Related papers: Lines of sight through randomly oriented flattened…
In this paper we discuss various possibilities of using X-ray observations to gain information about the large-scale structure of the Universe. After reviewing briefly the current status of these investigations we explore different ways of…
QSOs and radio-galaxies, together with the CMB, ``normal'' galaxies and clusters, represent the main source of information about the origin and evolution of the Large Scale Structure. They can be used either directly, as tracers of the…
A standard method to study the mass distribution in galaxy clusters is through strong lensing of background galaxies in which the positions of multiple images of the same source constrain the surface mass distribution of the cluster.…
Optical absorption in a random one-dimensional lattice in the presence of paired correlated disorder is studied. The absorption line shape is evaluated by solving the microscopic equations of motion of the Frenkel-exciton problem in the…
The full spatio-chemo-dynamical structure of galaxies of all types and environments at low redshift provides a critical accompaniment to observations of galaxy formation at high redshift. The next decade brings the observational opportunity…
Thermal models for the quasar Big Blue Bump generally lead to bound-free continuum features, which may be in absorption or emission. Searches for Lyman edges attributable to quasar atmospheres (in particular accretion disk atmospheres) have…
We present a new approach to measure the shapes of galaxies, a fundamental task in observational astronomy. This approach is based on the decomposition of a galaxy image into a series of orthogonal basis functions, or `shapelets'. Our…
Weak lensing surveys exploit measurements of galaxy ellipticities. These measurements are subject to errors which degrade the cosmological information that can be extracted from the surveys. Here we propose a way of using the galaxy data…
The purpose of the present work is the study of focusing properties of atmospheres of substars that is necessary for adequate interpreting of observational data and for solving the inverse problem consisting in recovery parameters of…
The so-called Scattering Equations which govern the kinematics of the scattering of massless particles in arbitrary dimensions have recently been cast into a system of homogeneous polynomials. We study these as affine and projective…
We investigate the statistics of flux anomalies in gravitationally lensed QSOs as a function of dark matter halo properties such as substructure content and halo ellipticity. We do this by creating a very large number of simulated lenses…
Theory predicts that a plane wave scattered by a thin slab of gas yields, in the forward direction and under specific circumstances, a larger irradiance than would be observed in the absence of the gas. This enhanced Rayleigh scattering…
We propose a method for detecting gravitational magnification of distant sources, like quasars, due to absorber systems detected in their spectra. We first motivate the use of metal absorption lines rather than Lyman-alpha lines, then we…
Strong gravitational lensing of quasars has the potential to unlock the poorly understood physics of these fascinating objects, as well as serve as a probe of the lensing mass distribution and of cosmological parameters. In particular,…
It has been proposed that the incorporation of an observer independent minimal length scale into the quantum field theories of the standard model effectively describes phenomenological aspects of quantum gravity. The aim of this paper is to…
A dense cloud of atoms with randomly changing positions exhibits coherent and incoherent scattering. We show that an atomic cloud of subwavelength dimensions can be modeled as a single scatterer where both coherent and incoherent components…
While most strong-gravitational-lensing systems may be roughly modelled by a single massive object between the source and the observer, in the details all the structures near the light path contribute to the observed images. These…
In many astrophysical systems, smoothly-varying large-scale variations coexist with small-scale fluctuations. For example, a large-scale velocity or density gradient can exist in molecular clouds that exhibit small-scale turbulence. In…
Clusters of galaxies acting as gravitational lenses deform the images of background galaxies. For small galaxies the deformation is determined by the local properties of the lens (shear, convergence). Small circular shaped galaxies are seen…
We investigate the possibility that linear arrays of atoms can guide matter waves, much as fiber optics guide light. We model the atomic line as a quasi-1D array of s wave point scatterers embedded in 2D. Our theoretical study reveals how…