in the growth of redsequence galaxies. We find that the typical environment of mixed and dry mergers is denser than that of wet mergers, mostly due to the color-density relation. While the galaxy companion rate (N c ) is observed to increase with overdensity, using N-body simulations we find that the fraction of pairs that will eventually merge decreases with the local density, predominantly because interlopers are more common in dense environments. After taking into account the merger probability of pairs as a function of local density, we find only marginal environment dependence of the fractional merger rate for wet mergers over the redshift range we have probed. On the other hand, the fractional dry merger rate increases rapidly with local density due to the increased population of red galaxies in dense environments. In other words, while wet mergers transform galaxies from the blue cloud into the red sequence at a similar fractional rate across different environments (assuming that the success rate of wet mergers to yield red galaxies does not depend on environment), the dry and mixed mergers are most effective in overdense regions. We also find that the environment distribution of K+A galaxies is similar to that of wet mergers alone and of wet+mixed mergers, suggesting a possible connection between K+A galaxies and wet and/or wet+mixed mergers. Based on our results, we therefore expect that the properties, including structures and masses, of red-sequence galaxies should be different between those in underdense regions and in overdense regions since the dry mergers are significantly more important in dense environments. We conclude that, as early as z ∼ 1, high-density regions are the preferred environment in which dry mergers occur, and that present-day red-sequence galaxies in overdense environments have, on average, undergone 1.2±0.3 dry mergers since this time, accounting for (38±10)% of their mass accretion in the last 8 billion years. Our findings suggest that dry mergers are crucial in the mass-assembly of massive red galaxies in dense environments, such as Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) in galaxy groups and clusters.

Using a sample of BzK-selected galaxies at z ∼ 2 identified from the CFHT/WIRCAM near-infrared survey of GOODS-North, we discuss the relation between star formation rate (SFR), specific star formation rate (SSFR), and stellar mass (M * ), and the clustering of galaxies as a function of these parameters. For star-forming galaxies (sBzKs), the UV-based SFR, corrected for extinction, scales with the stellar mass as SFR ∝ M * α with α = 0.74 ± 0.20 down to M * ∼ 10 9 M ⊙ , indicating a weak dependence on the stellar mass of the star formation rate efficiency, namely, SSFR. We also measure the angular correlation function and hence infer the correlation length for sBzK galaxies as a function of M * , SFR, and SSFR, as well as K-band apparent magnitude. We show that passive galaxies (pBzKs) are more strongly clustered than sBzK galaxies at a given stellar mass, mirroring the color−density relation seen at lower redshifts. We also find that the correlation length of sBzK galaxies ranges from 4 to 20 h −1 Mpc, being a strong function of M K , M * , and SFR. On the other hand, the clustering dependence on SSFR changes abruptly at 2 × 10 −9 yr −1 , which is the typical value for "main sequence" starforming galaxies at z ∼ 2. We show that the correlation length reaches a minimum at this characteristic value, and is larger for galaxies with both smaller and larger SSFRs; a dichotomy that is only marginally implied from the predictions of the semi-analytical models. Our results suggest that there are two types of environmental effects at work at z ∼ 2. Stronger clustering for relatively quiescent galaxies implies that the environment has started to play a role in quenching star formation. At the same time, stronger clustering for galaxies with elevated SSFRs ("starbursts") might be attributed to an increased efficiency for galaxy interactions and mergers in dense environments.

The fact that the clustering of dark matter halos depends not only on their mass, but also the formation epoch, is a prominent, albeit subtle, feature of the cold dark matter structure formation theory, and is known as assembly bias. At low mass scales (∼ 10 12 h −1 M ⊙ ), early-forming halos are predicted to be more strongly clustered than the late-forming ones. In this study we aim to robustly detect the signature of assembly bias observationally, making use of formation time indicators of central galaxies in low mass halos as a proxy for the halo formation history. Weak gravitational lensing is employed to ensure our early-and late-forming halo samples have similar masses, and are free of contamination of satellites from more massive halos. For the two formation time indicators used (resolved star formation history and current specific star formation rate), we do not find convincing evidence of assembly bias. For a pair of early-and late-forming galaxy samples with mean mass M 200c ≈ 9 × 10 11 h −1 M ⊙ , the relative bias is 1.00 ± 0.12. We attribute the lack of detection to the possibilities that either the current measurements of these indicators are too noisy, or they do not correlate well with the halo formation history. Alternative proxies for the halo formation history that should perform better are suggested for future studies.