2,760 research outputs found
Bisous model - detecting filamentary patterns in point processes
The cosmic web is a highly complex geometrical pattern, with galaxy clusters
at the intersection of filaments and filaments at the intersection of walls.
Identifying and describing the filamentary network is not a trivial task due to
the overwhelming complexity of the structure, its connectivity and the
intrinsic hierarchical nature. To detect and quantify galactic filaments we use
the Bisous model, which is a marked point process built to model
multi-dimensional patterns. The Bisous filament finder works directly with the
galaxy distribution data and the model intrinsically takes into account the
connectivity of the filamentary network. The Bisous model generates the visit
map (the probability to find a filament at a given point) together with the
filament orientation field. Using these two fields, we can extract filament
spines from the data. Together with this paper we publish the computer code for
the Bisous model that is made available in GitHub. The Bisous filament finder
has been successfully used in several cosmological applications and further
development of the model will allow to detect the filamentary network also in
photometric redshift surveys, using the full redshift posterior. We also want
to encourage the astro-statistical community to use the model and to connect it
with all other existing methods for filamentary pattern detection and
characterisation.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, accepted by Astronomy and Computin
The Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker Big Bang singularities are well behaved
We show that the Big Bang singularity of the
Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker model does not raise major problems to
General Relativity. We prove a theorem showing that the Einstein equation can
be written in a non-singular form, which allows the extension of the spacetime
before the Big Bang. The physical interpretation of the fields used is
discussed. These results follow from our research on singular semi-Riemannian
geometry and singular General Relativity.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Filaments in observed and mock galaxy catalogues
Context. The main feature of the spatial large-scale galaxy distribution is
an intricate network of galaxy filaments. Although many attempts have been made
to quantify this network, there is no unique and satisfactory recipe for that
yet. Aims. The present paper compares the filaments in the real data and in the
numerical models, to see if our best models reproduce statistically the
filamentary network of galaxies. Methods. We apply an object point process with
interactions (the Bisous process) to trace and describe the filamentary network
both in the observed samples (the 2dFGRS catalogue) and in the numerical models
that have been prepared to mimic the data.We compare the networks. Results. We
find that the properties of filaments in numerical models (mock samples) have a
large variance. A few mock samples display filaments that resemble the observed
filaments, but usually the model filaments are much shorter and do not form an
extended network. Conclusions. We conclude that although we can build numerical
models that are similar to observations in many respects, they may fail yet to
explain the filamentary structure seen in the data. The Bisous-built filaments
are a good test for such a structure.Comment: 13 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic
A domain-wall-brane-localized standard model
We sketch an SU(5) bulk model in 4+1-dimensions that plausibly produces an
effective 3+1-dimensional standard model dynamically-localized on a domain
wall.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Talk at PASCOS07, to appear in the proceeding
Bringing the power of dynamic languages to hardware control systems
Hardware control systems are normally programmed using high-performance languages like C or C++ and increasingly also Java. All these languages are strongly typed and compiled which brings usually good performance but at the cost of a longer development and testing cycle and the need for more programming expertise. Dynamic languages which were long thought to be too slow and not powerful enough for control purposes are, thanks to modern powerful computers and advanced implementation techniques, fast enough for many of these tasks. We present examples from the LHCb Experiment Control System (ECS), which is based on a commercial SCADA software. We have successfully used Python to integrate hardware devices into the ECS. We present the necessary lightweight middle-ware we have developed, including examples for controlling hardware and software devices. We also discuss the development cycle, tools used and compare the effort to traditional solutions
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