Influence of cluster environments on X-ray cluster morphology

We investigated the influence of environment on cluster morphology by examining the alignment of the cluster position angle with respect to the nearest neighbour cluster. The cluster position angle and ellipticity were measured using high spatial resolution X-ray data taken from the Chandra archive, while the nearest neighbour sample was extracted from the Abell cluster catalogue. We found high confidence for an alignment when neighbour distance (Dn) was less than  70  h ⁻¹  Mpc, while we found no significant variations of the confidence level at various values of Dn less than  70  h ⁻¹  Mpc.     

The effect of reionization on the cosmic microwave background–density correlation

In this paper, we show how the rescattering of cosmic microwave background photons after cosmic reionization can give a significant linear contribution to the temperature–matter cross-correlation measurements. These anisotropies, which arise via a late-time Doppler effect, are on scales much larger than the typical scale of non-linear effects at reionization; they can contribute to degree scale cross-correlations and could affect the interpretation of similar correlations resulting from the integrated Sachs–Wolfe effect. While expected to be small at low redshifts, these correlations can be large given a probe of the density at high redshift, and so could be a useful probe of the cosmic reionization history.     

Virialization of cosmological structures in models with time-varying equation of state

We study the virialization of the cosmic structures in the framework of flat cosmological models where the dark energy component plays an important role in the global dynamics of the Universe. In particular, our analysis focuses on the study of the spherical matter perturbations, as the latter decouple from the background expansion, start to 'turn around' and finally collapse. We generalize this procedure, taking into account models with an equation of state which vary with time, and provide a complete formulation of the cluster virialization attempting to address the non-linear regime of structure formation. In particular, assuming that clusters have collapsed prior to the epoch of z _f≃ 1.4, in which the most distant cluster has been found, we show that the behaviour of the spherical collapse model depends on the functional form of the equation of state.     

Statistical analysis of galaxy surveys – III. The non-linear clustering of red and blue galaxies in the 2dFGRS

We present measurements of the higher order clustering of red and blue galaxies as a function of scale and luminosity made from the two-degree field galaxy redshift survey (2dFGRS). We use a counts-in-cells analysis to estimate the volume-averaged correlation functions,     , as a function of scale up to the order of   p = 5  , and also the reduced void probability function. Hierarchical amplitudes are constructed using the estimates of the correlation functions:     . We find that (i) red galaxies display stronger clustering than blue galaxies at all orders measured; (ii) red galaxies show values of   S _p   that are strongly dependent on luminosity whereas blue galaxies show no segregation in   S _p   within the errors; this is remarkable given the segregation in the variance; (iii) the linear relative bias shows the opposite trend to the hierarchical amplitudes, with little segregation for the red sequence and some segregation for the blue; (iv) faint red galaxies deviate significantly from the 'universal' negative binomial reduced void probabilities followed by all other galaxy populations. Our results show that the characteristic colour of a galaxy population reveals a unique signature in its spatial distribution. Such signatures will hopefully further elucidate the physics responsible for shaping the cosmological evolution of galaxies.     

Constraining the nature of dark energy using the Square Kilometer Array Telescope

We investigate the potential of the Square Kilometer Array Telescope (SKA) to constrain the sound speed of dark energy. The Integrated Sachs Wolfe (ISW) effect results in a significant power spectrum signal when Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies are cross-correlated with galaxies detectable with the SKA in H  i . We consider using this measurement, the autocorrelation of H  i galaxies and the CMB temperature power spectrum to derive constraints on the sound speed. We study the contributions to the cross-correlation signal made by galaxies at different redshifts and use redshift tomography to improve the signal-to-noise. We use a  χ²  analysis to estimate the significance of detecting a sound speed different from that expected in quintessence models, finding that there is potential to distinguish very low sound speeds from the quintessence value.