Deciphering cosmological information from redshift surveys of high-z objects - the cosmological light-cone effect and redshift-space distortion -

The three-dimensional distribution of astronomical objects observed in redshift space significantly differs from the true distribution since the distance to each object cannot be determined by its redshift $z$ only; for $z \ll 1$ the peculiar velocity field contaminates the true recession velocity of the Hubble flow, while the true distance for objects at $z < 1$ sensitively depends on the (unknown and thus assumed) cosmological parameters. This hampers the effort to understand the true distribution of large-scale structure of the universe. In addition, all cosmological observations are carried out on a light-cone, the null hypersurface of an observer at $z=0$. This implies that their intrinsic properties and clustering statistics should change even within the survey volume. Therefore a proper comparison taking account of the light-cone effect is important to extract any cosmological information from redshift catalogues, especially for $z < 1$. We present recent theoretical development on the two effects -- the cosmological light-cone effect and the cosmological redshift-space distortion -- which should play key roles in observational cosmology in the 21st century.Comment: 28pages, 20 figures, minor revision to match the final version to appear in Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement, vol. 133 (1999

Modeling peculiar velocities of dark matter halos

We present a simple model that accurately describes various statistical properties of peculiar velocities of dark matter halos. We pay particular attention to the following two effects; first, the evolution of the halo peculiar velocity depends on the local matter density, instead of the global density. Second, dark matter halos are biased tracers of the underlying mass distribution, thus halos tend to be located preferentially at high density regions. For the former, we develop an empirical model calibrated with N-body simulations, while for the latter, we use a conventional halo bias models based on the extended Press-Schechter model combined with an empirical log-normal probability distribution function of the mass density distribution. We find that compared with linear theory, the present model significantly improves the accuracy of predictions of statistical properties of the halo peculiar velocity field including the velocity dispersion, the probability distribution function, and the pairwise velocity dispersion at large separations. Thus our model predictions may be useful in analyzing future observations of the peculiar velocities of galaxy clusters.Comment: This paper was published in MNRAS, 343, 1312 (2003). Owing to an error in numerical computations, some incorrect results were presented there. Erratum is to be published in MNRAS. Conclusions of the original version are unaffected by the correction. This version supersedes the original versio

Confronting cold dark matter cosmologies with strong clustering of Lyman break galaxies at z∼3z\sim3

We perform a detailed analysis of the statistical significance of a concentration of Lyman break galaxies at $z \sim 3$ recently discovered by Steidel et al. (1997), using a series of N-body simulations with $N=256^3$ particles in a (100\himpc)^3 comoving box. While the observed number density of Lyman break galaxies at $z\sim3$ implies that they correspond to systems with dark matter halos of \simlt 10^{12}M_\odot, the resulting clustering of such objects on average is not strong enough to be reconciled with the concentration if it is fairly common; we predict one similar concentration approximately per ($6\sim 10$) fields in three representative cold dark matter models. Considering the current observational uncertainty of the frequency of such clustering at $z\sim3$, it would be premature to rule out the models, but the future spectroscopic surveys in a dozen fields could definitely challenge all the existing cosmological models a posteriori fitted to the $z=0$ universe.Comment: the final version which matchs that published in ApJ Letters (Feb 1998); compared with the previous versions, the predictions for the SCDM model are slightly changed; Latex, 11 pages, including 3 ps figure

Where Are the Baryons? II: Feedback Effects

Numerical simulations of the intergalactic medium have shown that at the present epoch a significant fraction (40-50%) of the baryonic component should be found in the (T~10^6K) Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) - with several recent observational lines of evidence indicating the validity of the prediction. We here recompute the evolution of the WHIM with the following major improvements: (1) galactic superwind feedback processes from galaxy/star formation are explicitly included; (2) major metal species (O V to O IX) are computed explicitly in a non-equilibrium way; (3) mass and spatial dynamic ranges are larger by a factor of 8 and 2, respectively, than in our previous simulations. Here are the major findings: (1) galactic superwinds have dramatic effects, increasing the WHIM mass fraction by about 20%, primarily through heating up warm gas near galaxies with density 10^{1.5}-10^4 times the mean density. (2) the fraction of baryons in WHIM is increased modestly from the earlier work but is ~40-50%. (3) the gas density of the WHIM is broadly peaked at a density 10-20 times the mean density, ranging from underdense regions to regions that are overdense by 10^3-10^4. (4) the median metallicity of the WHIM is 0.18 Zsun for oxygen with 50% and 90% intervals being (0.040,0.38) and (0.0017,0.83).Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, high res version at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~cen/baryonII.ps.g

Slow relative motion of IRAS galaxies at small separations: implications for galaxy formation models

We report on the measurement of the two-point correlation function and the pairwise peculiar velocity of galaxies in the IRAS PSCz survey. The real space two-point correlation function can be fitted to a power law $\xi(r) = (r_0/r)^{\gamma}$ with $\gamma=1.69$ and r_0=3.70 \mpc. The pairwise peculiar velocity dispersion $\sigma_{12}(r_p)$ is close to 400 \kms at r_p=3\mpc and decreases to about 150 \kms at r_p \approx 0.2 \mpc. These values are significantly lower than those obtained from the Las Campanas Redshift Survey, but agree very well with the results of blue galaxies reported by the SDSS team later on. We have constructed mock samples from N-body simulations with a cluster-weighted bias and from the theoretically constructed GIF catalog. We find that the two-point correlation function of the mock galaxies can be brought into agreemnt with the observed result, but the model does not reduce the velocity dispersions of galaxies to the level measured in the PSCz data. Thus we conclude that the peculiar velocity dispersions of the PSCz galaxies require a biasing model which substantially reduces the peculiar velocity dispersion on small scales relative to their spatial clustering. The results imply that either the cosmogony model needs to be revised or the velocity bias is important for the velocity dispersion of the IRAS galaxies.Comment: 4 pages, contribution to the proceedings "A New Era in Cosmology", ASP conference series, eds. T. Shanks and N. Metcalf