We present new tests to identify stationary position-dependent additive shear biases in weak gravitational lensing data sets. These tests are important diagnostics for currently ongoing and planned cosmic shear surveys, as such biases induce coherent shear patterns that can mimic and potentially bias the cosmic shear signal. The central idea of these tests is to determine the average ellipticity of all galaxies with shape measurements in a grid in the pixel plane. The distribution of the absolute values of these averaged ellipticities can be compared to randomized catalogues; a difference points to systematics in the data. In addition, we introduce a method to quantify the spatial correlation of the additive bias, which suppresses the contribution from cosmic shear and therefore eases the identification of a position-dependent additive shear bias in the data. We apply these tests to the publicly available shear catalogues from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) and the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) and find evidence for a small but non-negligible residual additive bias at small scales. As this residual bias is smaller than the error on the shear correlation signal at those scales, it is highly unlikely that it causes a significant bias in the published cosmic shear results of CFHTLenS. In CFHTLenS, the amplitude of this systematic signal is consistent with zero in fields where the number of stars used to model the PSF is higher than average, suggesting that the position-dependent additive shear bias originates from undersampled PSF variations across the image.
Weak gravitational lensing is becoming a mature technique for constraining cosmological parameters, and future surveys will be able to constrain the dark energy equation of state $w$. When analyzing galaxy surveys, redshift information has proven to be a valuable addition to angular shear correlations. We forecast parameter constraints on the triplet $(\Omega_m,w,\sigma_8)$ for an LSST-like photometric galaxy survey, using tomography of the shear-shear power spectrum, convergence peak counts and higher convergence moments. We find that redshift tomography with the power spectrum reduces the area of the $1\sigma$ confidence interval in $(\Omega_m,w)$ space by a factor of 8 with respect to the case of the single highest redshift bin. We also find that adding non-Gaussian information from the peak counts and higher-order moments of the convergence field and its spatial derivatives further reduces the constrained area in $(\Omega_m,w)$ by a factor of 3 and 4, respectively. When we add cosmic microwave background parameter priors from Planck to our analysis, tomography improves power spectrum constraints by a factor of 3. Adding moments yields an improvement by an additional factor of 2, and adding both moments and peaks improves by almost a factor of 3, over power spectrum tomography alone. We evaluate the effect of uncorrected systematic photometric redshift errors on the parameter constraints. We find that different statistics lead to different bias directions in parameter space, suggesting the possibility of eliminating this bias via self-calibration.
In this paper, it is proposed a cosmological model independent method to constrain the cosmic opacity. As an approach never seen before in literature, we use the ages of 32 old passive galaxies distributed over the redshift interval $0.11 < z < 1.84$ and of 9 extremely old globular clusters in M31 galaxy to obtain opacity free luminosity distance. By comparing them to the 580 distance moduli of supernovae from the so-called Union 2.1 compilation we put limits on the cosmic opacity parametrized by $\tau(z) = \epsilon z/(1+z)$ (for $\epsilon =0$ the transparent universe is recovered). Considering the cosmic background radiation constraints on the spatial curvature of the Universe no significant deviation from transparency is verified.
The rapidly improving precision of measurements of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) also requires a corresponding increase in the precision of theoretical modeling. A commonly made approximation is to model the CMB deflection angle or lensing potential as a Gaussian random field. In this paper, however, we analytically quantify the influence of the non-Gaussianity of large-scale structure lenses, arising from nonlinear structure formation, on CMB lensing measurements. In particular, evaluating the impact of the non-zero bispectrum of large-scale structure on the relevant CMB four-point correlation functions, we find that there is a bias to estimates of the CMB lensing power spectrum. For temperature-based lensing reconstruction with CMB Stage-III and Stage-IV experiments, we find that this lensing power spectrum bias is negative and is of order one percent of the signal. This corresponds to a shift of multiple standard deviations for these upcoming experiments. We caution, however, that our numerical calculation only evaluates two of the largest bias terms and thus only provides an approximate estimate of the full bias. We conclude that further investigation into lensing biases from nonlinear structure formation is required and that these biases should be accounted for in future lensing analyses.
The shapes of cluster central galaxies are not randomly oriented, but rather exhibit coherent alignments with the shapes of their parent clusters as well as with large-scale structure. In this work, we undertake a comprehensive study of the alignments of central galaxies at low redshift. Based on a sample of 8237 clusters and 94817 members in the redMaPPer cluster catalog with 0.1 < z < 0.35, we first quantify the alignment between the projected central galaxy shapes and the distribution of member satellites, to understand what central galaxy and cluster properties most strongly correlate with these alignments. Next, we investigate the angular segregation of satellites with respect to their central galaxy major axis directions, to identify the satellite properties that most strongly predict their angular segregation. We find that central galaxies are more aligned with their member galaxy distributions in clusters that are more elongated and have higher richness, and for central galaxies with larger physical size, higher luminosity and centering probability, and redder color. Satellites with redder color, higher luminosity, located closer to the central galaxy, and with smaller ellipticity show a stronger angular segregation toward their central galaxy major axes. Finally, we provide physical explanations for some of the identified correlations, and discuss the connection to theories of central galaxy alignments, the impact of primordial alignments with tidal fields, and the importance of anisotropic accretion.
We present the numerical code PRECESSION: a new open-source python module to study the dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries in the post-Newtonian regime. The code provides a comprehensive toolbox to (i) study the evolution of the black-hole spins along their precession cycles, (ii) perform gravitational-wave driven binary inspirals using both orbit-averaged and precession-averaged integrations, and (iii) predict the properties of the merger remnant through fitting formulae obtained from numerical-relativity simulations. PRECESSION is a ready-to-use tool to add the black-hole spin dynamics to larger-scale numerical studies such as gravitational-wave parameter estimation codes, population synthesis models to predict gravitational-wave event rates, galaxy merger trees and cosmological simulations of structure formation. PRECESSION provides fast and reliable integration methods to propagate statistical samples of black-hole binaries from/to large separations where they form to/from small separations where they become detectable, thus linking gravitational-wave observations of spinning black-hole binaries to their astrophysical formation history. The code is also a useful tool to compute initial parameters for numerical-relativity simulations targeting specific precessing systems. PRECESSION can be installed from the Python Package Index and it is freely distributed under version control on Github, where further documentation is provided.
The gravitational memory effect leads to a net displacement in the relative positions of test particles. This memory is related to the change in the strain of the gravitational radiation field between infinite past and infinite future retarded times. There are three known sources of the memory effect: (i) the loss of energy to future null infinity by massless fields or particles, (ii) the ejection of massive particles to infinity from a bound system and (iii) homogeneous, source-free gravitational waves. In the context of linearized theory, we show that asymptotic conditions controlling these known sources of the gravitational memory effect rule out any other possible sources with physically reasonable stress-energy tensors. Except for the source-free gravitational waves, the two other known sources produce gravitational memory with E-mode radiation strain, characterized by a certain curl-free sky pattern of their polarization. Thus our results show that the only known source of B-mode gravitational memory is of primordial origin, corresponding in the linearized theory to a homogeneous wave entering from past null infinity.
We present a minimal framework of $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge extension of the Standard Model explaining dark matter abundance and matter-antimatter asymmetry simultaneously through an attractive mechanism of TeV scale WIMPy leptogenesis, testable at the current and next generation of colliders. This framework can also explain small neutrino masses via a radiative mechanism. One of the key predictions of this model is an enhanced rate for lepton flavor violating decay $\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$ within the sensitivity reach of next generation experiments.
