Monthly Notices is one of the three largest general primary astronomical research publications. It is an international journal, published by the Royal Astronomical Society. This article 1 describes its publication policy and practice.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Tables of integrals

http://inspirehep.net/record/1084324/files/arXiv:1201.2434.pdf

Observational probes of cosmic acceleration

Euclid is a European Space Agency medium-class mission selected for launch in 2020 within the cosmic vision 2015–2025 program. The main goal of Euclid is to understand the origin of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Euclid will explore the expansion history of the universe and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and red-shifts of galaxies as well as the distribution of clusters of galaxies over a large fraction of the sky. Although the main driver for Euclid is the nature of dark energy, Euclid science covers a vast range of topics, from cosmology to galaxy evolution to planetary research. In this review we focus on cosmology and fundamental physics, with a strong emphasis on science beyond the current standard models. We discuss five broad topics: dark energy and modified gravity, dark matter, initial conditions, basic assumptions and questions of methodology in the data analysis. This review has been planned and carried out within Euclid’s Theory Working Group and is meant to provide a guide to the scientific themes that will underlie the activity of the group during the preparation of the Euclid mission.

/pdf/cosmology-and-fundamental-physics-with-the-euclid-satellite-1pi37a138r.pdf

Cosmology and Fundamental Physics with the Euclid Satellite

The remarkable Hubble Space Telescope?(HST) data sets from the CANDELS, HUDF09, HUDF12, ERS, and BoRG/HIPPIES programs have allowed us to map the evolution of the rest-frame UV luminosity function (LF) from to . We develop new color criteria that more optimally utilize the full wavelength coverage from the optical, near-IR, and mid-IR observations over our search fields, while simultaneously minimizing the incompleteness and eliminating redshift gaps. We have identified 5859, 3001, 857, 481, 217, and 6 galaxy candidates at , , , , , and , respectively, from the ?1000 arcmin2 area covered by these data sets. This sample of >10,000 galaxy candidates at is by far the largest assembled to date with HST. The selection of 4?8 candidates over the five CANDELS fields allows us to assess the cosmic variance; the largest variations are at . Our new LF determinations at and span a 6 mag baseline and reach to ?16 AB mag. These determinations agree well with previous estimates, but the larger samples and volumes probed here result in a more reliable sampling of galaxies and allow us to reassess the form of the UV LFs. Our new LF results strengthen our earlier findings to significance for a steeper faint-end slope of the UV LF at , with ? evolving from at to at (and at ), consistent with that expected from the evolution of the halo mass function. We find less evolution in the characteristic magnitude M* from to the observed evolution in the LF is now largely represented by changes in . No evidence for a non-Schechter-like form to the z ? 4?8 LFs is found. A simple conditional LF model based on halo growth and evolution in the M/L ratio of halos provides a good representation of the observed evolution.

/pdf/uv-luminosity-functions-at-redshifts-z-4-to-z-10-10-000-4lbepnh417.pdf

UV luminosity functions at redshifts z ∼ 4 to z ∼ 10: 10,000 galaxies from HST legacy fields

The size distribution of ionized regions during the epoch of reionization -- a key ingredient in understanding the HI power spectrum observable by 21cm experiments -- can be modelled analytically using the excursion set formalism of random walks in the smoothed initial density field. To date, such calculations have been based on simplifying assumptions carried forward from the earliest excursion set models of two decades ago. In particular, these models assume that the random walks have uncorrelated steps and that haloes can form at arbitrary locations in the initial density field. We extend these calculations by incorporating recent technical developments that allow us to (a) include the effect of correlations in the steps of the walks induced by a realistic smoothing filter and (b) more importantly, account for the fact that dark matter haloes preferentially form near peaks in the initial density. A comparison with previous calculations shows that including these features, particularly the peaks constraint on halo locations, has large effects on the size distribution of the HII bubbles surrounding these haloes. For example, when comparing models at the same value of the globally averaged ionized volume fraction, the typical bubble sizes predicted by our model are more than a factor 2 larger than earlier calculations. Our results can potentially have a significant impact on estimates of the observable HI power spectrum.

