7,339 research outputs found
Topology of the Galaxy Distribution in the Hubble Deep Fields
We have studied topology of the distribution of the high redshift galaxies
identified in the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) North and South. The two-dimensional
genus is measured from the projected distributions of the HDF galaxies at
angular scales from to . We have also divided the samples into
three redshift slices with roughly equal number of galaxies using photometric
redshifts to see possible evolutionary effects on the topology.
The genus curve of the HDF North clearly indicates clustering of galaxies
over the Poisson distribution while the clustering is somewhat weaker in the
HDF South. This clustering is mainly due to the nearer galaxies in the samples.
We have also found that the genus curve of galaxies in the HDF is consistent
with the Gaussian random phase distribution with no significant redshift
dependence.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Ap
The Fast Multipole Method and Point Dipole Moment Polarizable Force Fields
We present an implementation of the fast multipole method for computing
coulombic electrostatic and polarization forces from polarizable force-fields
based on induced point dipole moments. We demonstrate the expected
scaling of that approach by performing single energy point calculations on
hexamer protein subunits of the mature HIV-1 capsid. We also show the long time
energy conservation in molecular dynamics at the nanosecond scale by performing
simulations of a protein complex embedded in a coarse-grained solvent using a
standard integrator and a multiple time step integrator. Our tests show the
applicability of FMM combined with state-of-the-art chemical models in
molecular dynamical systems.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted by J. Chem. Phy
Experiments on single oblique laminar-instability waves in a boundary layer: Introduction, growth, and transition
The laminar-turbulent transition in an incompressible flat-plate boundary layer was studied experimentally by using a spanwise array of computer-controlled surface heating elements to generate small disturbances. Oblique Tollmien-Schlichting waves were successfully introduced, and their downstream development into the intermittent region was studied using flush-mounted hot-film wall-shear sensors and dye flow visualization. Comparative studies of the development of single oblique waves were made for various wave angles, frequencies, and amplitudes. As these single oblique waves grew and began to break down, higher harmonics and subharmonics appeared in the wall shear. The amplitude of the subharmonic component decreased rapidly with increasing oblique-wave angle, so that a 10 degrees oblique wave had a subharmonic amplitude an order of magnitude below that for a two-dimensional (2-D) wave. Thus, the nonlinear mechanism that produces the subharmonic is affected by the symmetry of the primary wave. Intermittency measurements, carried out farther downstream, show that a 2-D wave is most effective in moving the transition point upstream, for a given power input
Error Estimates for Measurements of Cosmic Shear
In the very near future, weak lensing surveys will map the projected density
of the universe in an unbiased way over large regions of the sky. In order to
interpret the results of studies it is helpful to develop an understanding of
the errors associated with quantities extracted from the observations. In a
generalization of one of our earlier works, we present estimators of the
cumulants and cumulant correlators of the weak lensing convergence field, and
compute the variance associated with these estimators. By restricting ourselves
to so-called compensated filters we are able to derive quite simple expressions
for the errors on these estimates. We also separate contributions from cosmic
variance, shot noise and intrinsic ellipticity of the source galaxies.Comment: 12 pages, including 5 figures, uses mn.sty. Substantially revised
version accepted by MNRA
Effects of Foreground Contamination on the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy Measured by MAP
We study the effects of diffuse Galactic, far-infrared extragalactic source,
and radio point source emission on the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
anisotropy data anticipated from the MAP experiment. We focus on the
correlation function and genus statistics measured from mock MAP
foreground-contaminated CMB anisotropy maps generated in a spatially-flat
cosmological constant dominated cosmological model. Analyses of the simulated
MAP data at 90 GHz (0.3 deg FWHM resolution smoothed) show that foreground
effects on the correlation function are small compared with cosmic variance.