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We present new tests to identify stationary position-dependent additive shear biases in weak gravitational lensing data sets. These tests are important diagnostics for currently ongoing and planned cosmic shear surveys, as such biases induce coherent shear patterns that can mimic and potentially bias the cosmic shear signal. The central idea of these tests is to determine the average ellipticity of all galaxies with shape measurements in a grid in the pixel plane. The distribution of the absolute values of these averaged ellipticities can be compared to randomized catalogues; a difference points to systematics in the data. In addition, we introduce a method to quantify the spatial correlation of the additive bias, which suppresses the contribution from cosmic shear and therefore eases the identification of a position-dependent additive shear bias in the data. We apply these tests to the publicly available shear catalogues from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) and the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) and find evidence for a small but non-negligible residual additive bias at small scales. As this residual bias is smaller than the error on the shear correlation signal at those scales, it is highly unlikely that it causes a significant bias in the published cosmic shear results of CFHTLenS. In CFHTLenS, the amplitude of this systematic signal is consistent with zero in fields where the number of stars used to model the PSF is higher than average, suggesting that the position-dependent additive shear bias originates from undersampled PSF variations across the image.
Weak gravitational lensing is becoming a mature technique for constraining cosmological parameters, and future surveys will be able to constrain the dark energy equation of state $w$. When analyzing galaxy surveys, redshift information has proven to be a valuable addition to angular shear correlations. We forecast parameter constraints on the triplet $(\Omega_m,w,\sigma_8)$ for an LSST-like photometric galaxy survey, using tomography of the shear-shear power spectrum, convergence peak counts and higher convergence moments. We find that redshift tomography with the power spectrum reduces the area of the $1\sigma$ confidence interval in $(\Omega_m,w)$ space by a factor of 8 with respect to the case of the single highest redshift bin. We also find that adding non-Gaussian information from the peak counts and higher-order moments of the convergence field and its spatial derivatives further reduces the constrained area in $(\Omega_m,w)$ by a factor of 3 and 4, respectively. When we add cosmic microwave background parameter priors from Planck to our analysis, tomography improves power spectrum constraints by a factor of 3. Adding moments yields an improvement by an additional factor of 2, and adding both moments and peaks improves by almost a factor of 3, over power spectrum tomography alone. We evaluate the effect of uncorrected systematic photometric redshift errors on the parameter constraints. We find that different statistics lead to different bias directions in parameter space, suggesting the possibility of eliminating this bias via self-calibration.
In this paper, it is proposed a cosmological model independent method to constrain the cosmic opacity. As an approach never seen before in literature, we use the ages of 32 old passive galaxies distributed over the redshift interval $0.11 < z < 1.84$ and of 9 extremely old globular clusters in M31 galaxy to obtain opacity free luminosity distance. By comparing them to the 580 distance moduli of supernovae from the so-called Union 2.1 compilation we put limits on the cosmic opacity parametrized by $\tau(z) = \epsilon z/(1+z)$ (for $\epsilon =0$ the transparent universe is recovered). Considering the cosmic background radiation constraints on the spatial curvature of the Universe no significant deviation from transparency is verified.
The rapidly improving precision of measurements of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) also requires a corresponding increase in the precision of theoretical modeling. A commonly made approximation is to model the CMB deflection angle or lensing potential as a Gaussian random field. In this paper, however, we analytically quantify the influence of the non-Gaussianity of large-scale structure lenses, arising from nonlinear structure formation, on CMB lensing measurements. In particular, evaluating the impact of the non-zero bispectrum of large-scale structure on the relevant CMB four-point correlation functions, we find that there is a bias to estimates of the CMB lensing power spectrum. For temperature-based lensing reconstruction with CMB Stage-III and Stage-IV experiments, we find that this lensing power spectrum bias is negative and is of order one percent of the signal. This corresponds to a shift of multiple standard deviations for these upcoming experiments. We caution, however, that our numerical calculation only evaluates two of the largest bias terms and thus only provides an approximate estimate of the full bias. We conclude that further investigation into lensing biases from nonlinear structure formation is required and that these biases should be accounted for in future lensing analyses.
The shapes of cluster central galaxies are not randomly oriented, but rather exhibit coherent alignments with the shapes of their parent clusters as well as with large-scale structure. In this work, we undertake a comprehensive study of the alignments of central galaxies at low redshift. Based on a sample of 8237 clusters and 94817 members in the redMaPPer cluster catalog with 0.1 < z < 0.35, we first quantify the alignment between the projected central galaxy shapes and the distribution of member satellites, to understand what central galaxy and cluster properties most strongly correlate with these alignments. Next, we investigate the angular segregation of satellites with respect to their central galaxy major axis directions, to identify the satellite properties that most strongly predict their angular segregation. We find that central galaxies are more aligned with their member galaxy distributions in clusters that are more elongated and have higher richness, and for central galaxies with larger physical size, higher luminosity and centering probability, and redder color. Satellites with redder color, higher luminosity, located closer to the central galaxy, and with smaller ellipticity show a stronger angular segregation toward their central galaxy major axes. Finally, we provide physical explanations for some of the identified correlations, and discuss the connection to theories of central galaxy alignments, the impact of primordial alignments with tidal fields, and the importance of anisotropic accretion.
We present the numerical code PRECESSION: a new open-source python module to study the dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries in the post-Newtonian regime. The code provides a comprehensive toolbox to (i) study the evolution of the black-hole spins along their precession cycles, (ii) perform gravitational-wave driven binary inspirals using both orbit-averaged and precession-averaged integrations, and (iii) predict the properties of the merger remnant through fitting formulae obtained from numerical-relativity simulations. PRECESSION is a ready-to-use tool to add the black-hole spin dynamics to larger-scale numerical studies such as gravitational-wave parameter estimation codes, population synthesis models to predict gravitational-wave event rates, galaxy merger trees and cosmological simulations of structure formation. PRECESSION provides fast and reliable integration methods to propagate statistical samples of black-hole binaries from/to large separations where they form to/from small separations where they become detectable, thus linking gravitational-wave observations of spinning black-hole binaries to their astrophysical formation history. The code is also a useful tool to compute initial parameters for numerical-relativity simulations targeting specific precessing systems. PRECESSION can be installed from the Python Package Index and it is freely distributed under version control on Github, where further documentation is provided.
The gravitational memory effect leads to a net displacement in the relative positions of test particles. This memory is related to the change in the strain of the gravitational radiation field between infinite past and infinite future retarded times. There are three known sources of the memory effect: (i) the loss of energy to future null infinity by massless fields or particles, (ii) the ejection of massive particles to infinity from a bound system and (iii) homogeneous, source-free gravitational waves. In the context of linearized theory, we show that asymptotic conditions controlling these known sources of the gravitational memory effect rule out any other possible sources with physically reasonable stress-energy tensors. Except for the source-free gravitational waves, the two other known sources produce gravitational memory with E-mode radiation strain, characterized by a certain curl-free sky pattern of their polarization. Thus our results show that the only known source of B-mode gravitational memory is of primordial origin, corresponding in the linearized theory to a homogeneous wave entering from past null infinity.
We present a minimal framework of $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge extension of the Standard Model explaining dark matter abundance and matter-antimatter asymmetry simultaneously through an attractive mechanism of TeV scale WIMPy leptogenesis, testable at the current and next generation of colliders. This framework can also explain small neutrino masses via a radiative mechanism. One of the key predictions of this model is an enhanced rate for lepton flavor violating decay $\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$ within the sensitivity reach of next generation experiments.
