Does the Isotropy of the CMB Imply a Homogeneous Universe? Some Generalised EGS Theorems

We demonstrate that the high isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), combined with the Copernican principle, is not sufficient to prove homogeneity of the universe -- in contrast to previous results on this subject. The crucial additional factor not included in earlier work is the acceleration of the fundamental observers. We find the complete class of irrotational perfect fluid spacetimes admitting an exactly isotropic radiation field for every fundamental observer and show that are FLRW if and only if the acceleration is zero. While inhomogeneous in general, these spacetimes all possess three-dimensional symmetry groups, from which it follows that they also admit a thermodynamic interpretation. In addition to perfect fluids models we also consider multi-component fluids containing non-interacting radiation, dust and a quintessential scalar field or cosmological constant in which the radiation is isotropic for the geodesic (dust) observers. It is shown that the non-acceleration of the fundamental observers forces these spacetimes to be FLRW. While it is plausible that fundamental observers (galaxies) in the real universe follow geodesics, it is strictly necessary to determine this from local observations for the cosmological principle to be more than an assumption. We discuss how observations may be used to test this.Comment: replaced with final version. Added discusion and ref

Galaxy and Cluster Biasing from Local Group Dynamics

Comparing the gravitational acceleration induced on the Local Group of galaxies by different tracers of the underline density field we estimate, within the linear gravitational instability theory and the linear biasing ansatz, their relative bias factors. Using optical SSRS2 galaxies, IRAS (PSCz) galaxies and Abell/ACO clusters, we find b_{O,I} ~ 1.21 +- 0.06 and b_{C,I} ~ 4.3 +- 0.8, in agreement with other recent studies. Finally, there is an excellent one-to-one correspondence of the PSCz and Abell/ACO cluster dipole profiles, once the latter is rescaled by b_{C,I}, out to at least ~150 h^{-1} Mpc.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Influence of nuclear track potentials in insulators on the emission of target auger electrons

The angle, energy, and fluence dependence of electron emission following the interaction of normally incident 100-MeV Ne⁹⁺ ions with thin polypropylene foils and 170-MeV Ne⁷⁺ projectiles with Mylar foils has been investigated experimentally. Spectra were taken for electron ejection angles of 0°, 45°, and 120° at fluences in the range of 2x10¹³ to 4x10¹⁵ ions/cm². A fluence-dependent carbon KLL Auger energy shift of up to 68 eV was observed. Model calculations for the nuclear track potential are consistent with the experimental findings

A non-parametric model for the cosmic velocity field

We present a self-consistent non-parametric model of the local cosmic velocity field derived from the distribution of IRAS galaxies in the PSCz redshift survey. The survey has been analysed using two independent methods, both based on the assumptions of gravitational instability and linear biasing. The two methods, which give very similar results, have been tested and calibrated on mock PSCz catalogues constructed from cosmological N-body simulations. The denser sampling provided by the PSCz survey compared with previous IRAS galaxy surveys allows an improved reconstruction of the density and velocity fields out to large distances. The most striking feature of the model velocity field is a coherent large-scale streaming motion along the baseline connecting Perseus-Pisces, the Local Supercluster, the Great Attractor and the Shapley Concentration. We find no evidence for back-infall on to the Great Attractor. Instead, material behind and around the Great Attractor is inferred to be streaming towards the Shapley Concentration, aided by the compressional push of two large nearby underdensities. The PSCz model velocities compare well with those predicted from the 1.2-Jy redshift survey of IRAS galaxies and, perhaps surprisingly, with those predicted from the distribution of Abell/ACO clusters, out to 140h(-1)Mpc. Comparison of the real-space density fields (or, alternatively, the peculiar velocity fields) inferred from the PSCz and cluster catalogues gives a relative (linear) bias parameter between clusters and IRAS galaxies of b(c) = 4.4 +/- 0.6. Finally, we implement a likelihood analysis that uses all the available information on peculiar velocities in our local Universe to estimate beta = Omega(0)(0.6)/b = 0.6(-0.15)(+0.22) (1 sigma), where b is the bias parameter for IRAS galaxies