The Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS): survey
  definition and goals
  We present the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS), an
18 square degrees medium-deep survey at 3.6 and 4.5 microns with the
post-cryogenic Spitzer Space Telescope to ~2 microJy (AB=23.1) depth of five
highly observed astronomical fields (ELAIS-N1, ELAIS-S1, Lockman Hole, Chandra
Deep Field South and XMM-LSS). SERVS is designed to enable the study of galaxy
evolution as a function of environment from z~5 to the present day, and is the
first extragalactic survey both large enough and deep enough to put rare
objects such as luminous quasars and galaxy clusters at z>1 into their
cosmological context. SERVS is designed to overlap with several key surveys at
optical, near- through far-infrared, submillimeter and radio wavelengths to
provide an unprecedented view of the formation and evolution of massive
galaxies. In this paper, we discuss the SERVS survey design, the data
processing flow from image reduction and mosaicing to catalogs, as well as
coverage of ancillary data from other surveys in the SERVS fields. We also
highlight a variety of early science results from the survey.
