Showing papers by "Nabila Aghanim published in 2008"

Secondary anisotropies of the CMB

Abstract: The Cosmic Microwave Background fluctuations provide a powerful probe of the dark ages of the universe through the imprint of the secondary anisotropies associated with the reionization of the universe and the growth of structure. We review the relation between the secondary anisotropies and the primary anisotropies that are directly generated by quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. The physics of secondary fluctuations is described, with emphasis on the ionization history and the evolution of structure. We discuss the different signatures arising from the secondary effects in terms of their induced temperature fluctuations, polarization and statistics. The secondary anisotropies are being actively pursued at present, and we review the future and current observational status.

Optimising large galaxy surveys for ISW detection

Abstract: We investigate the potential of next-generation surveys of the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure, to constrain the nature of dark energy, by means of the cross-correlation of the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect with the galaxy distribution. We first complete a signal-to-noise analysis to decide the most appropriate properties of a survey required to detect the correlated signal at a significance level of higher than 4σ. We find that more than 35% of the sky should be covered, the galaxy distribution should be probed out to a median redshift higher than 0.8, and the number of galaxies detected should be higher than a few per squared arcmin. We then consider in particular forthcoming surveys DUNE, LSST, SNAP, PanSTARRS. We independently compute the constraints that the DUNE survey can place on the nature of dark energy, by means of different parametrisations of its equation of state, using a standard Fisher matrix analysis. We confirm that, with respect to limits placed by pure CMB, cross-correlation constraints can help to break the degeneracies between dark energy and cosmological parameters. The strength of the constraints is not, of course, independent of the dark-energy model. The constraints are complementary to, despite being weaker than, some other probes of dark energy such as gravitational weak-lensing, because they are sensitive to the high-redshift behaviour of the dark energy.

Biases on the cosmological parameters and thermal SZ residuals

Abstract: We examine the biases induced on cosmological parameters when the presence of secondary anisotropies is not taken into account in Cosmic Microwave Background analyses. We first develop an exact analytical expression for computing the biases on parameters when any additive signal is neglected in the analysis. We then apply it in the context of the forthcoming Planck experiment. For illustration, we investigate the effect of the sole residual thermal Sunyaev--Zel'dovich signal that remains after cluster extraction. We find in particular that analyses neglecting the presence of this contribution introduce on the cosmological parameters n_s and tau biases, at least 6.5 and 2.9 times their one sigma confidence intervals. The Omega_b parameter is also biased to a lesser extent.

Cluster scaling relations from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations in dark energy dominated universe

Abstract: Clusters are potentially powerful tools for cosmology provided their observed properties such as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) or X-ray signals can be translated into physical quantities like mass and temperature. Scaling relations are the appropriate mean to perform this translation. It is therefore, important to understand their evolution and their modifications with respect to the physics and to the underlying cosmology. In this spirit, we investigate the effect of dark energy on the X-ray and SZ scaling relations. The study is based on the first hydro-simulations of cluster formation for diferent models of dark energy. We present results for four dark energy models which differ from each other by their equations of state parameter, $w$. Namely, we use a cosmological constant model $w=-1$ (as a reference), a perfect fluid with constant equation of state parameter $w=-0.8$ and one with $w = -1.2$ and a scalar field model (or quintessence) with varying $w$. We generate N-body/hydrodynamic simulations that include radiative cooling with the public version of the Hydra code, modified to consider an arbitrary dark energy component. We produce cluster catalogues for the four models and derive the associated X-ray and SZ scaling relations. We find that dark energy has little effect on scaling laws making it safe to use the $\Lambda$CDM scalings for conversion of observed quantities into temperature and masses.

Detectability of nontrivial topologies

Abstract: We study how the uncertainty in the cosmological parameters impacts on the detection of topological signals, focussing on three cubic torus universes and using three tests: the information content, the S/N statistic, and the Bayesian evidence. We find, within the concordance cosmological model, that 3D torus universes with a size of {approx}29 Gpc{sup 3} or larger cannot be detected. For the toroidal models that can be detected, the detection significance is primarily influenced by {omega}{sub {lambda}}, which enters both in the noise amplitude due to the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect and in the size of the causal horizon which limits the accessible fundamental domain. On large angular scales l<40, only {omega}{sub {lambda}} significantly alters the detection for all three estimators considered here.

The cross-correlation of the CMB polarisation and the 21-cm line fluctuations from cosmic reionisation

Abstract: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarisation and the 21 cm line fluctuations are powerful probes of cosmological reionisation. We study how the cross-correlation between the CMB polarisation (E-modes) and the 21 cm line fluctuations can be used to gain further understanding of the reionisation history, within the framework of inhomogeneous reionisation. Since the E-mode polarisation reflects the amplitude of the quadrupole component of the CMB temperature fluctuations, the angular power spectrum of the cross-correlation exhibits oscillations at all multipoles. The first peak of the power spectrum appears at the scale corresponding to the quadrupole at the redshift that is probed by the 21 cm line fluctuations. The peak reaches its maximum value in redshift when the average ionisation fraction of the universe is about half. On the other hand, on small scales, there is a damping that depends on the duration of reionisation. Thus, the cross-correlation between the CMB polarisation and the 21 cm line fluctuations has the potential to constrain accurately the epoch and the duration of reionisation.