Related papers: Characterizing a cosmic string with the statistics…
Cosmic string loops contain cusps which decay by emitting bursts of particles. A significant fraction of the released energy is in the form of photons. These photons are injected non-thermally and can hence cause spectral distortions of the…
I discuss and illustrate the development of large-scale structure in the Universe, emphasising in particular the physical processes and cosmological parameters that most influence the observationally accessible aspects of structure at large…
Particle emission, in addition to gravitational radiation from cosmic string loops, affects the resulting loop distribution and hence the corresponding observational consequences of cosmic strings. Here we focus on two models in which loops…
We investigate strong gravitational lensing in the concordance $\Lambda$CDM cosmology by carrying out ray-tracing along past light cones through the Millennium Simulation, the largest simulation of cosmic structure formation ever carried…
Weak gravitational lensing provides a unique method to map directly the distribution of dark matter in the universe and to measure cosmological parameters. This cosmic-shear technique is based on the measurement of the weak distortions that…
In this paper the collision of two cosmic string loops is studied. After collision junctions are formed and the loops are entangled. We show that after their formation the junctions start to unzip and the loops disentangle. This analysis…
The fraction of high-redshift sources which are multiply-imaged by intervening galaxies is strongly dependent on the cosmological constant, and so can be a useful probe of the cosmological model. However its power is limited by various…
Gravitational lensing represents a powerful tool to estimate the cosmological pa- rameters and the distribution of dark matter. I will describe the main observable quantities, concentrating on strong lensing, that manifests its effect…
Here we present a number of improvements to weak lensing 3D power spectrum analysis, 3D cosmic shear, that uses the shape and redshift information of every galaxy to constrain cosmological parameters. We show how photometric redshift…
We explore the use of random forest and gradient boosting, two powerful tree-based machine learning algorithms, for the detection of cosmic strings in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), through their unique Gott-Kaiser-Stebbins…
The galaxy image pair CSL-1 has been a leading candidate for a cosmic string lens. High quality imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope presented here show that it is not a lens but a pair of galaxies. The galaxies show different…
A spectrum of relic stochastic gravitational radiation, strongly tilted towards high frequencies, and characterized by two basic parameters is shown to emerge in a class of string theory models. We estimate the required sensitivity for…
The existence of a scaling evolution for cosmic string loops in an expanding universe is demonstrated for the first time by means of numerical simulations. In contrast with what is usually assumed, this result does not rely on any…
We study the effect of free streaming in a universe with cosmic strings with time-varying tension as well as with constant tension. Although current cosmological observations suggest that fluctuation seeded by cosmic strings cannot be the…
We discuss the problem of estimating the characteristic length scale $\xi_{\rm s}$, and hence the initial density, of a system of cosmic strings formed at a continuous, second-order phase transition in the early universe. In particular, we…
We investigate numerically the configurational statistics of strings. The algorithm models an ensemble of global $U(1)$ cosmic strings, or equivalently vortices in superfluid $^4$He. We use a new method which avoids the specification of…
We investigate how galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements depend on the knowledge of redshifts for lens and source galaxies. Galaxy-galaxy lensing allows one to study dark matter halos of galaxies statistically using weak gravitational lensing.…
We describe a new approach for the determination of cosmological parameters using gravitational lensing systems with multiple arcs, exploiting the fact that a given cluster can produce multiple arcs from sources over a broad range in…
Microlensing of stars in strongly lensed galaxies can lead to temporary extreme magnification factors ($\mu\!>\!1000$), enabling their detection at high redshifts. Following the discovery of Icarus, several stars at cosmological distances…
With future wide and deep cosmological sky surveys, a large number of gravitationally lensed, multiply imaged systems will be found. In addition to multiply imaged galaxies and quasars, sources will include transient events like supernovae…