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We constrain the H I photoionization rate $(\Gamma_{\rm HI})$ at $z \lesssim 0.45$ by comparing the flux probability distribution function and power spectrum of the Ly-$\alpha$ forest data along 82 QSO sightlines obtained using Cosmic Origins Spectrograph with models generated from smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations. We have developed a module named "Code for Ionization and Temperature Evolution (CITE)" for calculating the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature evolution from high to low redshifts by post-processing the GADGET-2 simulation outputs. Our method, that produces results consistent with other simulations, is computationally less expensive thus allowing us to explore a large parameter space. It also allows rigorous estimation of the error covariance matrix for various statistical quantities of interest. We find that the best-fit $\Gamma_{\rm HI}(z)$ increases with $z$ and follows $(4 \pm 0.1) \times 10^{-14}\:(1+z)^{4.99 \pm 0.12}$ s$^{-1}$. At any given $z$ the typical uncertainties $\Delta \Gamma_{\rm HI} / \Gamma_{\rm HI}$ are $\sim 25$ per cent which contains not only the statistical errors but also those arising from possible degeneracy with the thermal history of the IGM and cosmological parameters and uncertainties in fitting the QSO continuum. These values of $\Gamma_{\rm HI}$ favour the scenario where only QSOs contribute to the ionizing background at $z<2$. Our derived $3\sigma$ upper limit on average escape fraction is $0.008$, consistent with measurements of low-$z$ galaxies.
The effects of many physical processes in the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters imprint themselves in X-ray surface brightness images. It is therefore important to choose optimal methods for extracting information from and enhancing the interpretability of such images. We describe in detail a gradient filtering edge detection method that we previously applied to images of the Centaurus cluster of galaxies. The Gaussian gradient filter measures the gradient in the surface brightness distribution on particular spatial scales. We apply this filter on different scales to Chandra X-ray observatory images of two clusters with AGN feedback, the Perseus cluster and M87, and a merging system, A3667. By combining filtered images on different scales using radial filters spectacular images of the edges in a cluster are produced. We describe how to assess the significance of features in filtered images. We find the gradient filtering technique to have significant advantages for detecting many kinds of features compared to other analysis techniques, such as unsharp-masking. Filtering cluster images in this way in a hard energy band allows shocks to be detected.
We present a class of modified-gravity theories which we call ultra-local models. We add a scalar field, with negligible kinetic terms, to the Einstein-Hilbert action. We also introduce a conformal coupling to matter. This gives rise to a new screening mechanism which is not entirely due to the non-linearity of the scalar field potential or the coupling function but to the absence of the kinetic term. As a result this removes any fifth force between isolated objects in vacuum. The predictions of these models only depend on a single free function, as the potential and the coupling function are degenerate, with an amplitude given by a parameter $\alpha \lesssim 10^{-6}$, whose magnitude springs from requiring a small modification of Newton's potential astrophysically and cosmologically. This singles out a redshift $z_{\alpha} \sim \alpha^{-1/3} \gtrsim 100$ where the fifth force is the greatest. The cosmological background follows the $\Lambda$-CDM history within a $10^{-6}$ accuracy, while cosmological perturbations are significantly enhanced (or damped) on small scales, $k \gtrsim 2 h {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ at $z=0$. The spherical collapse and the halo mass function are modified in the same manner. We find that the modifications of gravity are greater for galactic or sub-galactic structures. We also present a thermodynamic analysis of the non-linear and inhomogeneous fifth-force regime where we find that the Universe is not made more inhomogeneous before $z_\alpha$ when the fifth force dominates, and does not lead to the existence of clumped matter on extra small scales inside halos for large masses while this possibility exists for masses $M\lesssim 10^{11} M_\odot$ where the phenomenology of ultra-local models would be most different from $\Lambda$-CDM.
Observations of the neutral Hydrogen (\HI ) 21-cm signal hold the potential of allowing us to map out the cosmological large scale structures (LSS) across the entire post-reionization era ($z \leq 6$). Several experiments are planned to map the LSS over a large range of redshifts and angular scales, many of these targeting the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations. It is important to model the \HI distribution in order to correctly predict the expected signal, and more so to correctly interpret the results after the signal is detected. In this paper we have carried out semi-numerical simulations to model the \HI distribution and study the \HI power spectrum $P_{\HI}(k,z)$ across the redshift range $1 \le z \le 6$. We have modelled the \HI bias as a complex quantity $\tilde{b}(k,z)$ whose modulus squared $b^2(k,z)$ relates $P_{\HI}(k,z)$ to the matter power spectrum $P(k,z)$, and whose real part $b_r(k,z)$ quantifies the cross-correlation between the \HI and the matter distribution. We study the $z$ and $k$ dependence of the bias, and present polynomial fits which can be used to predict the bias across $0 \le z \le6$ and $0.01 \le k \le 10 \, {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$. We also present results for the stochasticity $r=b_r/b$ which is important for cross-correlation studies.
This paper describes the identification, modelling, and removal of previously
unexplained systematic effects in the polarization data of the Planck High
Frequency Instrument (HFI) on large angular scales, including new mapmaking and
calibration procedures, new and more complete end-to-end simulations, and a set
of robust internal consistency checks on the resulting maps. These maps, at
100, 143, 217, and 353 GHz, are early versions of those that will be released
in final form later in 2016.
The improvements allow us to determine the cosmic reionization optical depth
$\tau$ using, for the first time, the low-multipole $EE$ data from HFI,
reducing significantly the central value and uncertainty, and hence the upper
limit. Two different likelihood procedures are used to constrain $\tau$ from
two estimators of the CMB $E$- and $B$-mode angular power spectra at 100 and
143 GHz, after debiasing the spectra from a small remaining systematic
contamination. These all give fully consistent results.
A further consistency test is performed using cross-correlations derived from
the Low Frequency Instrument maps of the Planck 2015 data release and the new
HFI data. For this purpose, end-to-end analyses of systematic effects from the
two instruments are used to demonstrate the near independence of their dominant
systematic error residuals.
The tightest result comes from the HFI-based $\tau$ posterior distribution
using the maximum likelihood power spectrum estimator, giving a value $0.055\pm
0.009$. In a companion paper these results are discussed in the context of the
best-fit Planck $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model and recent models of
reionization.
We propose an improved methodology to constrain spatial variations of the fine structure constant using clusters of galaxies. We use the {\it Planck} 2013 data to measure the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect at the location of 618 X-ray selected clusters. We then use a Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm to obtain the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background at the location of each galaxy cluster. When fitting three different phenomenological parameterizations allowing for monopole and dipole amplitudes in the value of the fine structure constant we improve the results of earlier analysis involving clusters and CMB power spectrum, and we also found that the best-fit direction of a hypothetical dipole is compatible with the direction of other known anomalies. Although the constraining power of our current datasets do not allow us to test the indications of a dipole obtained though high-resolution optical/UV spectroscopy, our results do highlight that clusters of galaxies will be a very powerful tool to probe fundamental physics at low redshift.
The maximum size of a bound cosmic structure is computed perturbatively as a function of its mass in the framework of the cubic galileon, proposed recently to model the dark energy of our Universe. Comparison of our results with observations constrains the matter-galileon coupling of the model to $0.033\lesssim \alpha \lesssim 0.17$, thus improving previous bounds based solely on solar system physics.
While global cosmological and local galactic abundance of dark matter is well established, its identity, physical size and composition remain a mystery. In this paper, we analyze an important question of dark matter detectability through its gravitational interaction, using current and next generation gravitational-wave observatories to look for macroscopic (kilogram-scale or larger) objects. Keeping the size of the dark matter objects to be smaller than the physical dimensions of the detectors, and keeping their mass as free parameters, we derive the expected event rates. For favorable choice of mass, we find that dark matter interactions could be detected in space-based detectors such as LISA at a rate of one per ten years. We then assume the existence of an additional Yukawa force between dark matter and regular matter. By choosing the range of the force to be comparable to the size of the detectors, we derive the levels of sensitivity to such a new force, which exceeds the sensitivity of other probes in a wide range of parameters. For sufficiently large Yukawa coupling strength, the rate of dark matter events can then exceed 10 per year for both ground- and space-based detectors. Thus, gravitational-wave observatories can make an important contribution to a global effort of searching for non-gravitational interactions of dark matter.
