arXiv subjects

Gilbert Holder

Publications and source records attributed to Gilbert Holder.

44 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2007

The Sunyaev-Zeldovich Background

The cosmic background due to the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect is expected to be the largest signal at mm and cm wavelengths at a resolution of a few arcminutes. We investigate some simple statistics of SZ maps and their scaling with the normalization of the matter power spectrum, sigma_8, as well as the effects of the unknown physics of the intracluster medium on these statistics. We show that the SZ background provides a significant background for SZ cluster searches, with the onset of confusion occurring around 10^{14} h^{-1} solar masses in a cosmology-dependent way, where confusion is defined as typical errors in recovered flux larger than 20%. The confusion limit, corresponds to the mass at which there are roughly ten clusters per square degree, with this number nearly independent of cosmology and cluster gas physics. Typical errors grow quickly as lower mass objects are included in the catalog. We also point out that there is nothing in particular about the rms of the filtered map that makes it especially well-suited for capturing aspects of the SZ effect, and other indicators of the one-point SZ probability distribution function are at least as well suited for the task. For example, the full width at half maximum of the one point probability distribution has a field-to-field scatter that is about 60% that of the rms. The simplest statistics of SZ maps are largely unaffected by cluster physics such aspreheating, although the impact of preheating is clear by eye in the maps.Studies aimed at learning about the physics of the intracluster medium will apparently require more specialized statistical indicators.

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arXiv2006

Reconstructing the Thomson Optical Depth due to Patchy Reionization with 21-cm Fluctuation Maps

Large fluctuations in the electron column density can occur during the reionization process. We investigate the possibility of deriving the electron density fluctuations through detailed mapping of the redshifted 21-cm emission from the neutral medium during reionization. We find that the electron-scattering optical depth and 21-cm differential brightness temperature are strongly anti-correlated, allowing optical depth estimates based entirely on redshifted 21-cm measurements. This should help isolate the CMB polarization fluctuations that are due to reionization, allowing both cleaning of the patchy reionization polarization signal as a contaminating source of confusion to other signals and a measurement of the primordial quadrupole that would be measured at various locations in the universe at the epoch of reionization. This latter application in principle allows mapping of the primordial density field at z~1100 over a large fraction of the Hubble volume.

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arXiv2006

Likelihood Functions for Galaxy Cluster Surveys

Galaxy cluster surveys offer great promise for measuring cosmological parameters, but survey analysis methods have not been widely studied. Using methods developed decades ago for galaxy clustering studies, it is shown that nearly exact likelihood functions can be written down for galaxy cluster surveys. The sparse sampling of the density field by galaxy clusters allows simplifications that are not possible for galaxy surveys. An application to counts in cells is explicitly tested using cluster catalogs from numerical simulations and it is found that the calculated probability distributions are very accurate at masses above several times 10^{14}h^{-1} solar masses at z=0 and lower masses at higher redshift.

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arXiv2005

Constrained Cluster Parameters from Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Observations

Near-future SZ surveys such as ACT, SPT, APEX, and Planck will find thousands of galaxy clusters. Multi-frequency arcminute-resolution SZ observations can, in principle, determine each cluster's gas temperature (T_e), bulk velocity (v_pec), and optical depth (tau). However, the frequency bands and detector sensitivity employed by upcoming surveys will generally not be sufficient to disentangle the degeneracy between these three cluster parameters, even in the absence of SZ signal contamination from point sources and imperfect primary microwave background subtraction. Assuming contaminants can be removed, we find that near-future SZ surveys will be able to constrain well two cluster gas parameters that are linear combinations of tau*T_e, tau*v_z, and tau*T_e^2. Because the SZ intensity shift is nearly a linear function of tau*T_e, tau*v_z, and tau*T_e^2, a correspondence exists between the two effective gas parameters that SZ surveys can constrain and simple line-of-sight integrals through the three dimensional cluster. We illustrate the parameter constraints and correspondence to line-of-sight integrals using 3D Nbody + hydro cluster simulations and a Markov chain Monte Carlo method. We show that adding an independent T_e measurement to upcoming SZ data breaks the parameter degeneracy. The cluster effective velocity thus constrained is approximately the optical-depth-weighted velocity integrated along the cluster line of sight. A temperature prior with an error as large as 2 keV still gives bulk velocity errors < 100 km/sec, even for a more typical cluster with an electron temperature of 3 keV, for ACT-like SZ observations in the absence of signal contamination. The Markov chain constraints on v_pec and tau are more encouraging and likely more accurate than those obtained from Fisher matrices.

