Related papers: On Estimating Lyman-alpha Forest Correlations betw…
The Lyman-$\alpha$ (hereafter Ly-$\alpha$) forest is a probe of large-scale matter density fluctuations at high redshift, $z > 2.1$. It consists of HI absorption spectra along individual lines-of-sight. If the line-of-sight density is large…
The proximity effect of metal line absorption systems in spectra of high redshift quasars and quasar pairs is investigated through the distribution of \Lyalpha forests. No strong proximity effect is found down to 500 km/sec away from a…
We investigate correlations between the long wavelength fluctuations and the small scale power in the Lyman alpha forest. We show that such correlations can be used to discriminate between fluctuations induced by large scale structure and…
We present measurements of the mean and scatter of the IGM Lyman-{\alpha} opacity at 4.9 < z < 6.1 along the lines of sight of 62 quasars at z > 5.7, the largest sample assembled at these redshifts to date by a factor of two. The sample…
We present a weak lensing analysis of the 3 GHz VLA radio survey of the COSMOS field, which we correlate with overlapping HST-ACS optical observations using both intrinsic galaxy shape and cosmic shear correlation statistics. After…
The Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) three-dimensional correlation functions have been widely used to perform cosmological inference using the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale. While the traditional inference approach employs a data…
We investigate the 3-D matter distribution at z~2 with high resolution (R ~ 40000) spectra of QSO pairs and groups obtained with the UVES spectrograph at ESO VLT. Our sample is unique for the number density of objects and the variety of…
We directly measure the evolution of the intergalactic Lya effective optical depth, tau_eff, over the redshift range 2<z<4.2 from a sample of 86 high-resolution, high-signal-to-noise quasar spectra obtained with the ESI and HIRES…
Very recently a new inversion method has been developped to analyze the intergalactic medium seen in absorption in quasar spectra (the so-called Lyman-alpha forest). This method is applied to recover the temperature of the gas and the…
We study the evolution with redshift of the number density of Ly$\alpha$ clouds in a CDM model using numerical simulations including photo-ionization and cooling of the baryonic component. The photo-ionizing flux is consistently taken as…
We use the halo model of clustering to compute two- and three-point correlation functions for weak lensing, and apply them in a new statistical technique to measure properties of massive halos. We present analytical results on the eight…
The relation between the Lyman-$\alpha$ effective optical depth of quasar sightlines ($\tau_\mathrm{los}$) and the distribution of galaxies around them is an emerging probe of the connection between the first collapsed structures and the…
We present the results of microlens ray-tracing simulations showing the effect of absorbing material between a source quasar and a lensing galaxy in a gravitational lens system. We find that, in addition to brightness fluctuations due to…
Inhomogeneous reionization enhances the 1D Lyman-$\alpha$ forest power spectrum on large scales at redshifts $z\geq4$. This is due to coherent fluctuations in the ionized hydrogen fraction that arise from large-scale variations in the…
Observations of redshifted Lyman alpha forest absorption in the spectra of quasistellar objects (QSOs) provide a highly sensitive probe of the distribution of gaseous matter in the universe. Over the past two decades optical spectroscopy…
In light of recent successes in measuring baryon acoustic oscillations in quasar absorption using the Lyman $\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) transition, I explore the possibility of using the 1548\AA\ transition of triply ionized carbon (C IV) as a…
We develop a new statistical method to reanalyse angular correlations between background QSOs and foreground galaxies that are supposed to be a consequence of dark matter inhomogeneities acting as weak gravitational lenses. The method is…
The \lya forest at high redshifts is a powerful probe of reionization. Modeling and observing this imprint comes with significant technical challenges: inhomogeneous reionization must be taken into account while simultaneously being able to…
The intergalactic medium (IGM) around quasars is shaped by their dense environments and by their excess ionizing radiation, forming a "quasar proximity zone" whose size and anisotropy depend on the quasar's halo mass, luminosity, age, and…
We present the integrated 3-point correlation functions (3PCF) involving both the cosmic shear and the galaxy density fields. These are a set of higher-order statistics that describe the modulation of local 2-point correlation functions…