Small Angular Scale Simulations of the Microwave Sky

We describe and compare two types of microwave sky simulations which are good for small angular scales. The first type uses expansions in spherical harmonics, and the second one is based on plane waves and the Fast Fourier Transform. The angular power spectrum is extracted from maps corresponding to both types of simulations, and the resulting spectra are appropriately compared. In this way, the features and usefulness of Fourier simulations are pointed out. For $\ell \geq 100$, all the simulations lead to similar accuracies; however, the CPU cost of Fourier simulations is $\sim 10$ times smaller than that for spherical harmonic simulations. For $\ell \leq 100$, the simulations based on spherical harmonics seem to be preferable.Comment: 16 pages (LATEX), 2 postcript figures. Accepted in Ap

Contribution of Extragalactic Infrared Sources to CMB Foreground Anisotropy

We estimate the level of confusion to Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy measurements caused by extragalactic infrared sources. CMB anisotropy observations at high resolution and high frequencies are especially sensitive to this foreground. We use data from the COBE satellite to generate a Galactic emission spectrum covering mm and sub-mm wavelengths. Using this spectrum as a template, we predict the microwave emission of the 5319 brightest infrared galaxies seen by IRAS. We simulate skymaps over the relevant range of frequencies (30-900 GHz) and instrument resolutions (10'-10 degrees Full Width Half Max). Analysis of the temperature anisotropy of these skymaps shows that a reasonable observational window is available for CMB anisotropy measurements.Comment: 14 pages (LaTex source), 3 PostScript figures. Final version, to appear in ApJLetters May 1. Expanded discussion of systematic error

Hydraulic Geometry Curves and Bankfull Recurrence in the Pee Dee River Basin

2014 S.C. Water Resources Conference - Informing Strategic Water Planning to Address Natural Resource, Community and Economic Challenge

Primordial Gravity Waves and Weak Lensing

Inflation produces a primordial spectrum of gravity waves in addition to the density perturbations which seed structure formation. We compute the signature of these gravity waves in the large scale shear field. In particular, the shear can be divided into a gradient mode (G or E) and a curl mode (C or B). The former is produced by both density perturbations and gravity waves, while the latter is produced only by gravity waves, so the observations of a non-zero curl mode could be seen as evidence for inflation. We find that the expected signal from inflation is small, peaking on the largest scales at $l(l+1)C_l/2\pi < 10^{-11}$ at $l=2$ and falling rapidly there after. Even for an all-sky deep survey, this signal would be below noise at all multipoles. Part of the reason for the smallness of the signal is a cancellation on large scales of the standard line-of-sight effect and the effect of ``metric shear.''Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

The Doppler Peaks from Cosmic Texture

We compute the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies on the microwave sky in the cosmic texture theory, with standard recombination assumed. The spectrum shows `Doppler' peaks analogous to those in scenarios based on primordial adiabatic fluctuations such as `standard CDM', but at quite different angular scales. There appear to be excellent prospects for using this as a discriminant between inflationary and cosmic defect theories.Comment: 14 pages, latex, 3 figures, compressed and uuencoded, replaced version has minor typographical correction

A Century of Cosmology

In the century since Einstein's anno mirabilis of 1905, our concept of the Universe has expanded from Kapteyn's flattened disk of stars only 10 kpc across to an observed horizon about 30 Gpc across that is only a tiny fraction of an immensely large inflated bubble. The expansion of our knowledge about the Universe, both in the types of data and the sheer quantity of data, has been just as dramatic. This talk will summarize this century of progress and our current understanding of the cosmos.Comment: Talk presented at the "Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology - Einstein's Legacy" meeting in Munich, Nov 2005. Proceedings will be published in the Springer-Verlag "ESO Astrophysics Symposia" series. 10 pages Latex with 2 figure