71 research outputs found
Complete Zeldovich approximation
We have developed a generalization of the Zeldovich approximation (ZA) that
is exact in a wide variety of situations, including plannar, spherical and
cilyndrical symmetries. We have shown that this generalization, that we call
complete Zeldovich approximation (CZA), is exact to second order at an
arbitrary point within any field. For gaussian fields, the third order error
have been obtained and shown to be very small. For statistical purposes, the
CZA leads to results exact to the third order.Comment: 11 pages+1 figure, accepted in ApJ Letter
Fluctuations of K-band galaxy counts
We measure the variance in the distribution of off-plane (|b|>20 deg.)
galaxies with m_K<13.5 from the 2MASS K-band survey in circles of diameter
between 0.344 deg. and 57.2 deg. The use of a near-infrared survey makes
negligible the contribution of Galactic extinction to these fluctuations. We
calculate these variances within the standard Lambda-CDM model assuming that
the sources are distributed like halos of the corresponding mass, and it
reproduces qualitatively the galaxy counts variance. Therefore, we test that
the counts can be basically explained in terms only of the large scale
structure. A second result of this paper is a new method to determine the two
point correlation function obtained by forcing agreement between model and
data. This method does not need the knowledge of the two-point angular
correlation function, allows an estimation of the errors (which are low with
this method), and can be used even with incomplete surveys.
Using this method we get xi(z=0, r<10 h^{-1}Mpc)=(29.8+/-0.3)
(r/h^{-1}Mpc)^{-1.79+/-0.02}, which is the first measure of the amplitude of xi
in the local Universe for the K-band. It is more or less in agreement with
those obtained through red optical filters selected samples, but it is larger
than the amplitude obtained for blue optical filters selected samples.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted to be published in A&
Probability distribution of density fluctuations in the non-linear regime
We present a general procedure for obtaining the present density fluctuation
probability distribution given the statistics of the initial conditions. The
main difficulties faced with regard to this problem are those related to the
non-linear evolution of the density fluctuations and those posed by the fact
that the fields we are interested in are the result of filtering an underlying
field with structure down to scales much smaller than that of filtering. The
solution to the latter problem is discussed here in detail and the solution to
the former is taken from a previous work.
We have checked the procedure for values of the rms density fluctuation as
large as 3/2 and several power spectra and found that it leads to results in
excellent agreement with those obtained in numerical simulations. We also
recover all available exact results from perturbation theory.Comment: Accepted to be published in Ap
The spherical collapse model with shell crossing
In this work, we study the formation and evolution of dark matter halos by
means of the spherical infall model with shell-crossing. We present a framework
to tackle this effect properly based on the numerical follow-up, with time, of
that individual shell of matter that contains always the same fraction of mass
with respect to the total mass. In this first step, we do not include angular
momentum, velocity dispersion or triaxiality. Within this framework - named as
the Spherical Shell Tracker (SST) - we investigate the dependence of the
evolution of the halo with virial mass, with the adopted mass fraction of the
shell, and for different cosmologies. We find that our results are very
sensitive to a variation of the halo virial mass or the mass fraction of the
shell that we consider. However, we obtain a negligible dependence on
cosmology. Furthermore, we show that the effect of shell-crossing plays a
crucial role in the way that the halo reaches the stabilization in radius and
the virial equilibrium. We find that the values currently adopted in the
literature for the actual density contrast at the moment of virialization,
delta_vir, may not be accurate enough. In this context, we stress the problems
related to the definition of a virial mass and a virial radius for the halo.
The question of whether the results found here may be obtained by tracking the
shells with an analytic approximation remains to be explored.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 9 tables, replaced to match the published MNRAS
versio
Generation of galactic disc warps due to intergalactic accretion flows onto the disc
A new method is developed to calculate the amplitude of the galactic warps
generated by a torque due to external forces. This takes into account that the
warp is produced as a reorientation of the different rings which constitute the
disc in order to compensate the differential precession generated by the
external force, yielding a uniform asymptotic precession for all rings.
Application of this method to gravitational tidal forces in the Milky Way due
to the Magellanic Clouds leads to a very low amplitude of the warp. If the
force were due to an extragalactic magnetic field, its intensity would have to
be very high, to generate the observed warps. An alternative hypothesis is
explored: the accretion of the intergalactic medium over the disk. A cup-shaped
distortion is expected, due to the transmission of the linear momentum; but,
this effect is small and the predominant effect turns out to be the
transmission of angular momentum, i.e. a torque giving an integral-sign shape
warp. The torque produced by a flow of velocity ~100 km/s and baryon density
\~10^{-25} kg/m^3 is enough to generate the observed warps and this mechanism
offers quite a plausible explanation. First, because this order of accretion
rate is inferred from other processes observed in the Galaxy, notably its
chemical evolution. The inferred rate of infall of matter, ~1 solar-mass/yr, to
the Galactic disc that this theory predicts agrees with the quantitative
predictions of this chemical evolution resolving key issues, notably the
G-dwarf problem. Second, because the required density of the intergalactic
medium is within the range of values compatible with observation. By this
mechanism, we can explain the warp phenomenon in terms of intergalactic
accretion flows onto the disk of the galaxy.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, accepted to be published in A&
Quantifying the coherent outflows of galaxies around voids in the SDSS DR7
We report the detection, with a high level of confidence, of coherent
outflows around voids found in the seventh data release of the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey (SDSS DR7). In particular, we developed a robust
statistical test to quantify the strength of redshift-space distortions (RSD)
associated with extended coherent velocity fields. We consistently find that
the vector that joins void centers with galaxies that lie in shells around them
is more likely to be perpendicular to the line-of-sight than parallel to it.
This effect is clear evidence for the existence of outflows in the vicinity of
voids. We show that the RSD exist for a wide range of void radius and shell
thickness, but they are more evident in the largest voids in our sample. For
instance, we find that the for galaxies located in shells within
2 h^-1 Mpc from the edge of voids larger than 15 h^-1 Mpc deviates 3.81sigma
from uniformity. The measurements presented in this work provide useful
information to constrain cosmological parameters, in particular Omega_m and
Sigma_8.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in A&A Letter
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