General non-singular accelerating cosmological solutions for an initial cosmic period of pure vacuum birth era are derived. This vacuum era is described by a varying cosmological "constant" suggested by the Renormalisation Group flow of Asymptotic Safety scenario near the ultraviolet fixed point. In this scenario, natural exit from inflation to the standard decelerating cosmology occurs when the energy scale lowers and the cosmological "constant" becomes insignificant. In the following period where matter is also present, cosmological solutions with characteristics similar to the vacuum case are generated. Remarkably the set of equations allow for particle production and entropy generation. Alternatively, in the case of non-zero bulk viscosity, entropy production and reheating is found. As for the equations of motion, they modify Einstein equations by adding covariant kinetic terms of the cosmological "constant" which respect the Bianchi identities. An advance of the proposed framework is that it ensures a consistent description of both a quantum vacuum birth of the universe and a subsequent cosmic era in the presence of matter.
We study how the scalar power spectrum of single-scalar inflation depends functionally on models with features which have been proposed to explain anomalies in the data. We exploit a new formalism based on evolving the norm-squared of the scalar mode functions, rather than the mode functions themselves.
It is shown that low-collisionality plasmas cannot support linearly polarized shear-Alfv\'en fluctuations above a critical amplitude $\delta B_{\perp}/B_{0} \sim \beta^{\,-1/2}$, where $\beta$ is the ratio of thermal to magnetic pressure. Above this cutoff, a developing fluctuation will generate a pressure anisotropy that is sufficient to destabilize itself through the parallel firehose instability. This causes the wave frequency to approach zero, interrupting the fluctuation before any oscillation. The magnetic field lines rapidly relax into a sequence of angular zig-zag structures. Such a restrictive bound on shear-Alfv\'en-wave amplitudes has far-reaching implications for the physics of magnetized turbulence in the high-$\beta$ conditions prevalent in many astrophysical plasmas, as well as for the solar wind at $\sim 1 \mathrm{AU}$ where $\beta \gtrsim 1$.
We investigate the presence and importance of dark matter discs in a sample of 24 simulated Milky Way galaxies in the APOSTLE project, part of the EAGLE programme of hydrodynamic simulations in Lambda-CDM cosmology. It has been suggested that a dark disc in the Milky Way may boost the dark matter density and modify the velocity modulus relative to a smooth halo at the position of the Sun, with ramifications for direct detection experiments. From a kinematic decomposition of the dark matter and a real space analysis of all 24 halos, we find that only one of the simulated Milky Way analogues has a detectable dark disc component. This unique event was caused by a merger at late time with an LMC-mass satellite at very low grazing angle. Considering that even this rare scenario only enhances the dark matter density at the solar radius by 35% and affects the high energy tail of the dark matter velocity distribution by less than 1%, we conclude that the presence of a dark disc in the Milky Way is unlikely, and is very unlikely to have a significant effect on direct detection experiments.
The radiative torque (RAT) alignment of interstellar grains with ordinary paramagnetic susceptibilities has been supported by a number of earlier studies. The alignment of such grains depends on the so-called RAT parameter $q^{\max}$ that is determined by the grain shape. For interstellar grains with a broad range of $q^{\max}$, a significant fraction of grains is expected to get aligned with low angular momentum at the so-called low-J attractor points, which entail degrees of alignment between 20 or 30 percent, irrespectively of the strength of RATs. The latter value may not be sufficient for explaining the observed interstellar alignment in the diffuse medium. In this paper, we elaborate our model of radiative alignment for grains with enhanced magnetic susceptibility due to magnetic inclusions, such that both Magnetic torque and RAdiative Torque (MRAT) play a role in grain alignment. Such grains can get aligned with high angular momentum at the so-called high-J attractor points, which achieve a high degree of alignment. Using our analytical model (AMO) of RATs we derive the critical value of the magnetic relaxation parameter $\delta_{m}$ to produce high-J attractor points as functions of $q^{\max}$ and the anisotropic radiation angle relative to the magnetic field $\psi$. To calculate degree of grain alignment, we carry out numerical simulations of MRAT alignment by including stochastic excitations by gas collisions and magnetic fluctuations. We numerically demonstrate that the degree of MRAT alignment varies with $\psi$ and increases with increasing grain size for different values of $\delta_{m}$. Our obtained results pave the way for physical modeling of polarization spectrum of thermal dust emission as well as magnetic dipole emission from grains of arbitrary magnetic susceptibilities.
Emission-line galaxies (ELGs) are one of the main tracers of the large-scale structure to be targeted by the next-generation dark energy surveys. To provide a better understanding of the properties and statistics of these galaxies, we have collected spectroscopic data from the VVDS and DEEP2 deep surveys and estimated the galaxy luminosity functions (LFs) of three distinct emission lines, [OII], H$\beta$ and [OIII] at redshifts ($0.2 < z < 1.3$). Our measurements are based on the largest sample so far. We present the first measurement of the \Hb LF at these redshifts. We have also compiled LFs from the literature that were based on independent data or covered different redshift ranges, and we fit the entire set over the whole redshift range with analytic Schechter and Saunders models, assuming a natural redshift dependence of the parameters. We find that the characteristic luminosity ($L_*$) and density ($\phi_*$) of all LFs increase with redshift. Using the Schechter model, we find that $L^*$ of [OII] emitters increase by a factor 12 between redshift 0.2 and 1.3, that $L^*$ of [OIII] emitters increase by a factor 16 between redshift 0.3 and 1 and that $L^*$ of H$\beta$ emitters increase by a factor 13 between redshift 0.3 and 0.8.
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We show that if a cosmic string exists, it may be identified through characteristic diffraction pattern in the energy spectrum of the observed signal. In particular, if the string is on the line of sight, the wave field is shown to fit the Cornu spiral. We suggest a simple procedure, based on Keller's geometrical theory of diffraction, which allows to explain wave effects in conical spacetime of a cosmic string in terms of interference of four characteristic rays. Our results are supposed to be valid for scalar massless waves, including gravitational waves, electromagnetic waves, or even sound in case of condensed matter systems with analogous topological defects.
We investigate the process of reionisation in a model in which the dark matter is a warm elementary particle such as a sterile neutrino. We focus on models that are consistent with the dark matter decay interpretation of the recently detected line at 3.5 keV in the X-ray spectra of galaxies and clusters. In warm dark matter models the primordial spectrum of density perturbations has a cut-off on the scale of dwarf galaxies. Structure formation therefore begins later than in the standard cold dark matter (CDM) model and very few objects form below the cut-off mass scale. To calculate the number of ionising photons, we use the Durham semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, GALFORM. We find that even the most extreme 7 keV sterile neutrino we consider is able to reionise the Universe early enough to be compatible with the bounds on the epoch of reionisation from Planck. This, perhaps surprising, result arises from the rapid build-up of high redshift galaxies in the sterile neutrino models which is also reflected in a faster evolution of their far-UV luminosity function between $10>z>7$ than in CDM. The dominant sources of ionising photons are systematically more massive in the sterile neutrino models than in CDM. As a consistency check on the models, we calculate the present-day luminosity function of satellites of Milky Way-like galaxies. When the satellites recently discovered in the DES survey are taken into account, strong constraints are placed on viable sterile neutrino models.
