Related papers: Probing the optical depth with galaxy number count…
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…
In the last decade the detection of individual massive dark matter sub-halos has been possible using potential correction formalism in strong gravitational lens imaging. Here we propose a statistical formalism to relate strong gravitational…
The Thomson optical depth from reionization is a limiting factor in measuring the amplitude of primordial fluctuations, and hence in measuring physics that affects the low-redshift amplitude, such as the neutrino masses. Current constraints…
Gravitational lensing directly measures mass density fluctuations along the lines of sight to very distant objects. No assumptions need to be made concerning bias, the ratio of fluctuations in galaxy density to mass density. Hence, lensing…
The gravitational lensing distortion of distant sources by the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe has been extensively studied. In contrast, very little is known about the effects due to the large-scale distribution of dark…
As cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons traverse the Universe, anisotropies can be induced via Thomson scattering (proportional to the integrated electron density; optical depth) and inverse Compton scattering (proportional to the…
I review some results of estimation of the power spectrum of density fluctuations from galaxy redshift surveys and discuss advances that may be possible with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I then examine the realities of power spectrum…
We describe the use of partially overlapping galaxies to provide direct measurements of the effective absorption in galaxy disks, independent of assumptions about internal disk structure. The non-overlapping parts of the galaxies and…
We discuss cosmological inference from galaxy surveys at low and high redshifts. Studies of optical and IRAS redshift surveys with median redshift ${\bar z} \sim 0.02$ yield measurements of the density parameter $\Omega$ and the…
One of the main problems of observational cosmology is to determine the range in which a reliable measurement of galaxy correlations is possible. This corresponds to determine the shape of the correlation function, its possible evolution…
Weak gravitational lensing is now established as a powerful method to measure mass fluctuations in the universe. It relies on the measurement of small coherent distortions of the images of background galaxies. Even low-level correlations in…
Large fluctuations in the electron column density can occur during the reionization process. We investigate the possibility of deriving the electron density fluctuations through detailed mapping of the redshifted 21-cm emission from the…
Pulsar dispersion measures (DMs) have been used to model the electron density of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the Galactic disk as a plane-parallel medium, despite significant scatter in the DM-distance distribution and strong evidence…
Merging galaxy clusters such as the Bullet Cluster provide a powerful testing ground for indirect detection of dark matter. The spatial distribution of the dark matter is both directly measurable through gravitational lensing and…
We derive an estimator for the lensing potential from galaxy number counts which contains a linear and a quadratic term. We show that this estimator has a much larger signal-to-noise ratio than the corresponding estimator from intensity…
Precision astrometry offers a way to probe new physics. By measuring the angular position of light sources at unprecedented precision, astrometry could probe minuscule fluctuations of underlying spacetime. This work explores the possibility…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
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…
Gravitational lensing causes background galaxy images to become aligned, and the statistical characteristics of the image alignments can then be used to constrain the power spectrum of mass fluctuations. Analyses of gravitational lensing…
The first-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data suggest a high optical depth for Thomson scattering of 0.17 +/- 0.04, implying that the universe was reionized at an early epoch, z ~ 20. Such early reionization is likely to be…