Related papers: Observables In Cosmology: Three Astronomical Persp…
This thesis consists of two parts, connected by one central theme: the dynamics of the "shape of space". The first part of the thesis concerns the construction of a theory of gravity dynamically equivalent to general relativity (GR) in 3+1…
Strong gravitational lensing provides an independent measurement of the Hubble parameter ($H_0$). One remaining systematic is a bias from the additional mass due to a galaxy group at the lens redshift or along the sightline. We quantify…
When the gravitational lensing potential can be approximated by that of circularly symmetric system affected by weak perturbations, it is found that the shape of the resulting (tangential) caustics is entirely specified by the local…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys are rapidly becoming important tools to probe directly the mass density fluctuations in the universe and its background dynamics. Earlier studies have shown that it is possible to model the statistics of…
We consider the impact of key astrophysical and measurement systematics on constraints on dark energy and modifications to gravity on cosmic scales. We focus on upcoming photometric "Stage III" and "Stage IV" large scale structure surveys…
A long standing problem in weak lensing is about how to construct cosmic shear estimators from galaxy images. Conventional methods average over a single quantity per galaxy to estimate each shear component. We show that any such shear…
This thesis describes a numerical study of binary boson stars within the context of an approximation to general relativity. The approximation we adopt places certain restrictions on the dynamical variables of general relativity (conformal…
In this communication, we consider a wide class of extensions to General Relativity that break explicitly the Einstein Equivalence Principle by introducing a multiplicative coupling between a scalar field and the electromagnetic Lagrangian.…
Weak gravitational lensing is an important tool to estimate the masses of galaxy clusters, as it allows us to directly access their projected surface mass density along the line-of-sight (LOS) in a manner largely independent of their…
Gravitational lensing allows to quantify the angular distribution of the convergence field around clusters of galaxies to constrain their connectivity to the cosmic web. We describe in this paper the corresponding theory in Lagrangian space…
Weak lensing magnification probes the correlation between galaxies and the underlying matter field in a similar fashion to galaxy-galaxy lensing shear. Although it has long been sidelined in favor of the latter on the grounds of a poorer…
The correlation between cosmic shear as measured by the image distortion of high-redshift galaxies and the number counts of foreground galaxies is calculated. For a given power spectrum of the cosmic density fluctuations, this correlation…
We overview our recent studies of cosmological models with expansion and global rotation. Problems of the early rotating models are discussed, and the class of new viable cosmologies is described in detail. Particular attention is paid to…
The classical observational cosmological tests (Hubble diagram, count of sources, etc.) are considered for a homogeneous and isotropic model of the Universe in the framework of the five-dimensional Projective Unified Field Theory in which…
Cosmic shear is a key probe of modern cosmology. Amongst its challenges are shape noise and intrinsic alignments, both due to our ignorance of the unlensed shape of the source galaxies. I argue here that Einstein rings may be used as…
We are developing a general, unified, and rigorous analytical framework for using gravitational lensing by compact objects to test different theories of gravity beyond the weak-deflection limit. In this paper we present the formalism for…
The expansion of the universe causes spacetime curvature, distinguishing between distances measured along and transverse to the line of sight. The ratio of these distances, e.g. the cosmic shear distortion of a sphere defined by…
We model massive compact objects in galactic nuclei as stationary, axially-symmetric naked singularities in the Einstein-massless scalar field theory and study the resulting gravitational lensing. In the weak deflection limit we study…
Yes! Upcoming galaxy shear surveys have the potential to significantly improve our understanding of dark energy and neutrino mass if lensing systematics can be sufficiently controlled. The cross-correlations between the weak lensing shear,…
An overview of the cosmological models with expansion, shear and rotation is presented. Problems of the rotating models are discussed, their general kinematic properties and dynamical realizations are described. A particular attention is…