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Christopher M. Hirata

Bio: Christopher M. Hirata is an academic researcher from Ohio State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Weak gravitational lensing & Redshift. The author has an hindex of 70, co-authored 226 publications receiving 19410 citations. Previous affiliations of Christopher M. Hirata include Institute for Advanced Study & California Institute of Technology.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
Jennifer K. Adelman-McCarthy1, Marcel A. Agüeros2, S. Allam1, S. Allam3  +170 moreInstitutions (65)
TL;DR: The Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDS) as discussed by the authors contains images and parameters of roughly 287 million objects over 9583 deg(2), including scans over a large range of Galactic latitudes and longitudes.
Abstract: This paper describes the Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. With this data release, the imaging of the northern Galactic cap is now complete. The survey contains images and parameters of roughly 287 million objects over 9583 deg(2), including scans over a large range of Galactic latitudes and longitudes. The survey also includes 1.27 million spectra of stars, galaxies, quasars, and blank sky ( for sky subtraction) selected over 7425 deg2. This release includes much more stellar spectroscopy than was available in previous data releases and also includes detailed estimates of stellar temperatures, gravities, and metallicities. The results of improved photometric calibration are now available, with uncertainties of roughly 1% in g, r, i, and z, and 2% in u, substantially better than the uncertainties in previous data releases. The spectra in this data release have improved wavelength and flux calibration, especially in the extreme blue and extreme red, leading to the qualitatively better determination of stellar types and radial velocities. The spectrophotometric fluxes are now tied to point-spread function magnitudes of stars rather than fiber magnitudes. This gives more robust results in the presence of seeing variations, but also implies a change in the spectrophotometric scale, which is now brighter by roughly 0.35 mag. Systematic errors in the velocity dispersions of galaxies have been fixed, and the results of two independent codes for determining spectral classifications and red-shifts are made available. Additional spectral outputs are made available, including calibrated spectra from individual 15 minute exposures and the sky spectrum subtracted from each exposure. We also quantify a recently recognized underestimation of the brightnesses of galaxies of large angular extent due to poor sky subtraction; the bias can exceed 0.2 mag for galaxies brighter than r = 14 mag.

1,602 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present extensive forecasts for constraints on the dark energy equation of state and parameterized deviations from General Relativity, achievable with Stage III and Stage IV experimental programs that incorporate supernovae, BAO, weak lensing, and cosmic microwave background data.

1,253 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Jennifer K. Adelman-McCarthy1, Marcel A. Agüeros2, S. Allam3, S. Allam1  +149 moreInstitutions (47)
TL;DR: The fourth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) as discussed by the authors includes all survey-quality data taken through 2004 June, including five-band photometric data for 180 million objects selected over 6670 deg2 and 673,280 spectra of galaxies, quasars and stars selected from 4783 deg2 of those imaging data using the standard SDSS target selection algorithms.
Abstract: This paper describes the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), including all survey-quality data taken through 2004 June. The data release includes five-band photometric data for 180 million objects selected over 6670 deg2 and 673,280 spectra of galaxies, quasars, and stars selected from 4783 deg2 of those imaging data using the standard SDSS target selection algorithms. These numbers represent a roughly 27% increment over those of the Third Data Release; all the data from previous data releases are included in the present release. The Fourth Data Release also includes an additional 131,840 spectra of objects selected using a variety of alternative algorithms, to address scientific issues ranging from the kinematics of stars in the Milky Way thick disk to populations of faint galaxies and quasars.

1,110 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The relationship between galaxies and dark matter (DM) can be characterized by the halo mass of the central galaxy and the fraction of galaxies that are satellites as discussed by the authors, which is a function of r-band luminosity and stellar mass.
Abstract: The relationship between galaxies and dark matter (DM) can be characterized by the halo mass of the central galaxy and the fraction of galaxies that are satellites. Here, we present observational constraints from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey on these quantities as a function of r-band luminosity and stellar mass using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, with a total of 351 507 lenses. We use stellar masses derived from spectroscopy and virial halo masses derived from weak gravitational lensing to determine the efficiency with which baryons in the halo of the central galaxy have been converted into stars. We find that an L* galaxy with a stellar mass of 6 x 1010 M ⊙ is hosted by a halo with mass of 1.4 x 10 12 h -1 M ⊙ , independent of morphology, yielding baryon conversion efficiencies of 17 +10 -5 per cent (early-types) and 16 +15 -6 per cent (late-types) at the 95 per cent confidence level (statistical, not including systematic uncertainty due to assumption of a universal initial mass function). We find that for a given stellar mass, the halo mass is independent of morphology below M stellar = 10 11 M ⊙ , in contrast to typically a factor of 2 difference in halo mass between ellipticals and spirals at a fixed luminosity. This suggests that stellar mass is a good proxy for halo mass in this range and should be used preferentially whenever a halo mass selected sample is needed. For higher stellar masses, the conversion efficiency is a declining function of stellar mass, and the differences in halo mass between early- and late-types become larger, reflecting the fact that most group and cluster haloes with masses above 10 13 M ⊙ host ellipticals at the centre, while even the brightest central spirals are hosted by haloes of mass below 10 13 M ⊙ We find that the fraction of spirals that are satellites is roughly 10-15 per cent independent of stellar mass or luminosity, while for ellipticals this fraction decreases with stellar mass from 50 per cent at 10 10 M ⊙ to 10 per cent at 3 x 10 11 M ⊙ or 20 per cent at the maximum luminosity considered. We split the elliptical sample by local density, and find that at a given luminosity there is no difference in the signal on scales below 100 h -1 kpc between high- and low-density regions, suggesting that tidal stripping inside large haloes does not remove most of the DM from the early-type satellites. This result is dominated by haloes in the mass range 10 13 -10 14 h -1 M ⊙ , and is an average over all separations from the group or cluster centre.

