Related papers: High Redshift Galaxy Clusters as Probes of Cosmolo…
Star clusters are ideal tracers of star formation activity in systems outside the volume that can be studied using individual, resolved stars. These unresolved clusters span orders of magnitude in brightness and mass, and their formation is…
Next-generation large-scale structure spectroscopic surveys will probe cosmology at high redshifts $(2.3 < z < 3.5)$, relying on abundant galaxy tracers such as Ly$\alpha$ emitters (LAEs) and Lyman break galaxies (LBGs). Medium-band…
Clusters of galaxies are the most massive objects in the Universe and precise knowledge of their mass structure is important to understand the history of structure formation and constrain still unknown types of dark contents of the…
Measurements of galaxy cluster abundances, clustering properties, and mass to- light ratios in current and future surveys can provide important cosmological constraints. Digital wide-field imaging surveys, the recently-demonstrated fidelity…
Galaxies and clusters embedded in the large-scale structure of the Universe are observed to align in preferential directions. Galaxy alignment has been established as a potential probe for cosmological information, but the application of…
After a brief historical overview we discuss the luminous X-ray sources in globular clusters of our Galaxy. This is followed by an overview of the very luminous X-ray sources studied in globular clusters of 14 other galaxies, and a…
Gravitational Lensing is an efficient tool to probe: the mass distribution of collapsed systems: galaxies and clusters; high redshift objects thanks to the gravitational amplification; and the geometry of the Universe. I will review here…
Rich clusters of galaxies, the largest virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for the study of cosmology. Some of the fundamental questions that can be addressed with clusters of galaxies include: how did galaxies and large-scale…
(abridged) The old Star Cluster (SC) systems surrounding any sofar investigated galaxy represent a powerful tool for the understanding of the cosmological evolution of their host galaxies. Phases of enhanced cluster formation can be…
The links between the internal structure of galaxy groups and clusters and cosmological parameters are reviewed here. The mass density profiles of clusters, inferred from both optical analyses of the galaxy surface number density profile…
The upcoming XMM Large Scale Structure Survey (XMM-LSS) will ultimately provide a unique mapping of the distribution of X-ray sources in a contiguous 64 sq. deg. region. In particular, it will provide the 3-dimensional location of about 900…
The current status of our efforts to trace cosmic structure with 10^6 galaxies (2MASS), 10^3 galaxy clusters (NORAS II cluster survey), and precision measurements for 10^2 galaxy clusters (HIFLUGCS) is given. The latter is illustrated in…
My Ph.D. Thesis is devoted to the study of groups and clusters of galaxies in the X-ray band. This field has been very active in the last ten years, thanks to the data gathered from the Chandra and XMM satellites. Clusters of galaxies are…
A multi-object spectroscopy follow-up survey of galaxy clusters selected from the Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) is being completed. About forty clusters were chosen with redshifts from 0.15 to 0.6, and in a wide range of richnesses. One…
Cosmological simulations of structure formation predict that galaxies are dramatically modified by galaxy harassment during the assembly of galaxy clusters, losing a substantial fraction of their stellar mass which today must be in the form…
We discuss a method aiming to use photometric redshifts in lensing clusters to access the population of distant background sources. The amplification provided by gravitational lensing allows to calibrate photometric redshifts 1 to 3…
Normal galaxies are faint and complex X-ray sources that provide very powerful probes for fundamental astrophysical questions. Examples include: the study of populations of X-ray emitting sources; the study of the entire spectrum of…
The relativistic LambdaCDM cosmological model has passed a demanding network of tests that convincingly demonstrate it is a useful approximation to what happened back to high redshift. But there are anomalies in its application to structure…
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…
Magnetic fields in galaxy clusters can be investigated using a variety of techniques. Recent studies including radio halos, Inverse Compton hard X-ray emissions and Faraday rotation measure, are briefly outlined. A numerical approach for…