Measuring angular diameter distances through halo clustering

Current and upcoming wide-field surveys for weak gravitational lensing and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect will generate mass-selected catalogs of dark m atter halos with internal or follow-up photometric redshift information. Us ing the shape of the linear power spectrum as a standard ruler that is cali brated by cosmic microwave background measurements, we find that a survey o f 4000 deg(2) and a mass threshold of 10(14) M-. can be used to determine t he comoving angular diameter distance as a function of redshift. In princip le, this test also allows an absolute calibration of the distance scale and measurement of the Hubble constant. This test is largely insensitive to th e details of halo mass measurements, mass function, and halo bias. Determin ation of these quantities would further allow a measurement of the linear g rowth rate of fluctuations.