141 research outputs found
Effects of Noise on Galaxy Isophotes
The study of shapes of the images of objects is an important issue not only
because it reveals its dynamical state but also it helps to understand the
object's evolutionary history. We discuss a new technique in cosmological image
analysis which is based on a set of non-parametric shape descriptors known as
the Minkowski Functionals (MFs). These functionals are extremely versatile and
under some conditions give a complete description of the geometrical properties
of objects. We believe that MFs could be a useful tool to extract information
about the shapes of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and superclusters. The
information revealed by MFs can be utilized along with the knowledge obtained
from currently popular methods and thus could improve our understanding of the
true shapes of cosmological objects.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, to appear in "The IGM/Galaxy Connection - The
Distribution of Baryons at z=0" Conference Proceeding
Two-State Migration of DNA in a structured Microchannel
DNA migration in topologically structured microchannels with periodic
cavities is investigated experimentally and with Brownian dynamics simulations
of a simple bead-spring model. The results are in very good agreement with one
another. In particular, the experimentally observed migration order of Lambda-
and T2-DNA molecules is reproduced by the simulations. The simulation data
indicate that the mobility may depend on the chain length in a nonmonotonic way
at high electric fields. This is found to be the signature of a nonequilibrium
phase transition between two different migration states, a slow one and a fast
one, which can also be observed experimentally under appropriate conditions.Comment: Revised edition corresponding to the comments by the referees,
submitted to Physical Review
Disentangling the Cosmic Web I: Morphology of Isodensity Contours
We apply Minkowski functionals and various derived measures to decipher the
morphological properties of large-scale structure seen in simulations of
gravitational evolution. Minkowski functionals of isodensity contours serve as
tools to test global properties of the density field. Furthermore, we identify
coherent objects at various threshold levels and calculate their partial
Minkowski functionals. We propose a set of two derived dimensionless
quantities, planarity and filamentarity, which reduce the morphological
information in a simple and intuitive way. Several simulations of the
gravitational evolution of initial power-law spectra provide a framework for
systematic tests of our method.Comment: 26 pages including 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
Searching for Signatures of Cosmic String Wakes in 21cm Redshift Surveys using Minkowski Functionals
Minkowski Functionals are a powerful tool for analyzing large scale
structure, in particular if the distribution of matter is highly non-Gaussian,
as it is in models in which cosmic strings contribute to structure formation.
Here we apply Minkowski functionals to 21cm maps which arise if structure is
seeded by a scaling distribution of cosmic strings embeddded in background
fluctuations, and then test for the statistical significance of the cosmic
string signals using the Fisher combined probability test. We find that this
method allows for detection of cosmic strings with ,
which would be improvement over current limits by a factor of about 3.Comment: Matches published versio
Testing Gaussianity on Archeops Data
A Gaussianity analysis using a goodness-of-fit test and the Minkowski
functionals on the sphere has been performed to study the measured Archeops
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy data for a 143 GHz
Archeops bolometer. We consider large angular scales, greater than 1.8 degrees,
and a large fraction of the North Galactic hemisphere, around 16%, with a
galactic latitude b > 15 degrees.
The considered goodness-of-fit test, first proposed by Rayner & Best (1989),
has been applied to the data after a signal-to-noise decomposition. The three
Minkowski functionals on the sphere have been used to construct a chi-square
statistic using different thresholds. The first method has been calibrated
using simulations of Archeops data containing the CMB signal and instrumental
noise in order to check its asymptotic convergence. Two kind of maps produced
with two different map-making techniques (coaddition and Mirage) have been
analysed.
