The Mysterious Merger of NGC6868 and NGC6861 in the Telescopium Group

We use Chandra X-ray observations of the hot gas in and around NGC6868 and NGC6861 in the Telescopium galaxy group (AS0851) to probe the interaction history between these galaxies. Mean surface brightness profiles for NGC6868 and NGC6861 are each well described by double beta-models, suggesting that they are each the dominant galaxy in a galaxy subgroup about to merge. Surface brightness and temperature maps of the brightest group galaxy NGC6868 show a cold front edge ~23 kpc to the north, and a cool 0.62 keV spiral-shaped tail to the south. Analysis of the temperature and density across the cold front constrains the relative motion between NGC6868 and the ambient group gas to be at most transonic; while the spiral morphology of the tail strongly suggests that the cold front edge and tail are the result of gas sloshing due to the subgroup merger. The cooler central region of NGC6861 is surrounded by a sheath of hot gas to the east and hot, bifurcated tails of X-ray emission to the west and northwest. We discuss supersonic infall of the NGC6861 subroup, sloshing from the NGC6868 and NGC6861 subgroup merger, and AGN heating as possible explanations for these features, and discuss possible scenarios that may contribute to the order of magnitude discrepancy between the Margorrian and black hole mass - sigma predictions for its central black hole.Comment: 17 pages, 23 figures, submitted to Ap

Quintom dark energy in DGP braneworld cosmology

In this paper we consider a $Z_2$ symmetrical 3-brane embedded in a 5-dimensional spacetime. We study the effective Einstein equation and acceleration condition in presence of the quintom dark energy fluid as the bulk matter field. It is shown that the time-dependent bulk quintom field induces a time-dependent cosmological constant on the brane. In the framework of the DGP model, the effective Einstein equation is obtained in two different cases: i) where the quintom field is considered as the bulk matter field and the brane is empty and, ii) where the quintom dark energy is confined on the brane and the bulk is empty. We show that in both cases one could obtain a self-inflationary solution at late time in positive branch $\epsilon=1$, and an asymptotically static universe in negative branch $\epsilon=-1$.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Effective number of neutrinos and baryon asymmetry from BBN and WMAP

We place constraints on the number of relativistic degrees of freedom and on the baryon asymmetry at the epoch of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and at recombination, using cosmic background radiation (CBR) data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), complemented by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project measurement of the Hubble constant, along with the latest compilation of deuterium abundances and measurements of the primordial helium abundance. The agreement between the derived values of these key cosmological and particle physics parameters at these widely separated (in time or redshift) epochs is remarkable. From the combination of CBR and BBN data, we find the 2\sigma ranges for the effective number of neutrinos and for the baryon asymmetry (baryon to photon number ratio \eta) to be 1.7-3.0 and 5.53-6.76 \times 10^{-10}, respectively.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 2 table

Inflation on a Warped Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati Brane

We discuss an inflation model, in which the inflation is driven by a single scalar field with exponential potential on a warped DGP brane. In contrast to the power law inflation in standard model, we find that the inflationary phase can exit spontaneously without any mechanism. The running of the index of scalar perturbation spectrum can take an enough large value to match the observation data, while other parameters are in a reasonable region.Comment: Revtex, v3: 15 pages including 6 eps figures, some changes made and references added, to appear in JCA

Disappearing Dark Matter in Brane World Cosmology: New Limits on Noncompact Extra Dimensions

We explore cosmological implications of dark matter as massive particles trapped on a brane embedded in a Randall-Sundrum noncompact higher dimension $AdS_5$ space. It is an unavoidable consequence of this cosmology that massive particles are metastable and can disappear into the bulk dimension. Here, we show that a massive dark matter particle (e.g. the lightest supersymmetric particle) is likely to have the shortest lifetime for disappearing into the bulk. We examine cosmological constraints on this new paradigm and show that disappearing dark matter is consistent (at the 95% confidence level) with all cosmological constraints, i.e. present observations of Type Ia supernovae at the highest redshift, trends in the mass-to-light ratios of galaxy clusters with redshift, the fraction of X-ray emitting gas in rich clusters, and the spectrum of power fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. A best $2 \sigma$ concordance region is identified corresponding to a mean lifetime for dark matter disappearance of $15 \le \Gamma^{-1} \le 80$ Gyr. The implication of these results for brane-world physics is discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, new cosmological constraints added, accepted for publication in PR

