Related papers: Constraining (\Omega_m,\Omega_\lambda) from strong…
The abundance of high-redshift galaxy clusters depends sensitively on the matter density $\OmM$ and, to a lesser extent, on the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. Measurements of this abundance therefore constrain these fundamental…
Recent detection of high-redshift, massive clusters through Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observations has opened up a new way to test cosmological models. It is known that detection of a single supermassive cluster at a very high redshift can rule…
It has been debated for a decade whether there is a large overabundance of strongly lensed arcs in galaxy clusters, compared to expectations from LambdaCDM cosmology. We perform ray tracing through the most massive halos of the Millennium…
The relationship linking a galaxy cluster's total mass with the concentration of its mass profile and its redshift is a fundamental prediction of the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm of cosmic structure formation. However, confronting those…
When the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey (2QZ) is complete, a powerful geometric test for the cosmological constant will be available. By comparing the clustering along and across the line of sight and modelling the effects of peculiar velocities…
The distance-redshift relation depends on the amount of matter of each type in the universe. Measurements at different redshifts constrain differing combinations of these matter densities and thus may be used in combination to constrain…
We derive cosmological constraints using a galaxy cluster sample selected from the 2500~deg$^2$ SPT-SZ survey. The sample spans the redshift range $0.25< z<1.75$ and contains 343 clusters with SZ detection significance $\xi>5$. The sample…
Redshift distortions, both geometrical and kinematical, of quasar clustering are simulated, for the Two-Degree Field QSO Redshift Survey (2QZ), showing that they are very effective to constrain the cosmological density and equation of state…
Strong gravitational lensing has traditionally been one of the few phenomena said to oppose a large cosmological constant; many analyses of lens statistics have given upper limits on $\Omega_\Lambda$ that are marginally inconsistent with…
We present constraints on the values of $\Omega_m$, $n$, $\sigma_8$, obtained from measurements of the X-ray luminosity function of galaxy clusters as compiled in EMSS, RDCS and BCS galaxy cluster samples. The values obtained…
The lensing effect of curved space, which can cause the angular diameter of a fixed reference length seen on the sky to reach a minimum and then increase with redshift, depends sensitively on the value of the cosmological constant,…
We forecast the constraints on the values of sigma_8, Omega_m, and cluster scaling relation parameters which we expect to obtain from the XMM Cluster Survey (XCS). We assume a flat Lambda-CDM Universe and perform a Monte Carlo Markov Chain…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak gravitational lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-convergence…
Strong lensing has developed into an important astrophysical tool for probing both cosmology and galaxies (their structure, formation, and evolution). Using the gravitational lensing theory and cluster mass distribution model, we try to…
We investigate how observations of strong lensing can be used to infer cosmological parameters, in particular the equation of state of dark energy. We focus on the growth of the critical lines of lensing clusters with the source redshift as…
Outside galaxy clusters the competition between the inwards gravitational attraction and the outwards expansion of the Universe leads to a special radius of velocity cancellation, which is called the turn-around radius. Measurements of the…
We use two model-independent methods to constrain the curvature of the universe. In the first method, we study the evolution of the curvature parameter ($\Omega_k^0$) with redshift by using the observations of the Hubble parameter and…
Cluster-scale strong lensing is a powerful tool for exploring the properties of dark matter and constraining cosmological models. However, due to the complex parameter space, pixelized strong lens modeling in galaxy clusters is…
Upcoming ground and space based observatories such as the DES, the LSST, the JDEM concepts and the SKA, promise to dramatically increase the size of strong gravitational lens samples. A significant fraction of the systems are expected to be…
We explore the dependence of weak lensing phenomena on the background cosmology. We first generalise the relation between $P_\psi(\omega)$, the angular power spectrum of the distortion, and the power spectrum of density fluctuations to…