Related papers: How accurate is our knowledge of galaxy bias?
The evolution of galaxy cluster counts is a powerful probe of several fundamental cosmological parameters. A number of recent studies using this probe have claimed tension with the cosmology preferred by the analysis of the Planck primary…
I discuss the use of cross correlations between galaxies with distance information and projected weak lensing dark matter maps to obtain a fully three dimensional dark matter map and power spectrum. On large scales l<100 one expects the…
The surface mass density of a cluster of galaxies, and thus its total mass, can be estimated from its lens magnification. The magnification can be determined from the variation in number counts of its background galaxies. In the weak…
The physically motivated definition of galaxy size proposed recently, linked to the farther location of the in situ star formation, considerably reduces the scatter of the galaxy mass-size relation and provides a viable method to infer the…
These lecture notes concentrate on a few specific topics concerning the distribution of galaxies on scales from 0.1 to nearly 1000/h Mpc. The main aim is to provide the students with the information and tools to familiarize with a few basic…
We determine what aspects of the density field surrounding galaxies most affect their properties. For Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies, we measure the group environment, meaning the host group luminosity and the distance from the group…
The first building block to use galaxy clusters in astrophysics and cosmology is the accurate determination of their mass. Two of the most well regarded direct mass estimators are based on weak lensing (WL) determinations or X-ray analyses…
The mass distribution of galaxy clusters can be determined from the study of the projected phase-space distribution of cluster galaxies. The main advantage of this method as compared to others, is that it allows determination of cluster…
We present a Bayesian hierarchical inference formalism to study the relation between the properties of dark matter halos and those of their central galaxies using weak gravitational lensing. Unlike traditional methods, this technique does…
Galaxies are biased tracers of the matter density on cosmological scales. For future tests of galaxy models, we refine and assess a method to measure galaxy biasing as function of physical scale $k$ with weak gravitational lensing. This…
Various cosmological applications of galaxy clusters are presented. Clusters are used to determine the baryon fraction, dark matter distribution and the matter density of the universe. They also contain a wealth of information about…
The exploitation of clusters of galaxies as cosmological probes relies on accurate measurements of their total gravitating mass. X-ray observations provide a powerful means of probing the total mass distribution in galaxy clusters, but…
Our ability to extract cosmological information from galaxy surveys is limited by uncertainties in the galaxy-dark matter halo relationship for a given galaxy population, which are governed by the intricacies of galaxy formation. To…
Galaxy-galaxy or galaxy-quasar lensing can provide important information on the mass distribution in the Universe. It consists of correlating the lensing signal (either shear or magnification) of a background galaxy/quasar sample with the…
Galaxy-galaxy lensing is rapidly becoming one of the most promising means to accurately measure the average relation between galaxy properties and halo mass. In order to obtain a signal of sufficient signal-to-noise, one needs to stack many…
Since gravitational lensing effects directly probe inhomogeneities of dark matter, lensing-galaxy cross-correlations can provide us important information on the relation between dark matter and galaxy distributions, i.e., the bias. In this…
The aim of this work is to perform a systematic study of the measures of the mass and concentration estimated by fitting the convergence profile of a large sample of mock galaxy cluster size lenses, created with the publicly available code…
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…
Accurate measurement of galaxy structures is a prerequisite for quantitative investigation of galaxy properties or evolution. Yet, the impact of galaxy inclination and dust on commonly used metrics of galaxy structure is poorly quantified.…
High- to ultrahigh-redshift clustering of halos provides a powerful tool to understand cosmology and galaxy formation. However, theoretical predictions are not firmly established in the first billion years, where current and upcoming…