An improved model of H ii bubbles during the epoch of reionization

We revisit the issue of interpreting the results of large volume cosmological simulations in the context of large-scale general relativistic effects. We look for simple modifications to the nonlinear evolution of the gravitational potential $\ensuremath{\psi}$ that lead on large scales to the correct, fully relativistic description of density perturbations in the Newtonian gauge. We note that the relativistic constraint equation for $\ensuremath{\psi}$ can be cast as a diffusion equation, with a diffusion length scale determined by the expansion of the Universe. Exploiting the weak time evolution of $\ensuremath{\psi}$ in all regimes of interest, this equation can be further accurately approximated as a Helmholtz equation, with an effective relativistic ``screening'' scale $\ensuremath{\ell}$ related to the Hubble radius. We demonstrate that it is thus possible to carry out N-body simulations in the Newtonian gauge by replacing Poisson's equation with this Helmholtz equation, involving a trivial change in the Green's function kernel. Our results also motivate a simple, approximate (but very accurate) gauge transformation---${\ensuremath{\delta}}_{\mathrm{N}}(\mathbf{k})\ensuremath{\approx}{\ensuremath{\delta}}_{\mathrm{sim}}(\mathbf{k})\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}({k}^{2}+{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{-}2})/{k}^{2}$---to convert the density field ${\ensuremath{\delta}}_{\mathrm{sim}}$ of standard collisionless $N$-body simulations (initialized in the comoving synchronous gauge) into the Newtonian gauge density ${\ensuremath{\delta}}_{\mathrm{N}}$ at arbitrary times. A similar conversion can also be written in terms of particle positions. Our results can be interpreted in terms of a Jeans stability criterion induced by the expansion of the Universe. The appearance of the screening scale $\ensuremath{\ell}$ in the evolution of $\ensuremath{\psi}$, in particular, leads to a natural resolution of the ``Jeans swindle'' in the presence of superhorizon modes.

General relativistic screening in cosmological simulations

We compare analytical predictions of void volume functions to those measured from N-body simulations, detecting voids with the zobov void finder. We push to very small, nonlinear voids, below few Mpc radius, by considering the unsampled DM density field. We also study the case where voids are identified using halos. We develop analytical formula for the void abundance of both the excursion set approach and the peaks formalism. These formula are valid for random walks smoothed with a top-hat filter in real space, with a large class of realistic barrier models. We test the extent to which the spherical evolution approximation, which forms the basis of the analytical predictions, models the highly aspherical voids that occur in the cosmic web, and are found by a watershed-based algorithm such as zobov. We show that the volume function returned by zobov is quite sensitive to the choice of treatment of sub-voids, a fact that has not been appreciated previously. For reasonable choices of sub-void exclusion, we find that the Lagrangian density delta_v of the zobov voids -- which is predicted to be a constant delta_v = -2.7 in the spherical evolution model -- is different from the predicted value, showing substantial scatter and scale dependence. This result applies to voids identified at z=0 with effective radius between 1 and 10 Mpc/h. Our analytical approximations are flexible enough to give a good description of the resulting volume function; however, this happens for choices of parameter values that are different from those suggested by the spherical evolution assumption. We conclude that analytical models for voids must move away from the spherical approximation in order to be applied successfully to observations, and we discuss some possible ways forward.

Testing spherical evolution for modelling void abundances

We present a calibration of halo assembly bias using the Separate Universe technique. Specifically, we measure the response of halo abundances at fixed mass and concentration to the presence of an infinite-wavelength initial perturbation. We develop an analytical framework for describing the concentration dependence of this peak-background split halo bias -- a measure of assembly bias -- relying on the near-Lognormal distribution of halo concentration at fixed halo mass. The combination of this analytical framework and the Separate Universe technique allows us to achieve very high precision in the calibration of the linear assembly bias $b_1$, and qualitatively reproduces known trends such as the monotonic decrease (increase) of $b_1$ with halo concentration at large (small) masses. The same framework extends to the concentration dependence of higher order bias parameters $b_n$, and we present the first calibration of assembly bias in $b_2$. Our calibrations are directly applicable in analytical Halo Model calculations that seek to robustly detect galaxy assembly bias in observational samples. We detect a non-universality in the $b_1 - b_2$ relation arising from assembly bias, and suggest that simultaneous measurements of these bias parameters could be used to both detect the signature of assembly bias as well as mitigate its effects in cosmological analyses.

Halo assembly bias from Separate Universe simulations

We show that the distribution of luminosities of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in a Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)-based group catalogue suggests that BCG luminosities are just the statistical extremes of the group galaxy luminosity function. The latter happens to be very well approximated by the all-galaxy luminosity function (restricted to Mr < −19.9), provided one uses a parametrization of this function that is accurate at the bright end. A similar analysis of the luminosity distribution of the brightest satellite galaxies (BSGs) suggests that they are best thought of as being the second brightest pick from the same luminosity distribution of which BCGs are the brightest. That is, BSGs are not the brightest of some universal satellite luminosity functions, in contrast to what halo model analyses of the luminosity dependence of clustering suggest. However, we then use mark correlations to provide a novel test of these order statistics, showing that the hypothesis of a universal luminosity function (i.e. no halo mass dependence) from which the BCGs and BSGs are drawn is incompatible with the data, despite the fact that there was no hint of this in the BCG and BSG luminosity distributions themselves. We also discuss why, since extreme value statistics are explicitly a function of the number of draws, the consistency of BCG luminosities with extreme value statistics is most clearly seen if one is careful to perform the test at fixed group richness N. Tests at e.g. fixed total group luminosity Ltot will generally be biased and may lead to erroneous conclusions.

Aseem Paranjape

Papers

An improved model of H ii bubbles during the epoch of reionization

General relativistic screening in cosmological simulations

Testing spherical evolution for modelling void abundances

Halo assembly bias from Separate Universe simulations

The luminosities of the brightest cluster galaxies and brightest satellites in SDSS groups