Related papers: Measuring dark energy spatial inhomogeneity with s…
In strong gravitational lensing, the multiple images we see correspond to light rays that leave the source in slightly different directions. If the source emission is anisotropic, the images may differ from conventional lensing predictions…
Ongoing searches for supernovae (SNe) at cosmological distances have recently started to provide large numbers of events with measured redshifts and apparent brightnesses. Compared to quasars or galaxies, Type Ia SNe represent a population…
We consider the effect on the propagation of light of inhomogeneities with sizes of order 10 Mpc or larger. The Universe is approximated through a variation of the Swiss-cheese model. The spherical inhomogeneities are void-like, with…
We study the effect of diffuse intracluster light on the critical surface mass density estimated from photometric redshifts of lensing source galaxies, and the resulting bias in a weak lensing measurement of galaxy cluster mass. Under…
We show how observations of multiply-imaged quasars at high redshift can be used as a probe of dark matter clumps (subhalos with masses ~ 10^9 solar masses) within the virialized extent of more massive lensing halos. A large abundance of…
We consider a dynamical model for dark energy based on an ultralight mass scalar field with very large-scale inhomogeneities. This model may cause observable impacts on the anisotropic properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
Weak gravitational lensing observations probe the spectrum and evolution of density fluctuations and the cosmological parameters which govern them but are currently limited to small fields and subject to selection biases. We show how the…
We study some cosmological constraints on the two phenomenological models of oscillating dark energy. In these scenarios, the equation of state of dark energy varies periodically and may provide a way to unify the early acceleration…
Weak gravitational lensing is responsible for the shearing and magnification of the images of high-redshift sources due to the presence of intervening matter. The distortions are due to fluctuations in the gravitational potential, and are…
Only galaxies bright enough and large enough to be unambiguously identified and measured are included in galaxy surveys used to estimate cosmic shear. We demonstrate that because gravitational lensing can scatter galaxies across the…
The nature of dark matter is increasingly constrained by cosmological data. In this paper, we examine the implications of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy limits on the density of cold dark matter under different theoretical…
Surveys of weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies will be one of the key cosmological probes in the future. We study the ability of such surveys to constrain neutrino masses and the equation of state parameter of the dark energy,…
Gravitational lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the matter distribution on subgalactic scales, which itself may contain important clues about the fundamental origins and properties of dark matter. Broadly speaking, two different…
We study the prospects for measuring the cosmological distribution and abundance of ionized electrons in the intergalactic medium using galaxy surveys. Optical light from distant galaxies is subject to Thomson screening by intervening…
It has been only ~15 years since the discovery of dark energy (although some may argue there were strong indications even earlier). In the short time since measurements of type Ia supernovae indicated an accelerating universe, many other…
In the last decade the detection of individual massive dark matter sub-halos has been possible using potential correction formalism in strong gravitational lens imaging. Here we propose a statistical formalism to relate strong gravitational…
The weak gravitational lensing magnification of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is sensitive to the matter power spectrum on scales $k>1 h$ Mpc$^{-1}$, making it unwise to interpret SNe Ia lensing in terms of power on linear scales. We compute…
We examine the dark energy and matter densities allowed by precision measurements of distances out to various redshifts, in the presence of spatial curvature and (near) arbitrary behavior of the dark energy equation of state. Degeneracies…
In this paper, we present a scheme to investigate the opacity of the Universe in a cosmological-model-independent way, with the combination of current and future measurements of type Ia supernova sample and galactic-scale strong…
The currently available cosmological data yield, as a most striking result, that the expansion rate of the universe seems to be increasing at late times, contrary to the standard (zero cosmological constant) FLRW prediction. The usual…