53 research outputs found
Direct X-ray Constraints on Sterile Neutrino Warm Dark Matter
Warm dark matter (WDM) might more easily account for small scale clustering
measurements than the heavier particles typically invoked in Lambda cold dark
matter (LCDM) cosmologies. In this paper, we consider a Lambda WDM cosmology in
which sterile neutrinos nu_s, with a mass m_s of roughly 1-100 keV, are the
dark matter. We use the diffuse X-ray spectrum (total minus resolved point
source emission) of the Andromeda galaxy to constrain the rate of sterile
neutrino radiative decay: nu_s -> nu_{e,mu,tau} + gamma. Our findings demand
that m_s < 3.5 keV (95% C.L.) which is a significant improvement over the
previous (95% C.L.) limits inferred from the X-ray emission of nearby clusters,
m_s < 8.2 keV (Virgo A) and m_s < 6.3 keV (Virgo A + Coma).Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, minor revisions, accepted for publication in
Physical Review
Measuring neutrino masses with a future galaxy survey
We perform a detailed forecast on how well a Euclid-like photometric galaxy
and cosmic shear survey will be able to constrain the absolute neutrino mass
scale. Adopting conservative assumptions about the survey specifications and
assuming complete ignorance of the galaxy bias, we estimate that the minimum
mass sum of sum m_nu ~ 0.06 eV in the normal hierarchy can be detected at 1.5
sigma to 2.5 sigma significance, depending on the model complexity, using a
combination of galaxy and cosmic shear power spectrum measurements in
conjunction with CMB temperature and polarisation observations from Planck.
With better knowledge of the galaxy bias, the significance of the detection
could potentially reach 5.4 sigma. Interestingly, neither Planck+shear nor
Planck+galaxy alone can achieve this level of sensitivity; it is the combined
effect of galaxy and cosmic shear power spectrum measurements that breaks the
persistent degeneracies between the neutrino mass, the physical matter density,
and the Hubble parameter. Notwithstanding this remarkable sensitivity to sum
m_nu, Euclid-like shear and galaxy data will not be sensitive to the exact mass
spectrum of the neutrino sector; no significant bias (< 1 sigma) in the
parameter estimation is induced by fitting inaccurate models of the neutrino
mass splittings to the mock data, nor does the goodness-of-fit of these models
suffer any significant degradation relative to the true one (Delta chi_eff ^2<
1).Comment: v1: 29 pages, 10 figures. v2: 33 pages, 12 figures; added sections on
shape evolution and constraints in more complex models, accepted for
publication in JCA
Sterile neutrino production via active-sterile oscillations: the quantum Zeno effect
We study several aspects of the kinetic approach to sterile neutrino
production via active-sterile mixing. We obtain the neutrino propagator in the
medium including self-energy corrections up to , from which
we extract the dispersion relations and damping rates of the propagating modes.
The dispersion relations are the usual ones in terms of the index of refraction
in the medium, and the damping rates are where
is the active neutrino scattering rate and
is the mixing angle in the medium. We provide a generalization of
the transition probability in the \emph{medium from expectation values in the
density matrix}: and
study the conditions for its quantum Zeno suppression directly in real time. We
find the general conditions for quantum Zeno suppression, which for sterile neutrinos with \emph{may
only be} fulfilled near an MSW resonance. We discuss the implications for
sterile neutrino production and argue that in the early Universe the wide
separation of relaxation scales far away from MSW resonances suggests the
breakdown of the current kinetic approach.Comment: version to appear in JHE
X-ray Substructure Studies of Four Galaxy Clusters using XMM-Newton Data
Mahdavi et al. find that the degree of agreement between weak lensing and
X-ray mass measurements is a function of cluster radius. Numerical simulations
also point out that X-ray mass proxies do not work equally well at all radii.
The origin of the effect is thought to be associated with cluster mergers.
Recent work presenting the cluster maps showed an ability of X-ray maps to
reveal and study cluster mergers in detail. Here we present a first attempt to
use the study of substructure in assessing the systematics of the hydrostatic
mass measurements using two-dimensional (2-D) X-ray diagnostics. The
temperature map is uniquely able to identify the substructure in an almost
relaxed cluster which would be unnoticed in the ICM electron number density and
pressure maps. We describe the radial fluctuations in the 2-D maps by a
cumulative/differential scatter profile relative to the mean profile within/at
a given radius. The amplitude indicates ~10 fluctuations in the temperature,
electron number density and entropy maps, and ~15 fluctuations in the pressure
map. The amplitude of and the discontinuity in the scatter complement 2-D
substructure diagnostics, e.g. indicating the most disturbed radial range.
