Cosmology

About: Cosmology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 18004 publications have been published within this topic receiving 631028 citations. The topic is also known as: physical cosmology & cosmologies.

Photon-conserving radiative transfer around point sources in multidimensional numerical cosmology

Abstract: Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal and ionization history of the inter- galactic medium are now being successfully studied with the help of cosmological hydrodynamical simu- lations. Here we present a numerical method that solves for the radiative transfer around point sources within a three-dimensional Cartesian grid. The method is energy-conserving independent of resolution; this ensures correct propagation speeds for ionization fronts. We describe the details of the algorithm and compute as a —rst numerical application the ionized region surrounding a mini-quasar in a cosmo- logical density —eld at z \ 7. Subject headings: cosmology: theorygalaxies: formationgalaxies: ISMintergalactic medium ¨ radiative transfer

Does the Hubble constant tension call for new physics

Abstract: The $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter model ($\Lambda$CDM) represents the current standard model in cosmology. Within this, there is a tension between the value of the Hubble constant, $H_0$, inferred from local distance indicators and the angular scale of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We investigate whether the tension is significant enough to warrant new physics in the form of modifying or adding energy components to the standard cosmological model. We find that late time dark energy explanations are slightly disfavoured whereas a pre-CMB decoupling extra dark energy component has a marginally positive Bayesian evidence. A constant equation of state of the additional early energy density is constrained to 0.086$^{+0.04}_{-0.03}$. Although this value deviates significantly from 1/3, valid for dark radiation, the latter is not disfavoured based on the Bayesian evidence. If the tension persists, future estimates of $H_0$ at the 1$\%$ level will be able to decisively determine which of the proposed explanations is favoured.

Nonminimal torsion-matter coupling extension of f(T) gravity

Abstract: We construct an extension of f(T) gravity with the inclusion of a non-minimal torsion-matter coupling in the action. The resulting theory is a novel gravitational modification, since it is different from both f(T) gravity, as well as from the non-minimal curvature-matter-coupled theory. The cosmological application of this new theory proves to be very interesting. In particular, we obtain an effective dark energy sector whose equation-of-state parameter can be quintessence or phantom-like, or exhibit the phantom-divide crossing, while for a large range of the model parameters the Universe results in a de Sitter, dark-energy-dominated, accelerating phase. Additionally, we can obtain early-time inflationary solutions too, and thus provide a unified description of the cosmological history.

Galaxy Clustering & Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing: A Promising Union to Constrain Cosmological Parameters

Abstract: Galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing probe the connection between galaxies and their dark matter haloes in complementary ways. On one hand, the halo occupation statistics inferred from the observed clustering properties of galaxies are degenerate with the adopted cosmology. Consequently, different cosmologies imply different mass-to-light ratios for dark matter haloes. On the other hand, galaxy-galaxy lensing yields direct constraints on the actual mass-to-light ratios and it can be used to break this degeneracy, and thus to constrain cosmological parameters. In this paper we establish the link between galaxy luminosity and dark matter halo mass using the conditional luminosity function (CLF). We constrain the CLF parameters using the galaxy luminosity function and the luminosity dependence of the correlation lengths of galaxies. The resulting CLF models are used to predict the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal. For a cosmology with $(\Omega_{\rm m},\sigma_8)=(0.238,0.734)$, the model accurately fits the galaxy-galaxy lensing data obtained from the SDSS. For a comparison cosmology with $(\Omega_{\rm m},\sigma_8)=(0.3,0.9)$, however, we can accurately fit the luminosity function and clustering properties of the galaxy population, but the model predicts mass-to-light ratios that are too high, resulting in a strong overprediction of the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal. We conclude that the combination of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing is a powerful probe of the galaxy-dark matter connection, with the potential to yield tight constraints on cosmological parameters. Since this method mainly probes the mass distribution on non-linear scales, it is complementary to constraints obtained from the galaxy power-spectrum, which mainly probes the large-scale (linear) matter distribution.