763 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present observational constraints from the SDSS on these quantities as a function of r-band luminosity and stellar mass using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, with a total of 351,507 lenses.
Abstract: The relationship between galaxies and dark matter can be characterized by the halo mass of the central galaxy and the fraction of galaxies that are satellites. Here we present observational constraints from the SDSS on these quantities as a function of r-band luminosity and stellar mass using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, with a total of 351,507 lenses. We use stellar masses derived from spectroscopy and virial halo masses derived from weak gravitational lensing to determine the efficiency with which baryons in the halo of the central galaxy have been converted into stars. We find that an L* galaxy with a stellar mass of 6x10^{10} M_{sun} is hosted by a halo with mass of 1.4x10^{12} M_{sun}/h, independent of morphology, yielding baryon conversion efficiencies of 17_{-5}^{+10} (early types) and 16_{-6}^{+15} (late types) per cent at the 95 per cent CL (statistical, not including systematic uncertainty due to assumption of a universal initial mass function, or IMF). We find that for a given stellar mass, the halo mass is independent of morphology below M_{stellar}=10^{11} M_{sun}, in contrast to typically a factor of two difference in halo mass between ellipticals and spirals at a fixed luminosity. This suggests that stellar mass is a good proxy for halo mass in this range and should be used preferentially whenever a halo mass selected sample is needed. For higher stellar masses, the conversion efficiency is a declining function of stellar mass, and the differences in halo mass between early and late types become larger, reflecting the fact that most group and cluster halos with masses above 10^{13} M_{sun} host ellipticals at the center, while even the brightest central spirals are hosted by halos of mass below 10^{13} M_{sun}. (Abridged)

659 citations


Cited by
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[...]

08 Dec 2001-BMJ
TL;DR: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one, which seems an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.
Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

33,785 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a combination of seven-year data from WMAP and improved astrophysical data rigorously tests the standard cosmological model and places new constraints on its basic parameters and extensions.
Abstract: The combination of seven-year data from WMAP and improved astrophysical data rigorously tests the standard cosmological model and places new constraints on its basic parameters and extensions. By combining the WMAP data with the latest distance measurements from the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the distribution of galaxies and the Hubble constant (H0) measurement, we determine the parameters of the simplest six-parameter ΛCDM model. The power-law index of the primordial power spectrum is ns = 0.968 ± 0.012 (68% CL) for this data combination, a measurement that excludes the Harrison–Zel’dovich–Peebles spectrum by 99.5% CL. The other parameters, including those beyond the minimal set, are also consistent with, and improved from, the five-year results. We find no convincing deviations from the minimal model. The seven-year temperature power spectrum gives a better determination of the third acoustic peak, which results in a better determination of the redshift of the matter-radiation equality epoch. Notable examples of improved parameters are the total mass of neutrinos, � mν < 0.58 eV (95% CL), and the effective number of neutrino species, Neff = 4.34 +0.86 −0.88 (68% CL), which benefit from better determinations of the third peak and H0. The limit on a constant dark energy equation of state parameter from WMAP+BAO+H0, without high-redshift Type Ia supernovae, is w =− 1.10 ± 0.14 (68% CL). We detect the effect of primordial helium on the temperature power spectrum and provide a new test of big bang nucleosynthesis by measuring Yp = 0.326 ± 0.075 (68% CL). We detect, and show on the map for the first time, the tangential and radial polarization patterns around hot and cold spots of temperature fluctuations, an important test of physical processes at z = 1090 and the dominance of adiabatic scalar fluctuations. The seven-year polarization data have significantly improved: we now detect the temperature–E-mode polarization cross power spectrum at 21σ , compared with 13σ from the five-year data. With the seven-year temperature–B-mode cross power spectrum, the limit on a rotation of the polarization plane due to potential parity-violating effects has improved by 38% to Δα =− 1. 1 ± 1. 4(statistical) ± 1. 5(systematic) (68% CL). We report significant detections of the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect at the locations of known clusters of galaxies. The measured SZ signal agrees well with the expected signal from the X-ray data on a cluster-by-cluster basis. However, it is a factor of 0.5–0.7 times the predictions from “universal profile” of Arnaud et al., analytical models, and hydrodynamical simulations. We find, for the first time in the SZ effect, a significant difference between the cooling-flow and non-cooling-flow clusters (or relaxed and non-relaxed clusters), which can explain some of the discrepancy. This lower amplitude is consistent with the lower-than-theoretically expected SZ power spectrum recently measured by the South Pole Telescope Collaboration.

