Related papers: Structural and dynamical uncertainties in modeling…
We develop a method for reconstructing the two-dimensional, projected gravitational potential of galaxy clusters from observed line-of-sight velocity dispersions of cluster galaxies. It is the third of an intended series of papers aiming at…
This paper presents an analysis of the smoothness problem in cosmology by focussing on the ambiguities originated in the simplifying hypotheses aimed at observationally verifying if the large-scale distribution of galaxies is homogeneous,…
A new method is presented to obtain a non-parametric maximum likelihood estimate of the luminosity function and the selection function of a flux limited redshift survey. The method parameterizes the selection function as a series of…
A method is developed to evaluate the magnifications of the images of galaxies with lensing potentials stratified on similar concentric ellipses. A simple contour integral is provided which enables the sums of the magnifications of even…
An algorithm is developed and tested for the problem posed by photometric observations of the bulge of the Milky Way. The latter subtends a non-trivial solid angle on the sky, and we show that this permits inversion of the projected…
{We study biasing as a physical phenomenon by analysing geometrical and clustering properties of density fields of matter and galaxies.} {Our goal is to determine the bias function using a combination of geometrical and power spectrum…
Our view of the properties of galaxies is strongly affected by the way in which we survey for them. I discuss some aspects of selection effects and methods to compensate for them. One result is an estimate of the surface brightness…
By directly probing mass distributions, gravitational lensing offers several new tests of the CDM paradigm. Lens statistics place upper limits on the dark matter content of elliptical galaxies. Galaxies built from CDM mass distributions are…
The local space density of galaxies as a function of their basic structural parameters -luminosity, surface brightness and scale size- is still poorly known. Our poor knowledge is the result of strong selection biases against low surface…
We attempt to estimate the uncertainty in the constraints on the spin independent dark matter-nucleon cross section due to our lack of knowledge of the dark matter phase space in the galaxy. We fit the density of dark matter before…
We study the possibility of using correlations between spatial modulations in the observed luminosity distribution of galaxies and the underlying density field as a cosmological probe. Considering redshift ranges, where magnification…
Strong gravitational lensing can be used to find otherwise invisible dark matter subhaloes. In such an analysis, the lens galaxy mass model is a significant source of systematic uncertainty. In this paper we analyse the effect of angular…
While the direct detection of the dark-matter particle remains very challenging, the nature of dark matter could be possibly constrained by comparing the observed abundance and properties of small-scale sub-galactic mass structures with…
We present a method for recovering the distribution functions of edge-on thin axisymmetric disks directly from their observable kinematic properties. The most generally observable properties of such a stellar system are the line-of-sight…
The Sersic law reproduces very well the surface brightness profile of early-type galaxies, and therefore is routinely used in observational and theoretical works. Unfortunately, its deprojection can not be expressed in terms of elementary…
Our ability to interpret observations of galaxies and trace their stellar, gas, and dust content over cosmic time critically relies on our understanding of how the dust abundance and properties vary with environment. Here, we compute the…
Recent observations suggest appreciable star formation activity in early-type galaxies down to redshift $z\sim 0.5$. If so, there is likely to be dust in these galaxies. We consider the possibility that obscuration by dust can reconcile the…
The distribution function of quasars with respect to apparent brightness is given, found under the assumption that quasars are, at least partially, the gravitationally enhanced images of the active nuclei of distant galaxies. A Schechter…
We propose a new technique to directly measure the shapes of dark matter halos of galaxies using weak gravitational lensing. Extending the standard galaxy-galaxy lensing method, we show that the shape parameters of the mass distribution of…
We develop an analytic mass model for lensing galaxies, based on a broken power-law (BPL) density profile, which is a power-law profile with a mass deficit or surplus in the central region. Under the assumption of an elliptically symmetric…