221 research outputs found
SDSS J131339.98+515128.3: A new gravitationally lensed quasar selected based on near-infrared excess
We report the discovery of a new gravitationally lensed quasar, SDSS
J131339.98+515128.3, at a redshift of 1.875 with an image separation of 1.24".
The lensing galaxy is clearly detected in visible-light follow-up observations.
We also identify three absorption-line doublets in the spectra of the lensed
quasar images, from which we measure the lens redshift to be 0.194. Like
several other known lenses, the lensed quasar images have different continuum
slopes. This difference is probably the result of reddening and microlensing in
the lensing galaxy. The lensed quasar was selected by correlating Sloan Digital
Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic quasars with Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)
sources and choosing quasars that show near-infrared (IR) excess. The near-IR
excess can originate, for example, from the contribution of the lensing galaxy
at near-IR wavelengths. We show that the near-IR excess technique is indeed an
efficient method to identify lensed systems from a large sample of quasars.Comment: Accepted to MNRAS, 8 pages, 7 figure
Galaxy Bias and Halo-Occupation Numbers from Large-Scale Clustering
We show that current surveys have at least as much signal to noise in
higher-order statistics as in the power spectrum at weakly nonlinear scales. We
discuss how one can use this information to determine the mean of the galaxy
halo occupation distribution (HOD) using only large-scale information, through
galaxy bias parameters determined from the galaxy bispectrum and trispectrum.
After introducing an averaged, reasonably fast to evaluate, trispectrum
estimator, we show that the expected errors on linear and quadratic bias
parameters can be reduced by at least 20-40%. Also, the inclusion of the
trispectrum information, which is sensitive to "three-dimensionality" of
structures, helps significantly in constraining the mass dependence of the HOD
mean. Our approach depends only on adequate modeling of the abundance and
large-scale clustering of halos and thus is independent of details of how
galaxies are distributed within halos. This provides a consistency check on the
traditional approach of using two-point statistics down to small scales, which
necessarily makes more assumptions. We present a detailed forecast of how well
our approach can be carried out in the case of the SDSS.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure
Gravity and Large-Scale Non-local Bias
The relationship between galaxy and matter overdensities, bias, is most often
assumed to be local. This is however unstable under time evolution, we provide
proofs under several sets of assumptions. In the simplest model galaxies are
created locally and linearly biased at a single time, and subsequently move
with the matter (no velocity bias) conserving their comoving number density (no
merging). We show that, after this formation time, the bias becomes unavoidably
non-local and non-linear at large scales. We identify the non-local
gravitationally induced fields in which the galaxy overdensity can be expanded,
showing that they can be constructed out of the invariants of the deformation
tensor (Galileons). In addition, we show that this result persists if we
include an arbitrary evolution of the comoving number density of tracers. We
then include velocity bias, and show that new contributions appear, a dipole
field being the signature at second order. We test these predictions by
studying the dependence of halo overdensities in cells of fixed matter density:
measurements in simulations show that departures from the mean bias relation
are strongly correlated with the non-local gravitationally induced fields
identified by our formalism. The effects on non-local bias seen in the
simulations are most important for the most biased halos, as expected from our
predictions. The non-locality seen in the simulations is not fully captured by
assuming local bias in Lagrangian space. Accounting for these effects when
modeling galaxy bias is essential for correctly describing the dependence on
triangle shape of the galaxy bispectrum, and hence constraining cosmological
parameters and primordial non-Gaussianity. We show that using our formalism we
remove an important systematic in the determination of bias parameters from the
galaxy bispectrum, particularly for luminous galaxies. (abridged)Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures. v2: improved appendix
Discovery of Four Gravitationally Lensed Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We present the discovery of four gravitationally lensed quasars selected from
the spectroscopic quasar catalog of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We describe
imaging and spectroscopic follow-up observations that support the lensing
interpretation of the following four quasars: SDSS J0832+0404 (image separation
\theta=1.98", source redshift z_s=1.115, lens redshift z_l=0.659); SDSS
J1216+3529 (\theta=1.49", z_s=2.012); SDSS J1322+1052 (\theta=2.00",
z_s=1.716); and SDSS J1524+4409 (\theta=1.67", z_s=1.210, z_l=0.320). Each
system has two lensed images. We find that the fainter image component of SDSS
J0832+0404 is significantly redder than the brighter component, perhaps because
of differential reddening by the lensing galaxy. The lens potential of SDSS
J1216+3529 might be complicated by the presence of a secondary galaxy near the
main lensing galaxy.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in A
A New Survey for Giant Arcs
We report on the first results of an imaging survey to detect strong
gravitational lensing targeting the richest clusters selected from the
photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with follow-up deep
imaging observations from the Wisconsin Indiana Yale NOAO (WIYN) 3.5m telescope
and the University of Hawaii 88-inch telescope (UH88). The clusters are
selected from an area of 8000 deg^2 using the Red Cluster Sequence technique
and span the redshift range 0.1 < z < 0.6, corresponding to a comoving
cosmological volume of ~ 2 Gpc^3. Our imaging survey thus targets a volume more
than an order of magnitude larger than any previous search. A total of 240
clusters were imaged of which 141 had sub-arcsecond image quality. Our survey
has uncovered16 new lensing clusters with definite giant arcs, an additional 12
systems for which the lensing interpretation is very likely, and 9 possible
lenses which contain shorter arclets or candidate arcs which are less certain
and will require further observations to confirm their lensing origin. The
number of new cluster lenses detected in this survey is likely > 30. Among
these new systems are several of the most dramatic examples of strong
gravitational lensing ever discovered with multiple bright arcs at large
angular separation. These will likely become 'poster-child' gravitational
lenses similar to Abell 1689 and CL0024+1654. The new lenses discovered in this
survey will enable future sysetmatic studies of the statistics of strong
lensing and its implications for cosmology and our structure formation
paradigm.Comment: 19 pages, 7 pages of Figures, submitted to AJ. Fixed Typo
Measuring our universe from galaxy redshift surveys
Galaxy redshift surveys have achieved significant progress over the last
couple of decades. Those surveys tell us in the most straightforward way what
our local universe looks like. While the galaxy distribution traces the bright
side of the universe, detailed quantitative analyses of the data have even
revealed the dark side of the universe dominated by non-baryonic dark matter as
well as more mysterious dark energy (or Einstein's cosmological constant). We
describe several methodologies of using galaxy redshift surveys as cosmological
probes, and then summarize the recent results from the existing surveys.