There is a tantalizing link between the substructure identified using the
scatter of the entropy and pressure fluctuations and the hydrostatic mass bias
relative to the expected mass based on the M-Yx and M-Mgas relations
particularly at r500. XMM-Newton observations with ~120,000 source photons from
the cluster are sufficient to apply our substructure diagnostics via the
spectrally measured 2-D temperature, electron number density, entropy and
pressure maps.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables, including some language editing from
ApJ, published in Ap
Cluster Lenses
Clusters of galaxies are the most recently assembled, massive, bound
structures in the Universe. As predicted by General Relativity, given their
masses, clusters strongly deform space-time in their vicinity. Clusters act as
some of the most powerful gravitational lenses in the Universe. Light rays
traversing through clusters from distant sources are hence deflected, and the
resulting images of these distant objects therefore appear distorted and
magnified. Lensing by clusters occurs in two regimes, each with unique
observational signatures. The strong lensing regime is characterized by effects
readily seen by eye, namely, the production of giant arcs, multiple-images, and
arclets. The weak lensing regime is characterized by small deformations in the
shapes of background galaxies only detectable statistically. Cluster lenses
have been exploited successfully to address several important current questions
in cosmology: (i) the study of the lens(es) - understanding cluster mass
distributions and issues pertaining to cluster formation and evolution, as well
as constraining the nature of dark matter; (ii) the study of the lensed objects
- probing the properties of the background lensed galaxy population - which is
statistically at higher redshifts and of lower intrinsic luminosity thus
enabling the probing of galaxy formation at the earliest times right up to the
Dark Ages; and (iii) the study of the geometry of the Universe - as the
strength of lensing depends on the ratios of angular diameter distances between
the lens, source and observer, lens deflections are sensitive to the value of
cosmological parameters and offer a powerful geometric tool to probe Dark
Energy. In this review, we present the basics of cluster lensing and provide a
current status report of the field.Comment: About 120 pages - Published in Open Access at:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j183018170485723/ . arXiv admin note:
text overlap with arXiv:astro-ph/0504478 and arXiv:1003.3674 by other author
Measuring the neutrino mass from future wide galaxy cluster catalogues
We present forecast errors on a wide range of cosmological parameters
obtained from a photometric cluster catalogue of a future wide-field
Euclid-like survey. We focus in particular on the total neutrino mass as
constrained by a combination of the galaxy cluster number counts and
correlation function. For the latter we consider only the shape information and
the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), while marginalising over the spectral
amplitude and the redshift space distortions. In addition to the cosmological
parameters of the standard LCDM+nu model we also consider a non-vanishing
curvature, and two parameters describing a redshift evolution for the dark
energy equation of state. For completeness, we also marginalise over a set of
"nuisance" parameters, representing the uncertainties on the cluster mass
determination. We find that combining cluster counts with power spectrum
information greatly improves the constraining power of each probe taken
individually, with errors on cosmological parameters being reduced by up to an
order of magnitude. In particular, the best improvements are for the parameters
defining the dynamical evolution of dark energy, where cluster counts break
degeneracies. Moreover, the resulting error on neutrino mass is at the level of
\sigma(M_\nu)\sim 0.9 eV, comparable with that derived from present Ly-alpha
forest measurements and Cosmic Microwave background (CMB) data in the framework
of a non-flat Universe. Further adopting Planck priors and reducing the number
of free parameters to a LCDM+nu cosmology allows to place constraints on the
total neutrino mass of \sigma(M_\nu) \sim 0.08 eV, close to the lower bound
enforced by neutrino oscillation experiments. [abridged]Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, matches the JCAP accepted versio
A 6% measurement of the Hubble parameter at z~0.45 : direct evidence of the epoch of cosmic re-acceleration
MM, LP and AC acknowledge financial contributions by grants ASI/INAF I/023/12/0 and PRIN MIUR 2010-2011 "The dark Universe and the cosmic evolution of baryons: from current surveys to Euclid". RJ and LV thank the Royal Society for financial support and the ICIC at Imperial College for hospitality while this work was being completed. LV is supported by the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7-IDEAS-Phys.LSS 240117. Funding for this work was partially provided by the Spanish MINECO under projects AYA2014-58747-P and MDM-2014-0369 of ICCUB (Unidad de Excelencia "Maria de Maeztu") Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.Deriving the expansion history of the Universe is a major goal of modern cosmology. To date, the most accurate measurements have been obtained with Type Ia Supernovae (SNe) and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), providing evidence for the existence of a transition epoch at which the expansion rate changes from decelerated to accelerated. However, these results have been obtained within the framework of specific cosmological models that