Related papers: Determining the shape of the Universe using discre…
[Abridged] In a Universe with a detectable nontrivial spatial topology the last scattering surface contains pairs of matching circles with the same distribution of temperature fluctuations - the so-called circles-in-the-sky. Searches for…
If the universe is multiply-connected and sufficiently small, then the last scattering surface wraps around the universe and intersects itself. Each circle of intersection appears as two distinct circles on the microwave sky. The present…
Two fundamental questions regarding our description of the Universe concern the geometry and topology of its 3-dimensional space. While geometry is a local characteristic that gives the intrinsic curvature, topology is a global feature that…
Universe models with compact spatial sections smaller than the observable universe produce a topological lens effect. Given a catalog of cosmic sources, we estimate the number of topological images in locally hyperbolic and locally elliptic…
A non-trivial spatial topology of the Universe is a potentially observable attribute, which can be probed through the circles-in-the-sky for all locally homogeneous and isotropic universes with no assumptions on the cosmological parameters.…
We generalize simplicial minisuperspace models associated with restricting the topology of the universe to be that of a cone over a closed connected combinatorial $3-$manifold by considering the presence of a massive scalar field. By…
It is shown here how prior estimates on the local shape of the universe can be used to reduce, to a small region, the full parameter space for the search of circles in the sky. This is the first step towards the development of efficient…
Observational evidence for the presence of a preferred scale around 100 Mpc in the distribution of high-density regions in the Universe is summarised. Toy models with various degrees of regularity are analysed to understand better the…
Hot big bang cosmology says nothing about the topology of the Universe. A topology-independent algorithm is presented which is complementary to that of Lehoucq et al. 1996 and which searches for evidence of multi-connectedness using…
We consider a multidimensional universe with the topology $M= \R\times M_1\times \cdots \times M_n$, where the $M_i$ ($i>1$) are $d_i$-dimensional Ricci flat spaces. Exploiting a conformal equivalence between minimal coupling models and…
Three methods for detecting and characterizing structure in point data, such as that generated by redshift surveys, are described: classification using self-organizing maps, segmentation using Bayesian blocks, and density estimation using…
The universe's large-scale structure forms a vast, interconnected network of filaments, sheets, and voids known as the cosmic web. For decades, astronomers have observed that the orientations of neighboring galaxy clusters within these…
The cosmic microwave background radiation allows us to measure both the geometry and topology of the universe. It has been argued that the COBE-DMR data already rule out models that are multiply connected on scales smaller than the particle…
An impressive amount of different astrophysical data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing a today phase of accelerated expansion. The nature of the dark energy dominating the energy content of the universe…
A nontrivial topology of the spatial section of the universe is an observable, which can be probed for all locally homogeneous and isotropic universes, without any assumption on the cosmological density parameters. We discuss how one can…
Observations of the clustering of galaxies can provide useful information about the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. In order to extract accurate cosmological parameters from galaxy surveys, it is important to understand how the…
While the topology of the Universe is at present not specified by any known fundamental theory, it may in principle be determined through observations. In particular, a non-trivial topology will generate pairs of matching circles of…
In this paper we find the most general self-similar, homogeneous and isotropic, Ricci flat cosmologies in 5D. These cosmologies show a number of interesting features: (i) the field equations allow a complete integration in terms of one…
We describe application of the `shapelet' linear decomposition of galaxy images to morphological classification using images of $\sim$ 3000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. After decomposing the galaxies we perform a principal…
Clusters of galaxies, the most massive virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for studying the structure, the mass density, and the cosmology of our universe. Clusters furnish one of the best estimates of the dynamical mass…