We present a comparison between several observational tests of the post-reionization IGM and the numerical simulations of reionization completed under the Cosmic Reionization On Computers (CROC) project. We show that CROC simulations reproduce "out-of-the-box" the observed distributions of Gunn-Peterson optical depths, underscoring the importance of self-consistent modeling of radiative transfer. We also show that CROC simulations match well the observed distributions of dark gaps from SDSS quasars. Finally, we introduce a novel statistical probe of the small-scale structure in the IGM: heights and widths of transmission peaks. Simulations match the peak height distributions reasonably well, but do not reproduce the observed abundance of wide peaks.
The recently developed code for N-body/hydrodynamics simulations in Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), known as RAyMOND, is used to investigate the consequences of MOND on structure formation in a cosmological context, with a particular focus on the velocity field. This preliminary study investigates the results obtained with the two formulations of MOND implemented in RAyMOND, as well as considering the effects of changing the choice of MOND interpolation function, and the cosmological evolution of the MOND acceleration scale. The simulations are contrived such that structure forms in a background cosmology that is similar to $\Lambda$CDM, but with a significantly lower matter content. Given this, and the fact that a fully consistent MOND cosmology is still lacking, we compare our results with a standard $\Lambda$CDM simulation, rather than observations. As well as demonstrating the effectiveness of using RAyMOND for cosmological simulations, it is shown that a significant enhancement of the velocity field is likely an unavoidable consequence of the gravitational modification implemented in MOND, and may represent a clear observational signature of such a modification. It is further suggested that such a signal may be clearest in intermediate density regions such as cluster outskirts and filaments.
We develop a formalism for calculating soft limits of $n$-point inflationary correlation functions using separate universe techniques. Our method naturally allows for multiple fields and leads to an elegant diagrammatic approach. As an application we focus on the trispectrum produced by inflation with multiple light fields, giving explicit formulae for all possible single- and double-soft limits. We also investigate consistency relations and present an infinite tower of inequalities between soft correlation functions which generalise the Suyama-Yamaguchi inequality.
We introduce a new set of large scale, high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of the intergalactic medium: the Sherwood simulation suite. These are performed in volumes 10^3-160^3 h^-3 comoving Mpc^{3}, span almost four orders of magnitude in mass resolution with up to 17.2 billion particles, and employ a variety of physics variations including warm dark matter and galactic outflows. We undertake a detailed comparison of the simulations to high resolution, high signal-to-noise observations of the Lyman-alpha forest over the redshift range 2 < z < 5. The simulations are in very good agreement with the observational data, lending further support to the paradigm that the Lyman-alpha forest is a natural consequence of the web-like distribution of matter arising in LCDM cosmological models. Only a small number of minor discrepancies remain with respect to the observational data. Saturated Lyman-alpha absorption lines with column densities N_HI > 10^14.5 cm^-2 at 2 < z < 2.5 are underpredicted in the models. An uncertain correction for continuum placement bias is required to match the distribution and power spectrum of the transmitted flux, particularly at z > 4. Finally, the temperature of intergalactic gas in the simulations may be slightly too low at z=2.7 and a flatter temperature-density relation is required at z=2.4, consistent with the expected effects of non-equilibrium ionisation during He-II reionisation.
Primordial gravitational waves constitute a promising probe of the very-early universe and the laws of gravity. We study changes to tensor mode perturbations that can arise in various proposed modified gravity (MG) theories. These include additional friction effects, non-standard dispersion relations involving a massive graviton, a modified speed, and a small-scale modification. We introduce a physically-motivated parameterization of these effects and use current available data to obtain exclusion regions in the parameter spaces. Taking into account the foreground subtraction, we then perform a forecast analysis focusing on the tensor mode MG parameters as constrained by the future experiments COrE, Stage-IV and PIXIE. For a fiducial value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio r=0.01, we find that an additional friction of 3.5-4.5% compared to GR will be detected at $3\sigma$ by these experiments while a decrease in friction will be more difficult to detect. The speed of gravitational waves needs to be 5-15% different from the speed of light for detection. We find that the minimum detectable graviton mass is about $7.8-9.7\times 10^{-33}eV$, which is of the same order of magnitude as the graviton mass that allows massive gravity to produce late-time cosmic acceleration. Finally, we study the tensor mode perturbations in MG during inflation using our parameterization and find that if the background was de Sitter, the tensor spectral index would be related to the friction parameter by $n_T=-3\nu_0$ assuming the friction parameter is unchanged throughout the history of the universe. The experiments considered here will be able to distinguish this consistency relation from that of GR in some cases, and thus can be used as a further test of modified gravity. In sum, tensor mode perturbations and CMB B-mode polarization provide a complementary avenue to test gravity theories. (Abridged)
We investigate constraints on cosmic reionization extracted from the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We combine the Planck CMB anisotropy data in temperature with the low-multipole polarization data to fit {\Lambda}CDM models with various parameterizations of the reionization history. We obtain a Thomson optical depth {\tau}=0.058 +/- 0.012 for the commonly adopted instantaneous reionization model. This confirms, with only data from CMB anisotropies, the low value suggested by combining Planck 2015 results with other data sets and also reduces the uncertainties. We reconstruct the history of the ionization fraction using either a symmetric or an asymmetric model for the transition between the neutral and ionized phases. To determine better constraints on the duration of the reionization process, we also make use of measurements of the amplitude of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect using additional information from the high resolution Atacama Cosmology Telescope and South Pole Telescope experiments. The average redshift at which reionization occurs is found to lie between z=7.8 and 8.8, depending on the model of reionization adopted. Using kSZ constraints and a redshift-symmetric reionization model, we find an upper limit to the width of the reionization period of {\Delta}z < 2.8. In all cases, we find that the Universe is ionized at less than the 10% level at redshifts above z~10. This suggests that an early onset of reionization is strongly disfavoured by the Planck data. We show that this result also reduces the tension between CMB-based analyses and constraints from other astrophysical sources.
We measure the SZ signal toward a set of 47 clusters with a median mass of $9.5 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$ and a median redshift of 0.40 using data from Planck and the ground-based Bolocam receiver. When Planck XMM-like masses are used to set the scale radius $\theta_{\textrm{s}}$, we find consistency between the integrated SZ signal, $Y_{\textrm{5R500}}$, derived from Bolocam and Planck based on gNFW model fits using A10 shape parameters, with an average ratio of $1.069 \pm 0.030$ (allowing for the $\simeq 5$% Bolocam flux calibration uncertainty). We also perform a joint fit to the Bolocam and Planck data using a modified A10 model with the outer logarithmic slope $\beta$ allowed to vary, finding $\beta = 6.13 \pm 0.16 \pm 0.76$ (measurement error followed by intrinsic scatter). In addition, we find that the value of $\beta$ scales with mass and redshift according to $\beta \propto M^{0.077 \pm 0.026} \times (1+z)^{-0.06 \pm 0.09}$. This mass scaling is in good agreement with recent simulations. We do not observe the strong trend of $\beta$ with redshift seen in simulations, though we conclude that this is most likely due to our sample selection. Finally, we use Bolocam measurements of $Y_{500}$ to test the accuracy of the Planck completeness estimate. We find consistency, with the actual number of Planck detections falling approximately $1 \sigma$ below the expectation from Bolocam. We translate this small difference into a constraint on the the effective mass bias for the Planck cluster cosmology results, with $(1-b) = 0.93 \pm 0.06$.