must be implicitly or explicitly assumed in the measurement. It is therefore crucial to obtain measurements of the accelerated expansion of the Universe independently of assumptions on cosmological models. Here we exploit the unprecedented statistics provided by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS, [1-3]) Data Release 9 to provide new constraints on the Hubble parameter H(z) using the cosmic chronometers approach. We extract a sample of more than 130000 of the most massive and passively evolving galaxies, obtaining five new cosmology-independent H(z) measurements in the redshift range 0.3 < z < 0.5, with an accuracy of ~11â16% incorporating both statistical and systematic errors. Once combined, these measurements yield a 6% accuracy constraint of H(z = 0.4293) = 91.8 ± 5.3 km/s/Mpc. The new data are crucial to provide the first cosmology-independent determination of the transition redshift at high statistical significance, measuring zt = 0.4 ± 0.1, and to significantly disfavor the null hypothesis of no transition between decelerated and accelerated expansion at 99.9% confidence level. This analysis highlights the wide potential of the cosmic chronometers approach: it permits to derive constraints on the expansion history of the Universe with results competitive with standard probes, and most importantly, being the estimates independent of the cosmological model, it can constrain cosmologies beyondâand includingâthe ÎCDM model.PostprintPeer reviewe
Identification and structural analysis of C-terminally truncated collapsin response mediator protein-2 in a murine model of prion diseases
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders that accompany an accumulation of the disease-associated form(s) of prion protein (PrP<sup>Sc</sup>) in the central nervous system. The neuropathological changes in the brain begin with focal deposits of PrP<sup>Sc</sup>, followed by pathomorphological abnormalities of axon terminal degeneration, synaptic loss, atrophy of dendritic trees, and eventual neuronal cell death in the lesions. However, the underlying molecular basis for these neuropathogenic abnormalities is not fully understood.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In a proteomic analysis of soluble proteins in the brains of mice challenged intracerebrally with scrapie prion (Obihiro I strain), we found that the amount of the full-length form of collapsin response mediator protein-2 (CRMP-2; 61 kDa) decreased in the late stages of the disease, while the amount of its truncated form (56 kDa) increased to comparable levels observed for the full-length form. Detailed analysis by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry showed that the 56-kDa form (named CRMP-2-ÎC) lacked the sequence from serine<sup>518 </sup>to the C-terminus, including the C-terminal phosphorylation sites important for the regulation of axonal growth and axon-dendrite specification in developing neurons. The invariable size of the mRNA transcript in Northern blot analysis suggested that the truncation was due to post-translational proteolysis. By overexpression of CRMP-2-ÎC in primary cultured neurons, we observed the augmentation of the development of neurite branch tips to the same levels as for CRMP-2<sup>T514A/T555A</sup>, a non-phosphorylated mimic of the full-length protein. This suggests that the increased level of CRMP-2-ÎC in the brain modulates the integrity of neurons, and may be involved in the pathogenesis of the neuronal abnormalities observed in the late stages of the disease.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We identified the presence of CRMP-2-ÎC in the brain of a murine model of prion disease. Of note, C-terminal truncations of CRMP-2 have been recently observed in models for neurodegenerative disorders such as ischemia, traumatic brain injury, and Wallerian degeneration. While the structural identity of CRMP-2-ÎC in those models remains unknown, the present study should provide clues to the molecular pathology of degenerating neurons in prion diseases in connection with other neurodegenerative disorders.</p
A miRNA Signature of Prion Induced Neurodegeneration
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNA molecules which are emerging as key regulators of numerous cellular processes. Compelling evidence links miRNAs to the control of neuronal development and differentiation, however, little is known about their role in neurodegeneration. We used microarrays and RT-PCR to profile miRNA expression changes in the brains of mice infected with mouse-adapted scrapie. We determined 15 miRNAs were de-regulated during the disease processes; miR-342-3p, miR-320, let-7b, miR-328, miR-128, miR-139-5p and miR-146a were over 2.5 fold up-regulated and miR-338-3p and miR-337-3p over 2.5 fold down-regulated. Only one of these miRNAs, miR-128, has previously been shown to be de-regulated in neurodegenerative disease. De-regulation of a unique subset of miRNAs suggests a conserved, disease-specific pattern of differentially expressed miRNAs is associated with prionâinduced neurodegeneration. Computational analysis predicted numerous potential gene targets of these miRNAs, including 119 genes previously determined to be also de-regulated in mouse scrapie. We used a co-ordinated approach to integrate miRNA and mRNA profiling, bioinformatic predictions and biochemical validation to determine miRNA regulated processes and genes potentially involved in disease progression. In particular, a correlation between miRNA expression and putative gene targets involved in intracellular protein-degradation pathways and signaling pathways related to cell death, synapse function and neurogenesis was identified
- âŠ