Consistency equations in Randall-Sundrum cosmology: a test for braneworld inflation

In the context of an inflationary Randall-Sundrum Type II braneworld (RS2) we calculate spectral indices and amplitudes of cosmological scalar and tensor perturbations, up to second order in slow-roll parameters. Under very simple assumptions, extrapolating next-order formulae from first-order calculations in the case of a de Sitter brane, we see that the degeneracy between standard and braneworld lowest-order consistency equations is broken, thus giving different signatures of early-universe inflationary expansion. Using the latest results from WMAP for estimates of cosmological observables, it is shown that future data and missions can in principle discriminate between standard and braneworld scenarios.Comment: 13 pages; v3: supersedes the published version, corrected misprint

The Well-Tempered Neutralino

The dark-matter prediction is usually considered as one of the successes of low-energy supersymmetry. We argue that, after LEP constraints are taken into account, the correct prediction for the dark-matter density, at a quantitative level, is no longer a natural consequence of supersymmetry, but it requires special relations among parameters, highly sensitive to small variations. This is analogous to the problem of electroweak-symmetry breaking, where the correct value of the Z mass is obtained only with a certain degree of fine tuning. In the general parameter space of low-energy supersymmetry, one of the most plausible solution to reproduce the correct value of the dark-matter density is the well-tempered neutralino, which corresponds to the boundary between a pure Bino and a pure Higgsino or Wino. We study the properties of well-tempered neutralinos and we propose a simple limit of split supersymmetry that realizes this situation.Comment: Latex2e, 29 pages, 5 figures, reference added, typo corrected, version to be published in NP

Chaplygin inflation on the brane

Brane inflationary universe model in the context of a Chaplygin gas equation of state is studied. General conditions for this model to be realizable are discussed. In the high-energy limit and by using a chaotic potential we describe in great details the characteristic of this model. The parameters of the model are restricted by using recent astronomical observations.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, Accepted for publication in Physics Letters

CMB mapping experiments: a designer's guide

We apply state-of-the art data analysis methods to a number of fictitious CMB mapping experiments, including 1/f noise, distilling the cosmological information from time-ordered data to maps to power spectrum estimates, and find that in all cases, the resulting error bars can we well approximated by simple and intuitive analytic expressions. Using these approximations, we discuss how to maximize the scientific return of CMB mapping experiments given the practical constraints at hand, and our main conclusions are as follows. (1) For a given resolution and sensitivity, it is best to cover a sky area such that the signal-to-noise ratio per resolution element (pixel) is of order unity. (2) It is best to avoid excessively skinny observing regions, narrower than a few degrees. (3) The minimum-variance mapmaking method can reduce the effects of 1/f noise by a substantial factor, but only if the scan pattern is thoroughly interconnected. (4) 1/f noise produces a 1/l contribution to the angular power spectrum for well connected single-beam scanning, as compared to virtually white noise for a two-beam scan pattern such as that of the MAP satellite.Comment: 28 pages, with 13 figures included. Minor revisions to match accepted version. Color figures and links at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/strategy.html (faster from the US), from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~max/strategy.html (faster from Europe) or from [email protected]

Self-interacting Scalar Field Trapped in a Randall-Sundrum Braneworld: The Dynamical Systems Perspective

We apply the dynamical systems tools to study the linear dynamics of a self-interacting scalar field trapped on a Randall-Sundrum brane. The simplest kinds of self-interaction potentials are investigated: a) constant potential, and b) exponential potential. It is shown that the dynamics of the Randall-Sundrum model significantly differs from the standard four-dimensional behavior at early times: in all cases of interest the (singular) empty universe is the past attractor for every trajectory in phase space, meanwhile the kinetic energy-dominated solution is always a saddle critical point. The late-time dynamics is not affected by the brane effects.Comment: 8 pages, 14 eps figure