We study dynamics of cosmological models with diffusion effects modeling dark matter and dark energy interactions. We show the simple model with diffusion between the cosmological constant sector and dark matter, where the canonical scaling law of dark matter $(\rho_{dm,0}a^{-3}(t))$ is modified by an additive $\epsilon(t)=\gamma t a^{-3}(t)$ to the form $\rho_{dm}=\rho_{dm,0}a^{-3}(t)+\epsilon(t)$. We reduced this model to the autonomous dynamical system and investigate it using dynamical system methods. This system possesses a two-dimensional invariant submanifold on which the DM-DE interaction can be analyzed on the phase plane. The state variables are density parameter for matter (dark and visible) and parameter $\delta$ characterizing the rate of growth of energy transfer between the dark sectors. A corresponding dynamical system belongs to a general class of jungle type of cosmologies represented by coupled cosmological models in a Lotka-Volterra framework. We demonstrate that the de Sitter solution is a global attractor for all trajectories in the phase space and there are two repellers: the Einstein-de Sitter universe and the de Sitter universe state dominating by the diffusion effects. We distinguish in the phase space trajectories, which become in good agreement with the data. They should intersect a rectangle with sides of $\Omega_{m,0}\in [0.2724, 0.3624]$, $\delta \in [0.0000, 0.0364]$ at the 95\% CL. Our model could solve some of the puzzles of the $\Lambda$CDM model, such as the coincidence and fine-tuning problems. In the context of the coincidence problem, our model can explain the present ratio of $\rho_{m}$ to $\rho_{de}$, which is equal $0.4576^{+0.1109}_{-0.0831}$ at a 2$\sigma$ confidence level.
Bell's inequality for continuous-variable bipartite systems is studied. The inequality is expressed in terms of pseudo-spin operators and quantum expectation values are calculated for generic two-mode squeezed states characterized by a squeezing parameter $r$ and a squeezing angle $\varphi$. Allowing for generic values of the squeezing angle is especially relevant when $\varphi$ is not under experimental control, such as in cosmic inflation, where small quantum fluctuations in the early Universe are responsible for structures formation. Compared to previous studies restricted to $\varphi=0$ and to a fixed orientation of the pseudo-spin operators, allowing for $\varphi\neq 0$ and optimizing the angular configuration leads to a completely new and rich phenomenology. Two dual schemes of approximation are designed that allow for comprehensive exploration of the squeezing parameters space. In particular, it is found that Bell's inequality can be violated when the squeezing parameter $r$ is large enough, $r\gtrsim 1.12$, and the squeezing angle $\varphi$ is small enough, $\varphi\lesssim 0.34\,e^{-r}$.
The UV/optical variability of active galactic nuclei and quasars is useful for understanding the physics of the accretion disk and is gradually attributed to the stochastic fluctuations over the accretion disk. Quasars generally appear bluer when they brighten in the UV/optical, the nature of which remains controversial. Recently \citeauthor{Sun2014} discovered that the color variation of quasars is timescale dependent, in the way that faster variations are even bluer than longer term ones. While this discovery can directly rule out models that simply attribute the color variation to contamination from the host galaxies, or to changes in the global accretion rates, it favors the stochastic disk fluctuation model as fluctuations in the innermost hotter disk could dominate the short-term variations. In this work, we show that a revised inhomogeneous disk model, where the characteristic timescales of thermal fluctuations in the disk are radius-dependent (i.e., $\tau \sim r$; based on the one originally proposed by \citeauthor{DexterAgol2011}), can well reproduce a timescale dependent color variation pattern, similar to the observed one and unaffected by the un-even sampling and photometric error. This demonstrates that one may statistically use variation emission at different timescales to spatially resolve the accretion disk in quasars, thus opens a new window to probe and test the accretion disk physics in the era of time domain astronomy. Caveats of the current model, which ought to be addressed in future simulations, are discussed.
We present a detailed X-ray variability study of the low mass Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) NGC 7314 using the two newly obtained XMM-Newton observations ($140$ and $130$ ks), together with two archival data sets of shorter duration ($45$ and $84$ ks). The relationship between the X-ray variability characteristics and other physical source properties (such as the black hole mass) are still relatively poorly defined, especially for low-mass AGN. We perform a new, fully analytical, power spectral density (PSD) model analysis method, which will be described in detail in a forthcoming paper, that takes into consideration the spectral distortions, caused by red-noise leak. We find that the PSD in the $0.5-10$ keV energy range, can be represented by a bending power-law with a bend around $6.7\times10^{-5}$ Hz, having a slope of $0.51$ and $1.99$ below and above the bend, respectively. Adding our bend time-scale estimate, to an already published ensemble of estimates from several AGN, supports the idea that the bend time-scale depends linearly only on the black hole mass and not on the bolometric luminosity. Moreover, we find that as the energy range increases, the PSD normalization increases and there is a hint that simultaneously the high frequency slope becomes steeper. Finally, the X-ray time-lag spectrum of NGC 7314 shows some very weak signatures of relativistic reflection, and the energy resolved time-lag spectrum, for frequencies around $3\times10^{-4}$ Hz, shows no signatures of X-ray reverberation. We show that the previous claim about ks time-delays in this source, is simply an artefact induced by the minuscule number of points entering during the time-lag estimation in the low frequency part of the time-lag spectrum (i.e. below $10^{-4}$ Hz).
We present the discovery of a giant $\gtrsim$100 kpc Ly$\alpha$ nebula detected in the core of the X-ray emitting cluster CL J1449+0856 at $z=1.99$ through Keck/LRIS narrow-band imaging. This detection extends the known relation between Ly$\alpha$ nebulae and overdense regions of the Universe to the dense core of a $5-7\times10^{13}$ M$_{\odot}$ cluster. The most plausible candidates to power the nebula are two Chandra-detected AGN host cluster members. Given the physical conditions of the Ly$\alpha$-emitting gas and the possible interplay with the X-ray phase, we argue that the Ly$\alpha$ nebula would be short-lived ($\lesssim10$ Myr) if not continuously replenished with cold gas at a rate of $\gtrsim1000$ Myr. Cooling from the X-ray phase is disfavored as the replenishing mechanism, primarily because of the high Ly$\alpha$ to X-ray luminosity ratio ($L_{\mathrm{Ly\alpha}}/L_{\mathrm{X}} \approx0.3$), $\gtrsim10-1000\times$ higher than in local cool-core clusters. Cosmological cold flows are disfavored by current modeling. Thus, the cold gas is most plausibly supplied by cluster galaxies through massive outflows. An independent estimate of the total mass outflow rate of core members, based on the observed star formation and black hole accretion rates, matches the required replenishment to sustain the nebula. This scenario directly implies the extraction of energy from galaxies and its deposition in the surrounding intracluster medium, as required to explain the thermodynamic properties of local clusters. We estimate an energy injection of the order of $\thickapprox2$ keV per particle in the intracluster medium over a $2$ Gyr interval. AGN provide $75-85$% of the injected energy and $\approx66$% of the mass, while the rest is supplied by supernovae-driven winds.
We consider a simplified model in which Majorana fermion dark matter annihilates to charged fermions through exchange of charged mediators. We consider the gamma-ray signals arising from the processes $XX \rightarrow \bar f f \gamma$, $\gamma \gamma$, and $\gamma Z$ in the most general case, including non-trivial fermion mass and non-trivial left-right mixing and $CP$-violating phase for the charged mediators. In particular, we find the most general spectrum for internal bremsstrahlung, which interpolates between the regimes dominated by virtual internal bremsstrahlung and by final state radiation. We also examine the variation in the ratio $\sigma(\gamma \gamma) / \sigma (\gamma Z)$ and the helicity asymmetry in the $XX \rightarrow \gamma \gamma$ process, each as a function of mixing angle and $CP$-violating phase. As an application, we apply these results to searches for a class of MSSM models.
