Related papers: Quasar variability limits on cosmological density …
Motivated by the significant overdensity of background bright quasars recently detected behind the foreground clusters of galaxies on scale of $10$ arcminutes, we have investigated the possibility of attributing the quasar-cluster…
Context: Quasar variability has proven to be a powerful tool to constrain the properties of their inner engine and the accretion process onto supermassive black holes. Correlations between UV/optical variability and physical properties have…
We describe the results of high-resolution numerical simulations of string-induced structure formation in open universes and those with a non-zero cosmological constant. For models with $\Gamma = \Omega h = 0.1 - 0.2$ and a cold dark matter…
Cosmic superstrings of string theory differ from conventional cosmic strings of field theory. We review how the physical and cosmological properties of the macroscopic string loops influence experimental searches for these relics from the…
We introduce a technique to measure gravitational lensing magnification using the variability of type I quasars. Quasars' variability amplitudes and luminosities are tightly correlated, on average. Magnification due to gravitational lensing…
Exact solutions of the Einstein field equations with cosmic string and space varying cosmological constant, viz., $\Lambda= \Lambda(r)$, in the energy-momentum tensors are presented. Three cases have been studied: where variable…
The ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density $\eta/s$ of any material in nature has been conjectured to have a lower bound of $1/4\pi$, the famous KSS bound. We examine string theory models for evidence in favour of and against this…
We present cosmological results from the statistics of lensed quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Lens Search. By taking proper account of the selection function, we compute the expected number of quasars lensed by…
We analyze the properties of quasar variability using repeated SDSS imaging data in five UV-to-far red photometric bands, accurate to 0.02 mag, for 13,000 spectroscopically confirmed quasars. The observed time lags span the range from 3…
The Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background (SGWB) from cosmic superstrings offers one of the few known possibilities to test String Theory within current experimental reach. However, in order to be compatible with the existing…
The theoretically expected amplitude of the associations of background quasars with foreground galaxies as a result of gravitational lensing has been updated in this paper. Since the galactic matter alone yields an amplitude of quasar…
The number of cosmic strings in the observable universe is relevant in determining the probability of detecting such cosmic defects through their gravitational signatures. In particular, we refer to the observation of gravitational lensing…
We present projected constraints on the cosmic string tension, $G\mu/c^2$, that could be achieved by future gravitational wave detection experiments and express our results as semi-analytic relations of the form $G\mu(\Omega_{\rm…
We study the dependence of the number density and properties of quasars on the background galaxy density using the currently largest spectroscopic datasets of quasars and galaxies. We construct a galaxy number density field smoothed over…
We present a new approach to analysing the dependence of quasar variability on rest-frame wavelengths. We exploited the spectral archive of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to create a sample of more than 9000 quasars in the Stripe 82.…
In the light of recent work which suggests that structure formation by cosmic strings in a critical matter density universe requires large biases, we discuss the effects of reducing the matter density. Using a full linear Einstein-Boltzmann…
Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often…
We discuss data analysis techniques that can be used in the search for gravitational wave bursts from cosmic strings. When data from multiple interferometers are available, we describe consistency checks that can be used to greatly reduce…
We present a cosmic shear analysis of the 100 square degree weak lensing survey, combining data from the CFHTLS-Wide, RCS, VIRMOS-DESCART and GaBoDS surveys. Spanning ~100 square degrees, with a median source redshift z~0.78, this combined…
Measurements of radio emission from distant galaxies and quasars verify that the polarization vectors of these radiations are not randomly oriented as naturally expected. This peculiar phenomenon suggests that the spacetime intervening…