Related papers: Small Deviations from Gaussianity and The Galaxy C…
We consider a sample of 51 distant galaxy clusters at 0.15<z<0.9 (<z> about 0.3), each cluster having at least 10 galaxies with available redshift in the literature. We select member galaxies, analyze the velocity dispersion profiles, and…
In this thesis, we show how the structure of the landscape potential of the primordial Universe may be probed through the primordial density perturbations responsible for the origin of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies and the…
Large-scale structure of Universe includes galaxy clusters connected by filaments. Voids occupy the rest of cosmic volume. The search of any dependencities in filament structure can give answer to more general questions about origin of…
The cosmological implications from a new estimate of the local X-ray galaxy cluster abundance are summarized. The results are then compared to independent observations. It is suggested that `low' values for the mean cosmic matter density…
Explaining the formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the most challenging problems in observational cosmology. Many observations suggest that galaxies we see today could have evolved from the merging of smaller subsystems. Evolution…
The gravitational evolution of the genus of the density field in large-scale structure is analytically studied in a weakly nonlinear regime using second-order perturbation theory. Weakly nonlinear evolution produces asymmetry in the…
Primordial non-Gaussianity is a potentially powerful discriminant of the physical mechanisms that generated the cosmological fluctuations observed today. Any detection of significant non-Gaussianity would thus have profound implications for…
We present a brief introduction to the statistical properties of systems with large fluctuations. We point out that for such systems the relevant statistical quantities are scaling exponents and the nature of fluctuations is completely…
In this paper I consider the nonlinear evolution of a rare density fluctuation in a random density field with Gaussian fluctuations, and I rigorously show that it follows the spherical collapse dynamics applied to its mean initial profile.…
I review recent observational progress concerning the evolution of the morphological distribution of galaxies in the rich cluster environment and in the faint field population. By coupling HST imagery with ground-based spectroscopic…
We discuss the local density fluctuations which arise due to the topological defects that appear after the phase transition of light pseudo-Goldstone bosons. It has been found that in a post-inflationary universe the fluctuations of these…
We discover alignment of galaxies in clusters by analyzing the distribution of their position angles. We assume that galaxies are aligned, if their number at one 90deg position angle interval is more than twice higher than at another 90deg…
The distribution of galaxies on the mass-size plane as a function of redshift or environment is a powerful test for galaxy formation models. Here we use integral-field stellar kinematics to interpret the variation of the mass-size…
Macroscopic equations arising out of stochastic particle systems in detailed balance (called dissipative systems or gradient flows) have a natural variational structure, which can be derived from the large-deviation rate functional for the…
Using cosmological N-body simulations, we study the abundance of local maxima (peaks) and minima (dips) identified in the smoothed distribution of halos and dark matter (DM) on scales of $10-100$s Mpcs. The simulations include Gaussian and…
We present a gauge invariant formalism to study the evolution of curvature perturbations during decay of the inflaton or some other field that dominates the energy density. We specialize to the case where the total curvature perturbation…
Primordial, non-Gaussian perturbations can generate scale-dependent bias in the galaxy distribution. This in turn will modify correlations between galaxy positions and peculiar velocities at late times, since peculiar velocities reflect the…
The non-Gaussian distribution of primordial perturbations has the potential to reveal the physical processes at work in the very early Universe. Local models provide a well-defined class of non-Gaussian distributions that arise naturally…
We use cosmological N-body simulations to investigate whether measurements of the moments of large-scale structure can yield constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity. We measure the variance, skewness, and kurtosis of the evolved density…
We report measurements of the cluster X-ray luminosity function out to z=0.8 based on the final sample of 201 galaxy systems from the 160 Square Degree ROSAT Cluster Survey. There is little evidence for any measurable change in cluster…