Finally we present our views on the future of redshift surveys in the era of
Precision Cosmology.Comment: 82 pages, 31 figures, invited review article published in Living
Reviews in Relativity, http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2004-
Targeted knock-down of miR21 primary transcripts using snoMEN vectors induces apoptosis in human cancer cell lines
We have previously reported an antisense technology, 'snoMEN vectors', for targeted knock-down of protein coding mRNAs using human snoRNAs manipulated to contain short regions of sequence complementarity with the mRNA target. Here we characterise the use of snoMEN vectors to target the knock-down of micro RNA primary transcripts. We document the specific knock-down of miR21 in HeLa cells using plasmid vectors expressing miR21-targeted snoMEN RNAs and show this induces apoptosis. Knock-down is dependent on the presence of complementary sequences in the snoMEN vector and the induction of apoptosis can be suppressed by over-expression of miR21. Furthermore, we have also developed lentiviral vectors for delivery of snoMEN RNAs and show this increases the efficiency of vector transduction in many human cell lines that are difficult to transfect with plasmid vectors. Transduction of lentiviral vectors expressing snoMEN targeted to pri-miR21 induces apoptosis in human lung adenocarcinoma cells, which express high levels of miR21, but not in human primary cells. We show that snoMEN-mediated suppression of miRNA expression is prevented by siRNA knock-down of Ago2, but not by knock-down of Ago1 or Upf1. snoMEN RNAs colocalise with Ago2 in cell nuclei and nucleoli and can be co-immunoprecipitated from nuclear extracts by antibodies specific for Ago2
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Ensemble clustering in deterministic ensemble Kalman filters
Ensemble clustering (EC) can arise in data assimilation with ensemble square root filters (EnSRFs) using non-linear models: an M-member ensemble splits into a single outlier and a cluster of M−1 members. The stochastic Ensemble Kalman Filter does not present this problem. Modifications to the EnSRFs by a periodic resampling of the ensemble through random rotations have been proposed to address it. We introduce a metric to quantify the presence of EC and present evidence to dispel the notion that EC leads to filter failure. Starting from a univariate model, we show that EC is not a permanent but transient phenomenon; it occurs intermittently in non-linear models. We perform a series of data assimilation experiments using a standard EnSRF and a modified EnSRF by a resampling though random rotations. The modified EnSRF thus alleviates issues associated with EC at the cost of traceability of individual ensemble trajectories and cannot use some of algorithms that enhance performance of standard EnSRF. In the non-linear regimes of low-dimensional models, the analysis root mean square error of the standard EnSRF slowly grows with ensemble size if the size is larger than the dimension of the model state. However, we do not observe this problem in a more complex model that uses an ensemble size much smaller than the dimension of the model state, along with inflation and localisation. Overall, we find that transient EC does not handicap the performance of the standard EnSRF
An improved fitting formula for the dark matter bispectrum
In this paper we present an improved fitting formula for the dark matter
bispectrum motivated by the previous phenomenological approach of Scoccimarro &
Couchman (2001). We use a set of LCDM simulations to calibrate the fitting
parameters in the k-range of 0.03 h/Mpc<k<0.4 h/Mpc and in the redshift range
of 0<z<1.5. This new proposed fit describes well the BAO-features although it
was not designed to. The deviation between the simulations output and our
analytic prediction is typically less than 5% and in the worst case is never
above 10%. We envision that this new analytic fitting formula will be very
useful in providing reliable predictions for the non-linear dark matter
bispectrum for LCDM models.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Published in JCA
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search. III. Constraints on Dark Energy from the Third Data Release Quasar Lens Catalog
We present cosmological results from the statistics of lensed quasars in the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Lens Search. By taking proper account of
the selection function, we compute the expected number of quasars lensed by
early-type galaxies and their image separation distribution assuming a flat
universe, which is then compared with 7 lenses found in the SDSS Data Release 3
to derive constraints on dark energy under strictly controlled criteria. For a
cosmological constant model (w=-1) we obtain
\Omega_\Lambda=0.74^{+0.11}_{-0.15}(stat.)^{+0.13}_{-0.06}(syst.). Allowing w
to be a free parameter we find
\Omega_M=0.26^{+0.07}_{-0.06}(stat.)^{+0.03}_{-0.05}(syst.) and
w=-1.1\pm0.6(stat.)^{+0.3}_{-0.5}(syst.) when combined with the constraint from
the measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations in the SDSS luminous red galaxy
sample. Our results are in good agreement with earlier lensing constraints
obtained using radio lenses, and provide additional confirmation of the
presence of dark energy consistent with a cosmological constant, derived
independently of type Ia supernovae.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in A
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