Improved cosmological constraints on the curvature and equation of state of dark energy
We apply the Constitution compilation of 397 supernova Ia, the baryon acoustic oscillation measurements including the $A$ parameter, the distance ratio and the radial data, the five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the Hubble parameter data to study the geometry of the universe and the property of dark energy by using the popular Chevallier-Polarski-Linder and Jassal-Bagla-Padmanabhan parameterizations. We compare the simple $\chi^2$ method of joined contour estimation and the Monte-Carlo Markov Chain method, and find that it is necessary to make the marginalized analysis on the error estimation. The probabilities of $\Omega_k$ and $w_a$ in the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder model are skew distributions, and the marginalized $1\sigma$ errors are $\Omega_m=0.279^{+0.015}_{-0.008}$, $\Omega_k=0.005^{+0.006}_{-0.011}$, $w_0=-1.05^{+0.23}_{-0.06}$, and $w_a=0.5^{+0.3}_{-1.5}$. For the Jassal-Bagla-Padmanabhan model, the marginalized $1\sigma$ errors are $\Omega_m=0.281^{+0.015}_{-0.01}$, $\Omega_k=0.000^{+0.007}_{-0.006}$, $w_0=-0.96^{+0.25}_{-0.18}$, and $w_a=-0.6^{+1.9}_{-1.6}$. The equation of state parameter $w(z)$ of dark energy is negative in the redshift range $0\le z\le 2$ at more than $3\sigma$ level. The flat $\Lambda$CDM model is consistent with the current observational data at $1\sigma$ level.
N-Body Simulations for Coupled Scalar Field Cosmology
We describe in detail the general methodology and numerical implementation of consistent N-body simulations for coupled scalar field cosmological models, including the background cosmology and the generation of initial conditions (with the different couplings to different matter species taken into account). We perform fully consistent simulations for a class of coupled scalar field models with an inverse power-law potential and negative coupling constant, for which the chameleon mechanism does not operate. We find that in such cosmological models the scalar-field potential plays a negligible role except in the background expansion, and the fifth force that is produced is proportional to gravity in magnitude, justifying the use of a rescaled gravitational constant G in some earlier N-body simulations of similar models. We study the effects of the scalar coupling on the nonlinear matter power spectra and compare with linear perturbation calculations to investigate where the nonlinear model deviates from the linear approximation. For the first time, the algorithm to identify gravitationally virialized matter halos is adapted to the scalar field cosmology, and then used to measure the mass function and study the properties of virialized halos. We find that the net effect of the scalar coupling helps produce more heavy halos in our simulation boxes and suppresses the inner (but not the outer) density profile of halos compared with those predicted by lambda-CDM, while this suppression weakens as the coupling between the scalar field and dark matter particles increases in strength.
The Early Solar System - Chapter 6
This chapter presents a (partial) review of the information we can derive on the early history of the Solar System from radioactive nuclei of very different half-life, which were recognized to have been present alive in pristine solids. In fact, radioactivities open for us a unique window on the evolution of the solar nebula and provide tools for understanding the crucial events that determined and accompanied the formation of the Sun. Discussing these topics will require consideration of (at least) the following issues. i) The determination of an age for solar system bodies, as it emerged especially from the application of radioactive dating. ii) A synthetic account of the measurements that proved the presence of radioactive nuclei (especially those of half-life lower than about 100 Myr) in the Early Solar System (hereafter ESS). iii) An explanation of their existence in terms of galactic nucleosynthesis, and/or of local processes (either exotic or in-situ) preceding and accompanying the formation of the Sun. This will also need some reference to the present scenarios for star formation, as applied to the ESS.
Large-scale Velocities and Primordial Non-Gaussianity
We study the peculiar velocities of density peaks in the presence of primordial non-Gaussianity. Rare, high density peaks in the initial density field can be identified with tracers such as galaxies and clusters in the evolved matter distribution. The distribution of relative velocities of peaks is derived in the large-scale limit using two different approaches based on a local biasing scheme. Both approaches agree, and show that halos still stream with the dark matter locally as well as statistically, i.e. they do not acquire a velocity bias. Nonetheless, even a moderate degree of (not necessarily local) non-Gaussianity induces a significant skewness (~ 0.1-0.2) in the relative velocity distribution, making it a potentially interesting probe of non-Gaussianity on intermediate to large scales. We also study two-point correlations in redshift-space. The well-known Kaiser formula is still a good approximation on large scales, if the Gaussian halo bias is replaced with its (scale-dependent) non-Gaussian generalization. However, there are additional terms not encompassed by this simple formula which become relevant on smaller scales (k >~ 0.01 h/Mpc). Depending on the allowed level of non-Gaussianity, these could be of relevance for future large spectroscopic surveys.
The growth of dark matter halos: evidence for significant smooth accretion
We study the growth of dark matter halos in the concordance LCDM cosmology using several N-body simulations of large cosmological volumes. We build merger trees from the Millennium and Millennium-II simulations, covering a range 10^9-10^15 Msun in halo mass and 1-10^5 in merger mass ratio. Our algorithm takes special care of halo fragmentation and ensures that the mass contribution of each merger to halo growth is only counted once. This way the integrated merger rate converges and we can consistently determine the contribution of mergers of different mass ratios to halo growth. We find that all resolved mergers, up to mass ratios of 10^5, contribute only ~60% of the total halo mass growth, while major mergers are subdominant, e.g. mergers with mass ratios smaller than 3:1 (10:1) contribute only ~20% (~30%). This is verified with an analysis of two additional simulation boxes, where we follow all particles individually throughout cosmic time. Our results are also robust against using several halo definitions. Under the assumption that the power-law behaviour of the merger rate at large mass ratios can be extrapolated to arbitrarily large mass ratios, it is found that, independently of halo mass, ~40% of the mass in halos comes from genuinely smooth accretion of dark matter that was never bound in smaller halos. We discuss possible implications of our findings for galaxy formation. One robust implication, under standard assumptions about pre-heating from UV phot ons, is that all halos accrete >40% of their baryons in smooth T<~10^4K gas.
