Related papers: Using bright ellipticals as dark energy cosmic clo…
In recent years, significant progress has been made in building new galaxy clusters samples, at low and high redshifts, from wide-area surveys, particularly exploiting the Sunyaev--Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. A large effort is underway to…
We investigate the possibility of a dark energy component that is scaling with epochs. A phenomenological model is introduced whose energy density depends on the redshift in such a way that a smooth transition among the three dominant…
We use angular size versus redshift data for galaxy clusters from Bonamente et al. (2006) to place constraints on model parameters of constant and time-evolving dark energy cosmological models. These constraints are compatible with those…
It has been widely shown that the cosmological parameters and dark energy can be constrained by using data from type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy, the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak from…
We are using optical/IR surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) to validate the latest stellar population synthesis models and to understand the stellar populations of ellipticals. Integrated light and spectra measure only the first moment…
We describe our ongoing program designed to measure the SN-Ia rate in a sample of massive z=0.5-0.9 galaxy clusters. The SN-Ia rate is a poorly known observable, especially at high z, and in cluster environments. The SN rate and its…
In hierarchical models of galaxy formation, ellipticals form from the merging of disk galaxies drawn together by gravity as their surrounding dark halos coalesce. Using semi-analytic techniques, we are able to follow the merging, star…
We use the spherical collapse model to demonstrate that the observable average density of virialized clusters depends on the properties of dark energy along with the properties of gravity on cluster scales and can therefore be used as a…
The ellipticities and alignments of clusters of galaxies, and their evolution with redshift, are examined in the context of a Lambda-dominated cold dark matter cosmology. We use a large-scale, high-resolution N-body simulation to model the…
We focus on uncertainties in supernova measurements, in particular of individual magnitudes and redshifts, to review to what extent supernovae measurements of the expansion history of the universe are likely to allow us to constrain a…
Using a widely used stellar population synthesis model, we study the ability of using pairs of AB system colours to break the well-known stellar age--metallicity degeneracy and give constraints on the two stellar-population parameters (age…
Establishing the reliability with which stellar population parameters can be measured is vital to extragalactic astronomy. Galactic GCs provide an excellent medium in which to test the consistency of Single Stellar Population (SSP) models…
A simple speed-up cosmology model is proposed to account for the dark energy puzzle. We condense contributions from dark energy and curvature term into one effective parameter in order to reduce parameter degeneracies and to find any…
We present a comprehensive analysis of the ability of current stellar population models to reproduce the optical (ugriz) and near infra-red (JHK) colours of a small sample of well-studied nearby elliptical and S0 galaxies. We find broad…
We use Hubble parameter versus redshift data from Stern, et al(2010) and Gazta\~{n}aga, et al (2009) to place constraints on model parameters of constant and time-evolving dark energy cosmological models. These constraints are consistent…
Three models of a flat universe of coupled matter and dark energies with different low-redshift parameterizations of the dark energy equation of state are considered. The dark energy is assumed to vary with time like the trace of the…
The presence of dark energy in the Universe is inferred directly from the accelerated expansion of the Universe, and indirectly, from measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. Dark energy contributes about 2/3 of the…
Luminous elliptical galaxies generally display a rich star cluster system, whose properties provide strong constraints on the physics of galaxy formation and evolution. Star cluster system studies, however, concentrate on galaxies located…
It is well known that, when analyzed at the light of current synthesis model predictions, variations in the physical properties of single stellar populations (e.g. age, metallicity, initial mass function, element abundance ratios) may have…
We present forecast errors on a wide range of cosmological parameters obtained from a photometric cluster catalogue of a future wide-field Euclid-like survey. We focus in particular on the total neutrino mass as constrained by a combination…