Archeops maps for both Mirage and coaddition map-making, have been found to
be compatible with Gaussianity. From these results we can exclude a dust and
atmospheric contamination larger than 7.8% (90% CL). Also the non-linear
coupling parameter f_{nl} can be constrained to be -800 < f_{nl} < 1100 at the
95% CL and on angular scales of 1.8 degrees. For comparison, the same method
has been applied to data from the NASA WMAP satellite in the same region of
sky. The 1-year and 3-year releases have been used. Results are compatible with
those obtained with Archeops, implying in particular an upper limit for f_{nl}
on degree angular scales.Comment: A&A accepted. The limits on the contamination and the fnl parameter
have been improve
Dark Energy from structure: a status report
The effective evolution of an inhomogeneous universe model in any theory of
gravitation may be described in terms of spatially averaged variables. In
Einstein's theory, restricting attention to scalar variables, this evolution
can be modeled by solutions of a set of Friedmann equations for an effective
volume scale factor, with matter and backreaction source terms. The latter can
be represented by an effective scalar field (`morphon field') modeling Dark
Energy.
The present work provides an overview over the Dark Energy debate in
connection with the impact of inhomogeneities, and formulates strategies for a
comprehensive quantitative evaluation of backreaction effects both in
theoretical and observational cosmology. We recall the basic steps of a
description of backreaction effects in relativistic cosmology that lead to
refurnishing the standard cosmological equations, but also lay down a number of
challenges and unresolved issues in connection with their observational
interpretation.
The present status of this subject is intermediate: we have a good
qualitative understanding of backreaction effects pointing to a global
instability of the standard model of cosmology; exact solutions and
perturbative results modeling this instability lie in the right sector to
explain Dark Energy from inhomogeneities. It is fair to say that, even if
backreaction effects turn out to be less important than anticipated by some
researchers, the concordance high-precision cosmology, the architecture of
current N-body simulations, as well as standard perturbative approaches may all
fall short in correctly describing the Late Universe.Comment: Invited Review for a special Gen. Rel. Grav. issue on Dark Energy, 59
pages, 2 figures; matches published versio
Search for non-Gaussianity in pixel, harmonic and wavelet space: compared and combined
We present a comparison between three approaches to test non-Gaussianity of
cosmic microwave background data. The Minkowski functionals, the empirical
process method and the skewness of wavelet coefficients are applied to maps
generated from non-standard inflationary models and to Gaussian maps with point
sources included. We discuss the different power of the pixel, harmonic and
wavelet space methods on these simulated almost full-sky data (with Planck like
noise). We also suggest a new procedure consisting of a combination of
statistics in pixel, harmonic and wavelet space.Comment: Accepted for publication in PR
The primordial non-Gaussianity of local type (f_NL) in the WMAP 5-year data: the length distribution of CMB skeleton
We present skeleton studies of non-Gaussianity in the CMB temperature
anisotropy observed in the WMAP5 data. The local skeleton is traced on the 2D
sphere by cubic spline interpolation which leads to more accurate estimation of
the intersection positions between the skeleton and the secondary pixels than
conventional linear interpolation. We demonstrate that the skeleton-based
estimator of non-Gaussianity of the local type (f_NL) - the departure of the
length distribution from the corresponding Gaussian expectation - yields an
unbiased and sufficiently converged f_NL-likelihood.
We analyse the skeleton statistics in the WMAP5 combined V- and W-band data
outside the Galactic base-mask determined from the KQ75 sky-coverage. The
results are consistent with Gaussian simulations of the the best-fitting
cosmological model, but deviate from the previous results determined using the
WMAP1 data. We show that it is unlikely that the improved skeleton tracing
method, the omission of Q-band data, the modification of the
foreground-template fitting method or the absence of 6 extended regions in the
new mask contribute to such a deviation. However, the application of the Kp0
base-mask in data processing does improve the consistency with the WMAP1
results.
The f_NL-likelihoods of the data are estimated at 9 different smoothing
levels. It is unexpected that the best-fit values show positive correlation
with the smoothing scales. Further investigation argues against a point-source
or goodness-of-fit explanation but finds that about 30% of either Gaussian or
f_NL samples having better goodness-of-fit than the WMAP5 show a similar
correlation. We present the estimate f_NL=47.3+/-34.9 (1sigma error) determined
from the first four smoothing angles and f_NL=76.8+/-43.1 for the combination
of all nine. The former result may be overestimated at the 0.21sigma-level
because of point sources.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA
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