41,058 research outputs found
Spherical Redshift Distortions
Peculiar velocities induce apparent line of sight displacements of galaxies
in redshift space, distorting the pattern of clustering in the radial versus
transverse directions. On large scales, the amplitude of the distortion yields
a measure of the dimensionless linear growth rate , where is the cosmological density and the linear
bias factor. To make the maximum statistical use of the data in a wide angle
redshift survey, and for the greatest accuracy, the spherical character of the
distortion needs to be treated properly, rather than in the simpler plane
parallel approximation. In the linear regime, the redshift space correlation
function is described by a spherical distortion operator acting on the true
correlation function. It is pointed out here that there exists an operator,
which is essentially the logarithmic derivative with respect to pair
separation, which both commutes with the spherical distortion operator, and at
the same time defines a characteristic scale of separation. The correlation
function can be expanded in eigenfunctions of this operator, and these
eigenfunctions are eigenfunctions of the distortion operator. Ratios of the
observed amplitudes of the eigenfunctions yield measures of the linear growth
rate in a manner independent of the shape of the correlation function.
More generally, the logarithmic derivative with
respect to depth , along with the square and component of the
angular momentum operator, form a complete set of commuting operators for the
spherical distortion operator acting on the density. The eigenfunctions of this
complete set of operators are spherical waves about the observer, with radial
part lying in logarithmic real or Fourier space.Comment: 15 pages, with 1 embedded EPS figur
A note on dual giant gravitons in
We study some of the properties of dual giant gravitons - D2-branes wrapped
on an - in type IIA string theory on . In particular we confirm that the spectrum of small
fluctuations about the giant is both real and independent of the size of the
graviton. We also extend previously developed techniques for attaching open
strings to giants to this D2-brane giant and focus on two particular limits of
the resulting string sigma model: In the pp-wave limit we quantize the string
and compute the spectrum of bosonic excitations while in the semiclassical
limit, we read off the fast string Polyakov action and comment on the
comparison to the Landau-Lifshitz action for the dual open spin chain.Comment: v3 significantly changed: added coupling to RR 1-form and turned on
worldvolume gauge field, computed gauge field fluctuation, added comments on
closure of the sl(2) sector and re-written to improve clarity. This version
published in JHE
Metamaterials for light rays: ray optics without wave-optical analog in the ray-optics limit
Volumes of sub-wavelength electromagnetic elements can act like homogeneous
materials: metamaterials. In analogy, sheets of optical elements such as prisms
can act ray-optically like homogeneous sheet materials. In this sense, such
sheets can be considered to be metamaterials for light rays (METATOYs).
METATOYs realize new and unusual transformations of the directions of
transmitted light rays. We study here, in the ray-optics and scalar-wave
limits, the wave-optical analog of such transformations, and we show that such
an analog does not always exist. Perhaps, this is the reason why many of the
ray-optical possibilities offered by METATOYs have never before been
considered.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, references update
Local light-ray rotation
We present a sheet structure that rotates the local ray direction through an
arbitrary angle around the sheet normal. The sheet structure consists of two
parallel Dove-prism sheets, each of which flips one component of the local
direction of transmitted light rays. Together, the two sheets rotate
transmitted light rays around the sheet normal. We show that the direction
under which a point light source is seen is given by a Mobius transform. We
illustrate some of the properties with movies calculated by ray-tracing
software.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
Measuring the galaxy power spectrum with future redshift surveys
Precision measurements of the galaxy power spectrum P(k) require a data
analysis pipeline that is both fast enough to be computationally feasible and
accurate enough to take full advantage of high-quality data. We present a
rigorous discussion of different methods of power spectrum estimation, with
emphasis on the traditional Fourier method, the linear (Karhunen-Loeve; KL),
and quadratic data compression schemes, showing in what approximations they
give the same result. To improve speed, we show how many of the advantages of
KL data compression and power spectrum estimation may be achieved with a
computationally faster quadratic method. To improve accuracy, we derive
analytic expressions for handling the integral constraint, since it is crucial
that finite volume effects are accurately corrected for on scales comparable to
the depth of the survey. We also show that for the KL and quadratic techniques,
multiple constraints can be included via simple matrix operations, thereby
rendering the results less sensitive to galactic extinction and mis-estimates
of the radial selection function. We present a data analysis pipeline that we
argue does justice to the increases in both quality and quantity of data that
upcoming redshift surveys will provide. It uses three analysis techniques in
conjunction: a traditional Fourier approach on small scales, a pixelized
