Cross-Correlating DES and SPT

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) provide a uniquely powerful combination of overlapping optical imaging and cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. Cross-correlations between DES and SPT are expected to arise from several physical effects, including gravitational lensing, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, and the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. The resultant correlations contain information not accessible to either experiment on its own. Measurement of these correlations offers several exciting possibilities, such as improved cosmological parameter constraints, improved understanding of systematics affecting the two experiments, and calibration of the masses of galaxy clusters at high redshift. In this talk I will summarize recent results obtained by cross-correlating early DES data with data from the SPT-SZ survey and will discuss prospects for future cross-correlation measurements with these two surveys.