Related papers: Arc Statistics
We review recent advancements in cosmology with galaxy clusters. Galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the Universe. Consequently the cluster number density as a function of cluster mass, or cluster abundance, is sensitive to…
Strong gravitational lensing by irregular mass distributions, such as galaxy clusters, is generally not well quantified by cross sections of analytic mass models. Computationally expensive ray-tracing methods have so far been necessary for…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak gravitational lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-convergence…
Cold dark matter (CDM) constitutes most of the matter in the Universe. The interplay between dark and luminous matter in dense cosmic environments like galaxy clusters is studied theoretically using cosmological simulations. Observed…
We investigate the effect of weak gravitational lensing in the limit of small angular scales where projected galaxy clustering is strongly nonlinear. This is the regime likely to be probed by future weak lensing surveys. We use…
Some years ago we proposed a new approach for the analysis of galaxy and cluster correlations based on the concepts and methods of modern statistical physics. This led to the surprising result that galaxy correlations are fractal and not…
Weak gravitational lensing has been used extensively in the past decade to constrain the masses of galaxy clusters, and is the most promising observational technique for providing the mass calibration necessary for precision cosmology with…
We consider strong gravitational lensing by nearby stars. Using our wave-optical treatment of lensing phenomena, we study Einstein rings that may form around nearby stellar lenses. It is remarkable that these rings are bright and large…
In gaussian theories of structure formation, the galaxy cluster abundance is an extremely sensitive probe of the density fluctuation power spectrum and of the density parameter, $\Omega$. We develop this theme by deriving and studying in…
The question of the nature of galaxy clustering and the possible homogeneity of galaxy distribution is one of the fundamental problem of cosmology. It is well established that galaxy structures are characterized, up to a certain scale, by…
We review one of the most fruitful areas in cosmology today that bridge theory and data - the temporal growth of large-scale structure. We go over the growth's physical foundations, and derive its behavior in simple cosmological models.…
Statistics of lensed arcs in clusters of galaxies serve as a powerful probe of both the non-sphericity and the inner slope of dark matter halos. We develop a semi-analytic method to compute the number of arcs in triaxial dark matter halos.…
Strong gravitational lensing has traditionally been one of the few phenomena said to oppose a large cosmological constant; many analyses of lens statistics have given upper limits on $\Omega_\Lambda$ that are marginally inconsistent with…
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…
We show that the spatial correlation of the intrinsic alignments (IAs) of galaxies, measured in galaxy redshift surveys, offers a precision route to improve the geometrical and dynamical constraints on cosmology. The IA has been treated as…
When a gravitational wave encounters a massive object along the line of sight, repeated copies of the original signal may be produced due to gravitational lensing. In this paper, we develop a series of new machine-learning based statistical…
We explore a new technique to measure cosmic shear using Einstein rings. In Birrer et al. (2017), we showed that the detailed modelling of Einstein rings can be used to measure external shear to high precision. In this letter, we explore…
The wealth of incoming and future cosmological observations will allow us to map out the structure and evolution of the observable universe to an unprecedented level of precision. Among these observations is the weak gravitational lensing…
Weak gravitational lensing (WL) causes distortions of galaxy images and probes massive structures on large scales, allowing us to understand the late-time evolution of the Universe. One way to extract the cosmological information from WL is…
Weak gravitational lensing is a unique probe of the dark side of the universe: it provides a direct way to map the distribution of dark matter around galaxies, clusters of galaxies and on cosmological scales. Furthermore, the measurement of…