The evidence for unusual gravity from the large-scale structure of the Universe

Under the assumption that General Relativity (GR) correctly describes the phenomenology of our Universe, astronomical observations provide compelling evidence that (1) the dynamics of cosmic structure is dominated by dark matter (DM), an exotic matter mostly made of hypothetical elementary particles, and (2) the expansion of the Universe is currently accelerating because of the presence of a positive cosmological constant Lambda. The DM particles have not yet been detected and there is no theoretical justification for the tiny positive Lambda implied by observations. Therefore, over the last decade, the search for extended or alternative theories of gravity has flourished.Comment: Invited review to appear in the Proceedings of the 1st AFI symposium "From the Vacuum to the Universe", Innsbruck, Austria, October 2007, to be published by the Innsbruck University Press, ed. by S.D. Bass, F. Schallhart and B. Tasse

Wide field imaging of distant clusters

Wide field imaging is key to understanding the build-up of distant clusters and their galaxy population. By focusing on the so far unexplored outskirts of clusters, where infalling galaxies first hit the cluster potential and the hot intracluster medium, we can help separate cosmological field galaxy evolution from that driven by environment. I present a selection of recent advancements in this area, with particular emphasis on Hubble Space Telescope wide field imaging, for its superior capability to deliver galaxy morphologies and precise shear maps of distant clusters.Comment: Invited contribution. To appear in "Outskirts of galaxy clusters: intense life in the suburbs", A. Diaferio et al. eds. 7 pages, 5 figures. Refereed versio

Identification of members in the central and outer regions of galaxy clusters

The caustic technique measures the mass of galaxy clusters in both their virial and infall regions and, as a byproduct, yields the list of cluster galaxy members. Here we use 100 galaxy clusters with mass M200>=1E14 Msun/h extracted from a cosmological N-body simulation of a LambdaCDM universe to test the ability of the caustic technique to identify the cluster galaxy members. We identify the true three-dimensional members as the gravitationally bound galaxies. The caustic technique uses the caustic location in the redshift diagram to separate the cluster members from the interlopers. We apply the technique to mock catalogues containing 1000 galaxies in the field of view of 12 Mpc/h on a side at the cluster location. On average, this sample size roughly corresponds to 180 real galaxy members within 3r200, similar to recent redshift surveys of cluster regions. The caustic technique yields a completeness, the fraction of identified true members, fc=0.95 (+- 0.03) within 3r200. The contamination increases from fi=0.020 (+0.046;-0.015) at r200 to fi=0.08 (+0.11;-0.05) at 3r200. No other technique for the identification of the members of a galaxy cluster provides such large completeness and small contamination at these large radii. The caustic technique assumes spherical symmetry and the asphericity of the cluster is responsible for most of the spread of the completeness and the contamination. By applying the technique to an approximately spherical system obtained by stacking the individual clusters, the spreads decrease by at least a factor of two. We finally estimate the cluster mass within 3r200 after removing the interlopers: for individual clusters, the mass estimated with the virial theorem is unbiased and within 30 per cent of the actual mass; this spread decreases to less than 10 per cent for the spherically symmetric stacked cluster.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, published on Ap

Topology and Geometry of the CfA2 Redshift Survey

We analyse the redshift space topology and geometry of the nearby Universe by computing the Minkowski functionals of the Updated Zwicky Catalogue (UZC). The UZC contains the redshifts of almost 20,000 galaxies, is 96% complete to the limiting magnitude m_Zw=15.5 and includes the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) Redshift Survey (CfA2). From the UZC we can extract volume limited samples reaching a depth of 70 hMpc before sparse sampling dominates. We quantify the shape of the large-scale galaxy distribution by deriving measures of planarity and filamentarity from the Minkowski functionals. The nearby Universe shows a large degree of planarity and a small degree of filamentarity. This quantifies the sheet-like structure of the Great Wall which dominates the northern region (CfA2N) of the UZC. We compare these results with redshift space mock catalogues constructed from high resolution N-body simulations of two Cold Dark Matter models with either a decaying massive neutrino (tauCDM) or a non-zero cosmological constant (LambdaCDM). We use semi-analytic modelling to form and evolve galaxies in these dark matter-only simulations. We are thus able, for the first time, to compile redshift space mock catalogues which contain galaxies, along with their observable properties, rather than dark matter particles alone. In both models the large scale galaxy distribution is less coherent than the observed distribution, especially with regard to the large degree of planarity of the real survey. However, given the small volume of the region studied, this disagreement can still be a result of cosmic variance.Comment: 14 pages including 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notice