Related papers: Galaxy clusters, type Ia supernovae and the fine s…
We use astrophysical and atomic clock tests of the stability of the fine-structure constant $\alpha$, together with Type Ia supernova and Hubble parameter data, to constrain the simplest class of dynamical dark energy models where the same…
Observations of galaxy clusters (GC's) are a powerful tool to probe the evolution of the Universe at $z<2$. However, the determination of their real shape and structure is not completely understood and the assumption of asphericity is often…
We introduce a new statistic to measure more accurately the cosmic sound speed of clusters of galaxies at different redshifts. This statistic is evaluated by cross-correlating cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations caused by the…
Galaxy clusters, the most massive collapsed structures, have been routinely used to determine cosmological parameters. When using clusters for cosmology, the crucial assumption is that they are relaxed. However, subarcminute resolution…
The interaction of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with the hot gas in clusters of galaxies, the so-called Sunyaev--Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, is a very useful tool that allows us to determine the physical conditions in such clusters and…
Supernova Ia magnitude surveys measure the dimensionless luminosity distance $H_{0}D_{L}$. However, from the distances alone one cannot obtain quantities like $H(z)$ or the dark energy equation of state, unless further cosmological…
The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect introduces a specific distortion of the blackbody spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation when it scatters off hot gas in clusters of galaxies. The frequency dependence of the…
{In this paper, we use large scale structure observations to test the redshift dependence of cosmic distance duality relation (CDDR), $D_{\rm L}(1+z)^{-2}/D_{\rm A}=\eta(z)$}, with $D_{\rm L}$ and $D_{\rm A}$, being the luminosity and…
We present an update of our previous work, necessitated by availability of a significantly improved dataset. The work is a model-independent analysis of the cosmological supernova (Type Ia) data, where function families are fit to the data…
We present new measurements of the large-scale bulk flows of galaxy clusters based on 5-year WMAP data and a significantly expanded X-ray cluster catalogue. Our method probes the flow via measurements of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ)…
The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) provides a powerful tool for cosmological studies. Through recent advances in instrumentation and observational techniques it is now possible to obtain high quality measurements of the effect toward…
The delay time distribution (DTD) of Type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is important for understanding chemical evolution, SN Ia progenitors, and SN Ia physics. Past estimates of the DTD in galaxy clusters have been deduced from SN Ia rates…
The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect is a powerful probe of the evolution of structures in the universe, and is thus highly sensitive to cosmological parameters $\sigma_8$ and $\Omega_m$, though its power is hampered by the current…
We investigate the influence of the finite extension and the aspherical geometry of a galaxy cluster on the estimate of the Hubble constant through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. An analysis of a recent CHANDRA image of the galaxy cluster…
(abridged) The evolution of galaxy clustering from z=0 to z=4.5 is analyzed using the angular correlation function and the photometric redshift distribution of galaxies brighter than I_{AB}\le 28.5 in the HDF North. The reliability of the…
We present constraints on cosmological parameters using number counts as a function of redshift for a sub-sample of 189 galaxy clusters from the Planck SZ (PSZ) catalogue. The PSZ is selected through the signature of the Sunyaev--Zeldovich…
Under the assumption that the gas mass fraction of galaxy clusters estimated out to an outer hydrostatic radius is constant, it is possible to constrain the cosmological parameters by using the angular diameter distance relation with…
We perform a cosmological-model-independent test for the distance-duality (DD) relation $\eta(z)=D_L(z)(1+z)^{-2}/D_A(z)$, where $D_L$ and $D_A$ are the luminosity distance and angular diameter distance respectively, with a combination of…
We consider a cosmological model with a variable gravitational constant, G, based on a scalar-tensor theory. Using the recent observational data for the Hubble diagram of type Ia supernovae (SNeIa) we find a phenomenological expression…
We quantify the uncertainty in weak lensing mass estimates of clusters of galaxies, caused by distant (uncorrelated) large scale structure along the line of sight. We find that the effect is fairly small for deep observations (20<R<26) of…