11,309 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Peter A. R. Ade1, Nabila Aghanim2, Monique Arnaud3, M. Ashdown4  +334 moreInstitutions (82)
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a cosmological analysis based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.
Abstract: This paper presents cosmological results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Our results are in very good agreement with the 2013 analysis of the Planck nominal-mission temperature data, but with increased precision. The temperature and polarization power spectra are consistent with the standard spatially-flat 6-parameter ΛCDM cosmology with a power-law spectrum of adiabatic scalar perturbations (denoted “base ΛCDM” in this paper). From the Planck temperature data combined with Planck lensing, for this cosmology we find a Hubble constant, H0 = (67.8 ± 0.9) km s-1Mpc-1, a matter density parameter Ωm = 0.308 ± 0.012, and a tilted scalar spectral index with ns = 0.968 ± 0.006, consistent with the 2013 analysis. Note that in this abstract we quote 68% confidence limits on measured parameters and 95% upper limits on other parameters. We present the first results of polarization measurements with the Low Frequency Instrument at large angular scales. Combined with the Planck temperature and lensing data, these measurements give a reionization optical depth of τ = 0.066 ± 0.016, corresponding to a reionization redshift of . These results are consistent with those from WMAP polarization measurements cleaned for dust emission using 353-GHz polarization maps from the High Frequency Instrument. We find no evidence for any departure from base ΛCDM in the neutrino sector of the theory; for example, combining Planck observations with other astrophysical data we find Neff = 3.15 ± 0.23 for the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom, consistent with the value Neff = 3.046 of the Standard Model of particle physics. The sum of neutrino masses is constrained to ∑ mν < 0.23 eV. The spatial curvature of our Universe is found to be very close to zero, with | ΩK | < 0.005. Adding a tensor component as a single-parameter extension to base ΛCDM we find an upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r0.002< 0.11, consistent with the Planck 2013 results and consistent with the B-mode polarization constraints from a joint analysis of BICEP2, Keck Array, and Planck (BKP) data. Adding the BKP B-mode data to our analysis leads to a tighter constraint of r0.002 < 0.09 and disfavours inflationarymodels with a V(φ) ∝ φ2 potential. The addition of Planck polarization data leads to strong constraints on deviations from a purely adiabatic spectrum of fluctuations. We find no evidence for any contribution from isocurvature perturbations or from cosmic defects. Combining Planck data with other astrophysical data, including Type Ia supernovae, the equation of state of dark energy is constrained to w = −1.006 ± 0.045, consistent with the expected value for a cosmological constant. The standard big bang nucleosynthesis predictions for the helium and deuterium abundances for the best-fit Planck base ΛCDM cosmology are in excellent agreement with observations. We also constraints on annihilating dark matter and on possible deviations from the standard recombination history. In neither case do we find no evidence for new physics. The Planck results for base ΛCDM are in good agreement with baryon acoustic oscillation data and with the JLA sample of Type Ia supernovae. However, as in the 2013 analysis, the amplitude of the fluctuation spectrum is found to be higher than inferred from some analyses of rich cluster counts and weak gravitational lensing. We show that these tensions cannot easily be resolved with simple modifications of the base ΛCDM cosmology. Apart from these tensions, the base ΛCDM cosmology provides an excellent description of the Planck CMB observations and many other astrophysical data sets.

10,728 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB, which are consistent with the six-parameter inflationary LCDM cosmology.
Abstract: We present results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB. These data are consistent with the six-parameter inflationary LCDM cosmology. From the Planck temperature and lensing data, for this cosmology we find a Hubble constant, H0= (67.8 +/- 0.9) km/s/Mpc, a matter density parameter Omega_m = 0.308 +/- 0.012 and a scalar spectral index with n_s = 0.968 +/- 0.006. (We quote 68% errors on measured parameters and 95% limits on other parameters.) Combined with Planck temperature and lensing data, Planck LFI polarization measurements lead to a reionization optical depth of tau = 0.066 +/- 0.016. Combining Planck with other astrophysical data we find N_ eff = 3.15 +/- 0.23 for the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom and the sum of neutrino masses is constrained to < 0.23 eV. Spatial curvature is found to be |Omega_K| < 0.005. For LCDM we find a limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r <0.11 consistent with the B-mode constraints from an analysis of BICEP2, Keck Array, and Planck (BKP) data. Adding the BKP data leads to a tighter constraint of r < 0.09. We find no evidence for isocurvature perturbations or cosmic defects. The equation of state of dark energy is constrained to w = -1.006 +/- 0.045. Standard big bang nucleosynthesis predictions for the Planck LCDM cosmology are in excellent agreement with observations. We investigate annihilating dark matter and deviations from standard recombination, finding no evidence for new physics. The Planck results for base LCDM are in agreement with BAO data and with the JLA SNe sample. However the amplitude of the fluctuations is found to be higher than inferred from rich cluster counts and weak gravitational lensing. Apart from these tensions, the base LCDM cosmology provides an excellent description of the Planck CMB observations and many other astrophysical data sets.

9,745 citations