相关论文: Cosmic Crystallography
We show how observations of multiply-imaged quasars at high redshift can be used as a probe of dark matter clumps (subhalos with masses ~ 10^9 solar masses) within the virialized extent of more massive lensing halos. A large abundance of…
The immediate observational consequence of a non-trivial spatial topology of the Universe is that an observer could potentially detect multiple images of radiating sources. In particular, a non-trivial topology will generate pairs of…
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…
We describe a cosmology of the very early universe, based on the holographic principle of 't Hooft and Susskind. We have described the initial state as a dense black hole fluid. Here we present a mathematical model of this heuristic…
The topology of the universe is discussed in relation to the singularity problem. We explore the possibility that the initial state of the universe might have had a structure with 3-Klein bottle topology, which would lead to a model of a…
Combining intervals of ekpyrotic (ultra-slow) contraction with a (non-singular) classical bounce naturally leads to a novel cyclic theory of the universe in which the Hubble parameter, energy density and temperature oscillate periodically,…
Weak gravitational lensing is a unique probe of the dark side of the universe: it provides a direct way to map the distribution of dark matter around galaxies, clusters of galaxies and on cosmological scales. Furthermore, the measurement of…
The Hilbert-Einstein equations are insufficient to describe the geometry of the Universe, as they only constrain a local geometrical property: curvature. A global knowledge of the geometry of space, if possible, would require measurement of…
Multiple images, giant arcs, Einstein cross, fold, cusp, lip, caustics, critical lines, sources, mapping, time delay, arclets, weak shear, magnification bias, depletion, ellipticities, polarization, smearing, convergence, kernel, mass…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
This article reviews the prevailing paradigm for how galaxies and larger structures formed in the universe: gravitational instability. Basic observational facts are summarized to motivate the standard cosmological framework underlying most…
In this paper we propose a model for the formation of the cosmological voids. We show that cosmological voids can form directly after the collapse of extremely large wavelength perturbations into low-density black holes or cosmological…
We explore the dependence of weak lensing phenomena on the background cosmology. We first generalise the relation between $P_\psi(\omega)$, the angular power spectrum of the distortion, and the power spectrum of density fluctuations to…
The global geometry of the universe is in principle as observable an attribute as local curvature. Previous studies have established that if the universe is wrapped into a flat hypertorus, the simplest compact space, then the fundamental…
The Universe is not isotropic or spatially homogeneous on local scales. The averaging of local inhomogeneities in general relativity can lead to significant dynamical effects on the evolution of the Universe, and even if the effects are at…
Simple analytic arguments are used to understand the predominantly filamentary web in the large-scale distribution of galaxies. Numerical simulations of superclusters are performed to assess the feasibility of directly mapping the…
Gravitational lensing has become one of the most powerful tools available for investigating the 'dark side' of the universe. Cosmological strong gravitational lensing, in particular, probes the properties of the dense cores of dark matter…
When a luminous source is extended, its distortions by weak gravitational lensing are richer than a mere combination of magnification and shear. In a recent work, we proposed an elegant formalism based on complex analysis to describe and…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of an almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid universe is reconsidered and formally simplified by introducing new covariant and gauge-invariant variables with physical interpretations on…
Spherical manifolds yield cosmic spaces with positive curvature. They result by closing pieces from the sphere used by Einstein for his initial cosmology. Harmonic analysis on the manifolds aims at explaining the observed low amplitudes at…