quadratic matrix method on large scales and a pixelized KL eigenmode analysis
to probe anisotropic effects such as redshift-space distortions.Comment: Major revisions for clarity. Matches accepted ApJ version. 23 pages,
with 2 figs included. Color figure and links at
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/galpower.html (faster from the US), from
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~max/galpower.html (faster from Europe) or
from [email protected]
Decorrelating the Power Spectrum of Galaxies
It is shown how to decorrelate the (prewhitened) power spectrum measured from
a galaxy survey into a set of high resolution uncorrelated band-powers. The
treatment includes nonlinearity, but not redshift distortions. Amongst the
infinitely many possible decorrelation matrices, the square root of the Fisher
matrix, or a scaled version thereof, offers a particularly good choice, in the
sense that the band-power windows are narrow, approximately symmetric, and
well-behaved in the presence of noise. We use this method to compute band-power
windows for, and the information content of, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the
Las Campanas Redshift Survey, and the IRAS 1.2 Jy Survey.Comment: 11 pages, including 8 embedded PostScript figures. Minor changes to
agree with published versio
The power spectrum of galaxies in the 2dF 100k redshift survey
We compute the real-space power spectrum and the redshift-space distortions
of galaxies in the 2dF 100k galaxy redshift survey using pseudo-Karhunen-Loeve
eigenmodes and the stochastic bias formalism. Our results agree well with those
published by the 2dFGRS team, and have the added advantage of producing
easy-to-interpret uncorrelated minimum-variance measurements of the
galaxy-galaxy, galaxy-velocity and velocity-velocity power spectra in 27
k-bands, with narrow and well-behaved window functions in the range 0.01h/Mpc <
k < 0.8h/Mpc. We find no significant detection of baryonic wiggles, although
our results are consistent with a standard flat Omega_Lambda=0.7
``concordance'' model and previous tantalizing hints of baryonic oscillations.
We measure the galaxy-matter correlation coefficient r > 0.4 and the
redshift-distortion parameter beta=0.49+/-0.16 for r=1 (beta=0.47+/- 0.16
without finger-of-god compression). Since this is an apparent-magnitude limited
sample, luminosity-dependent bias may cause a slight red-tilt in the power
spectum. A battery of systematic error tests indicate that the survey is not
only impressive in size, but also unusually clean, free of systematic errors at
the level to which our tests are sensitive. Our measurements and window
functions are available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/2df.html together with
the survey mask, radial selection function and uniform subsample of the survey
that we have constructed.Comment: Replaced to match accepted MNRAS version, with new radial/angular
systematics plot and sigma8 typo corrected. High-res figures, power spectra,
windows and our uniform galaxy subsample with mask at
http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/2df.html or from [email protected]. 26
journal pages, 28 fig
HST Images and Spectra of the Remnant of SN 1885 in M31
Near UV HST images of the remnant of SN 1885 (S And) in M31 show a 0"70 +-
0"05 diameter absorption disk silhouetted against M31's central bulge, at SN
1885's historically reported position. The disk's size corresponds to a linear
diameter of 2.5 +- 0.4 pc at a distance of 725 +- 70 kpc, implying an average
expansion velocity of 11000 +- 2000 km/s over 110 years. Low-dispersion FOS
spectra over 3200-4800 A; reveal that the absorption arises principally from Ca
II H & K (equivalent width ~215 A;) with weaker absorption features of Ca I
4227 A; and Fe I 3720 A;. The flux at Ca II line center indicates a foreground
starlight fraction of 0.21, which places SNR 1885 some 64 pc to the near side
of the midpoint of the M31 bulge, comparable to its projected 55 pc distance
from the nucleus. The absorption line profiles suggest an approximately
spherically symmetric, bell-shaped density distribution of supernova ejecta
freely expanding at up to 13100 +- 1500 km/s. We estimate Ca I, Ca II, and Fe I
masses of 2.9(+2.4,-0.6) x 10^-4 M_o, 0.005(+0.016,-0.002) M_o, and
0.013(+0.010,-0.005) M_o respectively. If the ionization state of iron is
similar to the observed ionization state of calcium, M_CaII/M_CaI = 16(+42,-5),
then the mass of Fe II is 0.21(+0.74,-0.08) M_o, consistent with that expected
for either normal or subluminous SN Ia.Comment: 8 pages, including 4 embedded EPS figures, emulateapj.sty style file.
Color image at http://casa.colorado.edu/~mcl/sand.shtml . Submitted to Ap
Determination of the Baryon Density from Large Scale Galaxy Redshift Surveys
We estimate the degree to which the baryon density, , can be
determined from the galaxy power spectrum measured from large scale galaxy
redshift surveys, and in particular, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A high
baryon density will cause wiggles to appear in the power spectrum, which should
be observable at the current epoch. We assume linear theory on scales and do not include the effects of redshift distortions, evolution,
or biasing. With an optimum estimate of to ,
the uncertainties in are roughly 0.07 and 0.016 in flat
and open () cosmological models, respectively. This result
suggests that it should be possible to test for consistency with big bang
nucleosynthesis estimates of if we live in an open universe.Comment: 23 Pages, 10 Postscript figure
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