Related papers: Bias and beyond
We extend existing methods for using cross-correlations to derive redshift distributions for photometric galaxies, without using photometric redshifts. The model presented in this paper simultaneously yields highly accurate and unbiased…
Likelihood fitting to two-point clustering statistics made from galaxy surveys usually assumes a multivariate normal distribution for the measurements, with justification based on the central limit theorem given the large number of…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
Measurements of the cosmological density parameter Omega using techniques that exploit the gravity-induced motions of galaxies constrain, in linear perturbation theory, the degenerate parameter combination beta = Omega^{0.6}/b, where the…
We list a few things that we do not understand about stars and that most people ignore. These are all hard problems. We can learn more cosmology by working on them to reduce the systematic errors they introduce than by trying to derive…
We discuss the problem of galaxy correlations by considering the various methods by which this information can be obtained. We focus in particular on the volume limited three dimensional samples and discuss a new way to increase the scale…
The ability of digital sky surveys to collect and store very large amounts of data provides completely new ways to study the local universe. Perhaps one of the most provocative observations reported with such tools is the asymmetry between…
Gravitational lensing will cause a dispersion in the Hubble diagram for high redshift sources. This effect will introduce a bias in the cosmological parameter determination using the distance-redshift relation for Type Ia supernovae. In…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
Techniques for the construction of dynamical Galaxy models should be considered essential infrastructure that should be put in place before GAIA flies. Three possible modelling techniques are discussed. Although one of these seems to have…
We compute the bispectrum of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and use it to measure the bias parameter of the galaxies. This parameter quantifies the strength of clustering of the galaxies relative to the mass in the Universe. By…
In the quest for precision cosmology, one must ensure that the cosmology is accurate as well. We discuss figures of merit for determining from observations whether the dark energy is a cosmological constant or dynamical, with special…
Several recent studies have shown how to properly calculate the observed clustering of galaxies in a relativistic context, and uncovered corrections to the Newtonian calculation that become significant on scales near the horizon. Here, we…
In the low redshift Universe (z<0.3), our view of galaxy evolution is primarily based on fibre optic spectroscopy surveys. Elaborate methods have been developed to address aperture effects when fixed aperture sizes only probe the inner…
We study the linear and non-linear bias parameters which determine the mapping between the distributions of galaxies and the full matter density fields, comparing different measurements and predictions. Associating galaxies with dark matter…
Measuring the angular clustering of galaxies as a function of redshift is a powerful method for extracting information from the three-dimensional galaxy distribution. The precision of such measurements will dramatically increase with…
Our aim is to quantify the impact of systematic effects on the inference of cosmological parameters from cosmic shear. We present an end-to-end approach that introduces sources of bias in a modelled weak lensing survey on a galaxy-by-galaxy…
The body of photometric and astrometric data on stars in the Galaxy has been growing very fast in recent years (Hipparcos/Tycho, OGLE-3, 2-Mass, DENIS, UCAC2, SDSS, RAVE, Pan Starrs, Hermes, ...) and in two years ESA will launch the Gaia…
It is a well-established fact that massive cosmological objects exhibit a ``geometrical bias'' that boosts their spatial correlations with respect to the underlying mass distribution. Although this geometrical bias is a simple function of…
Since gravitational lensing effects directly probe inhomogeneities of dark matter, lensing-galaxy cross-correlations can provide us important information on the relation between dark matter and galaxy distributions, i.e., the bias. In this…