Neutrinos and Future Concordance Cosmologies

We review the free parameters in the concordance cosmology, and those which might be added to this set as the quality of astrophysical data improves. Most concordance parameters encode information about otherwise unexplored aspects of high energy physics, up to the GUT scale via the "inflationary sector," and possibly even the Planck scale in the case of dark energy. We explain how neutrino properties may be constrained by future astrophysical measurements. Conversely, future neutrino physics experiments which directly measure these parameters will remove uncertainty from fits to astrophysical data, and improve our ability to determine the global properties of our universe.Comment: Proceedings of paper given at Neutrino 2008 meeting (by RE

KamLAND Bounds on Solar Antineutrinos and neutrino transition magnetic moments

We investigate the possibility of detecting solar electron antineutrinos with the KamLAND experiment. These electron antineutrinos are predicted by spin-flavor oscillations at a significant rate even if this mechanism is not the leading solution to the SNP. KamLAND is sensitive to antineutrinos originated from solar ${}^8$B neutrinos. From KamLAND negative results after 145 days of data taking, we obtain model independent limits on the total flux of solar electron antineutrinos $\Phi({}^8 B)< 1.1-3.5\times 10^4 cm^{-2}\ s^{-1}$, more than one order of magnitude smaller than existing limits, and on their appearance probability$P<0.15%$(95antineutrino production by spin-flavor precession, this upper bound implies an upper limit on the product of the intrinsic neutrino magnetic moment and the value of the solar magnetic field$\mu B< 2.3\times 10^{-21}$MeV 95LMA$(\Delta m^2, \tan^2\theta)$values). Limits on neutrino transition moments are also obtained. For realistic values of other astrophysical solar parameters these upper limits would imply that the neutrino magnetic moment is constrained to be, in the most conservative case,$\mu\lsim 3.9\times 10^{-12} \mu_B$(95CL) for a relatively small field$B= 50$kG. For higher values of the magnetic field we obtain:$\mu\lsim 9.0\times 10^{-13} \mu_B$for field$B= 200$kG and$\mu\lsim 2.0\times 10^{-13} \mu_B$for field$B= 1000$ kG at the same statistical significance.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Limits on deviations from the inverse-square law on megaparsec scales

We present an attempt to constrain deviations from the gravitational inverse-square law on large-scale structure scales. A perturbed law modifies the Poisson equation, which implies a scale-dependent growth of overdensities in the linear regime and thus modifies the power spectrum shape. We use two large-scale structure surveys (the Sloan Digital Sky survey and the Anglo-Australian Two-degree field galaxy redshift survey) to constrain the parameters of two simple modifications of the inverse-square law. We find no evidence for deviations from normal gravity on the scales probed by these surveys (~ 10^(23) m.)Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Replaced with published versio

Coulomb chronometry to probe the decay mechanism of hot nuclei

In 129 Xe+ nat Sn central collisions from 8 to 25 MeV/A, the three-fragment exit channel occurs with a significant cross section. We show that these fragments arise from two successive binary splittings of a heavy composite system. The sequence of fragment production is determined. Strong Coulomb proximity effects are observed in the three-fragment final state. A comparison with Coulomb trajec-tory calculations shows that the time scale between the consecutive break-ups decreases with increasing bombarding energy, becoming quasi-simultaneous above excitation energy E * = 4.0$\pm$0.5 MeV/A. This transition from sequential to simultaneous break-up was interpreted as the signature of the onset of multifragmentation for the three-fragment exit channel in this system.Comment: 12 pages; 13 Figures; 4 Table; Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Measuring the Nonlinear Biasing Function from a Galaxy Redshift Survey

We present a simple method for evaluating the nonlinear biasing function of galaxies from a redshift survey. The nonlinear biasing is characterized by the conditional mean of the galaxy density fluctuation given the underlying mass density fluctuation, or by the associated parameters of mean biasing and nonlinearity (following Dekel & Lahav 1999). Using the distribution of galaxies in cosmological simulations, at smoothing of a few Mpc, we find that the mean biasing can be recovered to a good accuracy from the cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of galaxies and mass, despite the biasing scatter. Then, using a suite of simulations of different cosmological models, we demonstrate that the matter CDF is robust compared to the difference between it and the galaxy CDF, and can be approximated for our purpose by a cumulative log-normal distribution of 1+\delta with a single parameter \sigma. Finally, we show how the nonlinear biasing function can be obtained with adequate accuracy directly from the observed galaxy CDF in redshift space. Thus, the biasing function can be obtained from counts in cells once the rms mass fluctuation at the appropriate scale is assumed a priori. The relative biasing function between different galaxy types is measurable in a similar way. The main source of error is sparse sampling, which requires that the mean galaxy separation be smaller than the smoothing scale. Once applied to redshift surveys such as PSCz, 2dF, SDSS, or DEEP, the biasing function can provide valuable constraints on galaxy formation and structure evolution.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, revised version, accepted for publication in Ap

Linear regression for numeric symbolic variables: an ordinary least squares approach based on Wasserstein Distance

In this paper we present a linear regression model for modal symbolic data. The observed variables are histogram variables according to the definition given in the framework of Symbolic Data Analysis and the parameters of the model are estimated using the classic Least Squares method. An appropriate metric is introduced in order to measure the error between the observed and the predicted distributions. In particular, the Wasserstein distance is proposed. Some properties of such metric are exploited to predict the response variable as direct linear combination of other independent histogram variables. Measures of goodness of fit are discussed. An application on real data corroborates the proposed method

Prospects in Constraining the Dark Energy Potential

We generalize to non-flat geometries the formalism of Simon et al. (2005) to reconstruct the dark energy potential. This formalism makes use of quantities similar to the Horizon-flow parameters in inflation, can, in principle, be made non-parametric and is general enough to be applied outside the simple, single scalar field quintessence. Since presently available and forthcoming data do not allow a non-parametric and exact reconstruction of the potential, we consider a general parametric description in term of Chebyshev polynomials. We then consider present and future measurements of H(z), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations surveys and Supernovae type 1A surveys, and investigate their constraints on the dark energy potential. We find that, relaxing the flatness assumption increases the errors on the reconstructed dark energy evolution but does not open up significant degeneracies, provided that a modest prior on geometry is imposed. Direct measurements of H(z), such as those provided by BAO surveys, are crucially important to constrain the evolution of the dark energy potential and the dark energy equation of state, especially for non-trivial deviations from the standard LambdaCDM model.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures. 2 references correcte

The two-and three-point correlation functions of the polarized five-year WMAP sky maps

We present the two- and three-point real space correlation functions of the five-year WMAP sky maps, and compare the observed functions to simulated LCDM concordance model ensembles. In agreement with previously published results, we find that the temperature correlation functions are consistent with expectations. However, the pure polarization correlation functions are acceptable only for the 33GHz band map; the 41, 61, and 94 GHz band correlation functions all exhibit significant large-scale excess structures. Further, these excess structures very closely match the correlation functions of the two (synchrotron and dust) foreground templates used to correct the WMAP data for galactic contamination, with a cross-correlation statistically significant at the 2sigma-3sigma confidence level. The correlation is slightly stronger with respect to the thermal dust template than with the synchrotron template.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, published in ApJ. v2: New title, minor changes to appendix, and fixed some typos. v3: Matches version published in Ap