We explore the mechanics of inflation in simplified extra-dimensional models involving an inflaton interacting with the Einstein-Maxwell system in two extra dimensions. The models are Goldilocks-like in that they are just complicated enough to include a mechanism to stabilize the extra-dimensional size, yet simple enough to solve the full 6D field equations using basic tools. The solutions are not limited to the effective 4D regime with H << m_KK (the latter referring to the characteristic mass gap of the Kaluza-Klein excitations) because the full 6D Einstein equations are solved. This allows an exploration of inflationary physics in a controlled regime away from the usual 4D lamp-post. The inclusion of modulus stabilization is important as experience with string models teaches that this is usually what makes models fail: stabilization energies dominate the shallow potentials required by slow roll and open up directions to evolve that are steeper than those of the putative inflationary direction. We explore three representative inflationary scenarios within this simple setup. In one the radion is trapped in an inflaton-dependent local minimum whose non-zero energy drives inflation. Inflation ends as this energy relaxes to zero when the inflaton finds its minimum. The others involve power-law solutions during inflation. One is an attractor whose features are relatively insensitive to initial conditions but whose slow-roll parameters cannot be arbitrarily small; the other is not an attractor but can roll much more slowly, until eventually decaying to the attractor. These solutions can satisfy H > m_KK, but when they do standard 4D fluctuation calculations need not apply. When in a 4D regime the solutions predict eta ~ 0 hence n_s ~ 0.96 and r ~ 0.096 and so are ruled out if tensor modes remain unseen. Analysis of general parameters is difficult without a full 6D fluctuation calculation.
We investigate gravitational Cherenkov radiation in a healthy branch of background solutions in the ghost-free bigravity model. In this model, because of the modification of dispersion relations, each polarization mode can possess subluminal phase velocities, and the gravitational Cherenkov radiation could be potentially emitted from a relativistic particle. In the present paper, we derive conditions for the process of the gravitational Cherenkov radiation to occur and estimate the energy emission rate for each polarization mode. We found that the gravitational Cherenkov radiation emitted even from an ultrahigh energy cosmic ray is sufficiently suppressed for the graviton's effective mass less than $100\,{\rm eV}$, and the bigravity model with dark matter coupled to the hidden metric is therefore consistent with observations of high energy cosmic rays.
In this paper we perform a dynamical analysis for a vector field as a candidate for the dark energy, in the presence of a barothropic fluid. The vector is one component of the so-called cosmic triad, which is a set of three identical copies of an abelian field pointing mutually in the orthogonal direction. In order to generalize the analysis, we also assumed the interaction between dark energy and the barothropic fluid, with a phenomenological coupling. Both matter and dark energy eras can be successfully described by the critical points, indicating that the dynamical system theory is a viable tool to analyze asymptotic states of such cosmological models.
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We investigate the gravitational wave background from a first order phase transition in a matter-dominated universe, and show that it has a unique feature from which important information about the properties of the phase transition and thermal history of the universe can be easily extracted. Also, we discuss the inverse problem of such a gravitational wave background in view of the degeneracy among macroscopic parameters governing the signal.
I review the current status of structure formation bounds on neutrino properties such as mass and energy density. I also discuss future cosmological bounds as well as a variety of different scenarios for reconciling cosmology with the presence of light sterile neutrinos.
Cosmic reionization and dark matter decay can impact observations of the cosmic microwave sky in a similar way. A simultaneous study of both effects is required to constrain unstable dark matter from cosmic microwave background observations. We compare two reionization models with and without dark matter decay. We find that a reionization model that fits also data from quasars and star forming galaxies results in tighter constraints on the reionization optical depth $\tau_{\text{reio}}$, but weaker constraints on the spectral index $n_{\text{s}}$ than the conventional parametrization. We use the Planck 2015 data to constrain the effective decay rate of dark matter to $\Gamma_{\rm eff} < 2.9 \times 10^{-25}/$s at $95$\% C.L. This limit is robust and model independent. It holds for any type of decaying dark matter and it depends only weakly on the chosen parametrization of astrophysical reionization. For light dark matter particles that decay exclusively into electromagnetic components this implies a limit of $\Gamma < 5 \times 10^{-24}/$s at $95$\% C.L. Specifying the decay channels, we apply our result to the case of keV-mass sterile neutrinos as dark matter candidates and obtain constraints on their mixing angle and mass, which are comparable to the ones from the diffuse X-ray background.
We report the discovery of an optical Einstein Ring in the Sculptor constellation, IAC J010127-334319, in the vicinity of the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. It is an almost complete ring ($\sim 300^{\circ}$) with a diameter of $\sim 4.5\, {\rm arcsec}$. The discovery was made serendipitously from inspecting Dark Energy Camera (DECam) archive imaging data. Confirmation of the object nature has been obtained by deriving spectroscopic redshifts for both components, lens and source, from observations at the $10.4$ m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) with the spectrograph OSIRIS. The lens, a massive early-type galaxy, has a redshift of ${\rm z}=0.581$ while the source is a starburst galaxy with redshift of ${\rm z}=1.165$. The total enclosed mass that produces the lensing effect has been estimated to be ${\rm M_{tot}=(1.86 \pm 0.23) \,\cdot 10^{12}\, {\rm M_{\odot}}}$.
In this work, we test consistency relations between a kinematic probe, the observational Hubble data, and a dynamical probe, the growth rates for cosmic large scale structure, which should hold if general relativity is the correct theory of gravity on cosmological scales. Moreover, we summarize the development history of parametrization in testings and make an improvement of it. Taking advantage of the Hubble parameter given from both parametric and non-parametric methods, we propose three equations and test two of them performed by means of two-dimensional parameterizations, including one using trigonometric functions we propose. As a result, it is found that the consistency relations satisfies well at $1\sigma$ CL and trigonometric functions turn out to be efficient tools in parameterizations. Furthermore, in order to confirm the validity of our test, we introduce a model of modified gravity, DGP model and compare the testing results in the cases of $\Lambda$CDM, "DGP in GR" and DGP model with mock data. It can be seen that it is the establishing of consistency relations which dominates the results of the testing. Overall, the present observational Hubble data and growth rate data favor convincingly that the general relativity is the correct theory of gravity on cosmological scales.
We discuss a possible extension of calculations of the bending angle of light in a static, spherically symmetric and asymptotically flat spacetime to a non-asymptotically flat case. We examine a relation between the bending angle of light and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem by using the optical metric. A correspondence between the deflection angle of light and the surface integral of the Gaussian curvature may allow us to take account of the finite distance from a lens object to a light source and a receiver. Using this relation, we propose a method for calculating the bending angle of light for such cases. Finally, this method is applied to two examples of the non-asymptotically flat spacetimes to suggest finite-distance corrections: Schwarzschild-de Sitter (Kottler) solution to the Einstein equation and an exact solution in Weyl conformal gravity.
We argue that any GRB model where the progenitor is made by high relativistic hadronic interactions shock waves, and later on by electron-pairs feeding gamma jets, is necessarily leading to an average high neutrino over photon fluency ratio well above unity, mostly above several thousands. The present observed average highest energy ICECUBE neutrino energy fluency is at most comparable to the gamma-X in GRB one. Therefore no hadronic GRB, Fireball or even any earliest hadronic thin precessing Jet, may fit the observation. We therefore imagine a novel electronic thin spinning and precessing jet, fed in late binary system, able to avoid the overcrowded neutrino tails foreseen in hadronic GRB models. In some occasion such an electronic model may lead to an explosion that shines during a GRB with an (apparent) late SN-like event.