However, the Galactic emission, even just from the region with |b| > 20 deg,
significantly affects the topology of CMB anisotropy, causing a negative genus
shift non-Gaussianity signal. Given the expected level of cosmic variance, this
effect can be effectively reduced by subtracting existing Galactic foreground
emission models from the observed data. IRAS and DIRBE far-infrared
extragalactic sources have little effect on the CMB anisotropy. Radio point
sources raise the amplitude of the correlation function considerably on scales
below 0.5 deg. Removal of bright radio sources above a 5 \sigma detection limit
effectively eliminates this effect. Radio sources also result in a positive
genus curve asymmetry (significant at 2 \sigma) on 0.5 deg scales. Accurate
radio point source data is essential for an unambiguous detection of CMB
anisotropy non-Gaussianity on these scales. Non-Gaussianity of cosmological
origin can be detected from the foreground-subtracted CMB anisotropy map at the
2 \sigma level if the measured genus shift parameter |\Delta\nu| >= 0.02 (0.04)
or if the measured genus asymmetry parameter |\Delta g| >= 0.03 (0.08) on a 0.3
(1.0) deg FWHM scale.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for Publication in Astrophysical
Journal (Some sentences and figures modified
Topology of Neutral Hydrogen Within the Small Magellanic Cloud
In this paper, genus statistics have been applied to an HI column density map
of the Small Magellanic Cloud in order to study its topology. To learn how
topology changes with the scale of the system, we provide the study of topology
for column density maps at varying resolution. To evaluate the statistical
error of the genus we randomly reassign the phases of the Fourier modes while
keeping the amplitudes. We find, that at the smallest scales studied () the genus shift is in all regions negative,
implying a clump topology. At the larger scales () the topology shift is detected to be negative in 4 cases and positive
(``swiss cheese'' topology) in 2 cases. In 4 regions there is no statistically
significant topology shift at large scales
Testing for Non-Gaussianity in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Data: Minkowski Functionals and the Length of the Skeleton
The three Minkowski functionals and the recently defined length of the
skeleton are estimated for the co-added first-year Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data and compared with 5000 Monte Carlo simulations,
based on Gaussian fluctuations with the a-priori best-fit running-index power
spectrum and WMAP-like beam and noise properties. Several power
spectrum-dependent quantities, such as the number of stationary points, the
total length of the skeleton, and a spectral parameter, gamma, are also
estimated. While the area and length Minkowski functionals and the length of
the skeleton show no evidence for departures from the Gaussian hypothesis, the
northern hemisphere genus has a chi^2 that is large at the 95% level for all
scales. For the particular smoothing scale of 3.40 degrees FWHM it is larger
than that found in 99.5% of the simulations. In addition, the WMAP genus for
negative thresholds in the northern hemisphere has an amplitude that is larger
than in the simulations with a significance of more than 3 sigma. On the
smallest angular scales considered, the number of extrema in the WMAP data is
high at the 3 sigma level. However, this can probably be attributed to the
effect of point sources. Finally, the spectral parameter gamma is high at the
99% level in the northern Galactic hemisphere, while perfectly acceptable in
the southern hemisphere. The results provide strong evidence for the presence
of both non-Gaussian behavior and an unexpected power asymmetry between the
northern and southern hemispheres in the WMAP data.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
A low CMB variance in the WMAP data
We have estimated the CMB variance from the three-year WMAP data, finding a
value which is significantly lower than the one expected from Gaussian
simulations using the WMAP best-fit cosmological model, at a significance level
of 98.7 per cent. This result is even more prominent if we consider only the
north ecliptic hemisphere (99.8 per cent). Different analyses have been
performed in order to identify a possible origin for this anomaly. In
particular we have studied the behaviour of single radiometers and single year
data as well as the effect of residual foregrounds and 1/f noise, finding that
none of these possibilities can explain the low value of the variance. We have
also tested the effect of varying the cosmological parameters, finding that the
estimated CMB variance tends to favour higher values of than the one of
the WMAP best-fit model. In addition, we have also tested the consistency
between the estimated CMB variance and the actual measured CMB power spectrum
of the WMAP data, finding a strong discrepancy. A possible interpretation of
this result could be a deviation from Gaussianity and/or isotropy of the CMB.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Some new tests added. Section 5 largely
modified. Accepted for publication in MNRA
On Recovering the Nonlinear Bias Function from Counts in Cells Measurements
We present a simple and accurate method to constrain galaxy bias based on the
distribution of counts in cells. The most unique feature of our technique is
that it is applicable to non-linear scales, where both dark matter statistics
and the nature of galaxy bias are fairly complex. First, we estimate the
underlying continuous distribution function from precise counts-in-cells
measurements assuming local Poisson sampling. Then a robust, non-parametric
inversion of the bias function is recovered from the comparison of the
cumulative distributions in simulated dark matter and galaxy catalogs.
Obtaining continuous statistics from the discrete counts is the most delicate
novel part of our recipe. It corresponds to a deconvolution of a (Poisson)
kernel. For this we present two alternatives: a model independent algorithm
based on Richardson-Lucy iteration, and a solution using a parametric skewed
lognormal model. We find that the latter is an excellent approximation for the
dark matter distribution, but the model independent iterative procedure is more
suitable for galaxies. Tests based on high resolution dark matter simulations
and corresponding mock galaxy catalogs show that we can reconstruct the
non-linear bias function down to highly non-linear scales with high precision
in the range of . As far as the stochasticity of the bias,
we have found a remarkably simple and accurate formula based on Poisson noise,
which provides an excellent approximation for the scatter around the mean
non-linear bias function. In addition we have found that redshift distortions
have a negligible effect on our bias reconstruction, therefore our recipe can
be safely applied to redshift surveys.Comment: 32 pages, 18 figures; submitted to Ap
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