The simplest way to modify gravity is to extend the gravitational sector to include an additional scalar degree of freedom. The most general metric that can be built in such a theory includes disformal terms, so that standard model fields move on a metric which is the sum of the space time metric and a tensor constructed from first derivatives of the scalar. In such a theory gravitational waves and photons can propagate at different speeds, and these can in turn be different from the maximum speed limit for matter particles. In this work we show that disformal couplings can cause charged particles to emit Cherenkov radiation and bremsstrahlung apparently in vacuum, depending on the background evolution of the scalar field. We discuss the implications of this for observations of cosmic rays, and the constraints that arise for models of dark energy with disformal couplings.
Gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows are thought to be produced by an ultra-relativistic jet. One of the most important open questions is the outflow composition: the energy may be carried out from the central source either as kinetic energy (of baryons and/or pairs), or in electromagnetic form (Poynting flux). While the total observable flux may be indistinguishable in both cases, its polarization properties are expected to differ markedly. The prompt emission and afterglow polarization are also a powerful diagnostic of the jet geometry. Again, with subtle and hardly detectable differences in the output flux, we have distinct polarization predictions. In this review we briefly describe the theoretical scenarios that have been developed following the observations, and the now large observational datasets that for the prompt and the afterglow phases are available. Possible implications of polarimetric measurements for quantum gravity theory testing are discussed, and future perspectives for the field briefly mentioned.
Several `giant' Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) nebulae with extent $\gtrsim 300\,$kpc and observed Ly$\alpha$ luminosity of $\gtrsim 10^{44}\,{\rm erg}\,{\rm s}^{-1}\,{\rm cm}^{-2}\,{\rm arcsec}^{-2}$ have recently been detected, and it has been speculated that their presence hints at a substantial cold gas reservoir in small cool clumps not resolved in modern hydro-dynamical simulations. We use the Illustris simulation to predict the Ly$\alpha$ emission emerging from large halos ($M > 10^{11.5}M_{\odot}$) at $z\sim 2$ and thus test this model. We consider both AGN and star driven ionization, and compared the simulated surface brightness maps, profiles and Ly$\alpha$ spectra to a model where most gas is clumped below the simulation resolution scale. We find that while the cold clumps boost the Ly$\alpha$ luminosity especially in the outer regions of the halo -- as expected by previous work -- with Illustris no additional clumping is necessary to explain the extents and luminosities of the `giant Ly$\alpha$ nebulae' observed. Furthermore, the maximal extents of the objects show a wide spread for a given luminosity and do not correlate significantly with any halo properties. We also show how the detected size depends strongly on the employed surface brightness cutoff, and predict that further such objects will be found in the near future.
We present MCRaT, a Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer code for self-consistently computing the light curves and spectra of the photospheric emission from relativistic, unmagnetized jets. We apply MCRaT to a relativistic hydrodynamic simulation of a long duration gamma-ray burst jet, and present the resulting light-curves and time-dependent spectra for observers at various angles from the jet axis. We compare our results to observational results and find that photospheric emission is a viable model to explain the prompt phase of long-duration gamma-ray bursts at the peak frequency and above, but faces challenges in reproducing the flat spectrum below the peak frequency. We finally discuss possible limitations of these results both in terms of the hydrodynamics and the radiation transfer and how these limitations could affect the conclusions that we present.
The Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model has been proposed as a possible solution to the quantum measurement problem by modifying the Schr\"{o}dinger equation. In this work, we apply the CSL model to two cosmological models of the early Universe: the matter bounce scenario and slow roll inflation. In particular, we focus on the generation of the classical primordial inhomogeneities and anisotropies that arise from the dynamical evolution, provided by the CSL mechanism, of the quantum state associated to the quantum fields. In each case, we obtained a prediction for the shape and the parameters characterizing the primordial spectra (scalar and tensor), i.e. the amplitude, the spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio. We found that there exist CSL parameter values, allowed by other non-cosmological experiments, for which our predictions for the angular power spectrum of the CMB temperature anisotropy are consistent with the best fit canonical model to the latest data released by the Planck Collaboration.
I show that a recently discovered star cluster near the center of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Eridanus II provides strong constraints on massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) of >~5 M_sun as the main component of dark matter. MACHO dark matter will dynamically heat the cluster, driving it to larger sizes and higher velocity dispersions until it dissolves into its host galaxy. The star cluster has a luminosity of just ~2000 L_sun and is relatively puffy, with a half-light radius of 13 pc, making it much more fragile than other known clusters in dwarf galaxies. For a wide range of plausible dark matter halo properties, Eri II's star cluster combines with existing constraints from microlensing, wide binaries, and disk kinematics to rule out dark matter composed entirely of MACHOs from ~10$^{-7}$ M_sun up to arbitrarily high masses. The cluster in Eri II closes the ~20--100 M_sun window of allowed MACHO dark matter and provides much stronger constraints than wide Galactic binaries for MACHOs of up to thousands of Solar masses.
We used the Revised Flat Galaxy Catalog (RFGC) to select 817 ultra-flat (UF) edge-on disk galaxies with blue and red apparent axial ratios of $(a/b)_B > 10.0$ and $(a/b)_R > 8.5$. The sample covering the whole sky, except the Milky Way zone, contains 490 UF galaxies with measured radial velocities. Our inspection of the neighboring galaxies around them revealed only 30 companions with radial velocity difference of $\mid\Delta V\mid<500$ km s$^{-1}$ inside the projected separation of $R_p < 250$ kpc. Wherein, the wider area around the UF galaxy within $R_p < 750$ kpc contains no other neighbors brighter than the UF galaxy itself in the same velocity span. The resulting sample galaxies mostly belong to the morphological types Sc, Scd, Sd. They have a moderate rotation velocity curve amplitude of about $120$ km s$^{-1}$ and a moderate K-band luminosity of about $10^{10}L_{\odot}$. The median difference of radial velocities of their companions is $87$ km s$^{-1}$, yielding the median orbital mass estimate of about $5\times10^{11}M_{\odot}$. Excluding six probable non-isolated pairs, we obtained a typical halo-mass-to-stellar-mass of UF galaxies of about $30$, what is almost the same one as in the principal spiral galaxies, like M 31 and M 81 in the nearest groups. We also note that ultra-flat galaxies look two times less "dusty" than other spirals of the same luminosity.
A short introduction on elements of noncommutative geometry, which offers a purely geometric interpretation of the Standard Model and implies a higher derivative gravitational theory, is presented. Physical consequences of almost commutative manifolds are briefly discussed and cosmological consequences of the gravitational sector, which is shown not to be plagued by linear instability, are highlighted. Successes and challenges are discussed. A novel spectral action proposal based on zeta function regularisation is briefly presented.
Images of dust continuum and CO line emission are powerful tools for deducing structural characteristics of galaxies, such as disk sizes, H$_2$ gas velocity fields and enclosed H$_2$ and dynamical masses. We report on a fundamental constraint set by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on the observed structural and dynamical characteristics of galaxies, as deduced from dust continuum and CO-line imaging at high redshifts. As the CMB temperature rises in the distant Universe, the ensuing thermal equilibrium between the CMB and the cold dust and H$_2$ gas progressively erases all spatial and spectral contrasts between their brightness distributions and the CMB. For high-redshift galaxies, this strongly biases the recoverable H$_2$ gas and dust mass distributions, scale lengths, gas velocity fields and dynamical mass estimates. This limitation is unique to mm/submm wavelengths and unlike its known effect on the global dust continuum and molecular line emission of galaxies, it cannot be addressed simply. We nevertheless identify a unique signature of CMB-affected continuum brightness distributions, namely an increasing rather than diminishing contrast between such brightness distributions and the CMB when the cold dust in distant galaxies is imaged at frequencies beyond the Raleigh-Jeans limit. For the molecular gas tracers, the same effect makes the atomic carbon (CI) lines maintain a larger contrast than the CO lines against the CMB.
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