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arXiv2003

Statistics of Giant Arcs in Galaxy Clusters

We study the expected properties and statistics of giant arcs produced by galaxy clusters in a LambdaCDM universe and investigate how the characteristics of CDM clusters determine the properties of the arcs they generate. Due to the triaxiality and substructure of CDM halos, the giant arc cross section for individual clusters varies by more than an order of magnitude as a function of viewing angle. In addition, the shallow density cusps and triaxiality of CDM clusters cause systematic alignments of giant arcs which should be testable with larger samples from forthcoming lensing surveys. We compute the predicted statistics of giant arcs for the LambdaCDM model and compare to results from previous surveys. The predicted arc statistics are in excellent agreement with the numbers of giant arcs observed around low redshift (0.2 < z < 0.6) clusters from the EMSS sample, however there are hints of a possible excess of arcs observed around high redshift z > 0.6 clusters. This excess, if real, appears to be due to the presence of highly massive or concentrated clusters at high redshifts.

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arXiv2003

The Reionization History at High Redshifts II: Estimating the Optical Depth to Thomson Scattering from CMB Polarization

In light of the recent inference of a high optical depth to Thomson scattering, tau, from the WMAP data we investigate the effects of extended periods of partial ionization and ask if the value of tau inferred by assuming a single sharp transition is an unbiased estimate. We construct and consider several representative ionization models and evaluate their signatures in the CMB. If tau is estimated with a single sharp transition we show that there can be a significant bias in the derived value (and therefore a bias in sigma8 as well). For WMAP noise levels the bias in tau is smaller than the statistical uncertainty, but for Planck or a cosmic variance limited experiment the tau bias could be much larger than the statistical uncertainties. This bias can be reduced in the ionization models we consider by fitting a slightly more complicated ionization history, such as a two-step ionization process. Assuming this two-step process we find the Planck satellite can simultaneously determine the initial redshift of reionization to +-2 and tau to +-0.01 Uncertainty about the ionization history appears to provide a limit of about 0.005 on how well tau can be estimated from CMB polarization data, much better than expected from WMAP but significantly worse than expected from cosmic-variance limits.

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arXiv2003

A Method for Mapping the Temperature Profile of X-ray Clusters Through Radio Observations

Many of the most luminous extragalactic radio sources are located at the centers of X-ray clusters, and so their radiation must be scattered by the surrounding hot gas. We show that radio observations of the highly-polarized scattered radiation (which depends on the electron density distribution) in combination with the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (which measures the electron pressure distribution), can be used to determine the radial profile of the electron temperature within the host cluster. The sensitivity levels expected from current instruments will allow radio measurements of mass-weighted cluster temperature profiles to better than roughly 1 keV accuracy, as long as the central radio source is steady over several million years. Variable or beamed sources will leave observable signatures in the scattered emission. For clusters with a central point source brighter than about 1 mJy, the scattered polarization signal is stronger than competing effects due to the cosmic microwave background.

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arXiv2001

Constraints on Omega_m, Omega_L, and Sigma_8, from Galaxy Cluster Redshift Distributions

We show that the counts of galaxy clusters in future deep cluster surveys can place strong constraints on the matter density, Omega_m, the vacuum energy density, Omega_L, and the normalization of the matter power spectrum, sigma_8. Degeneracies between these parameters are different from those in studies of either high--redshift type Ia Supernovae (SNe), or cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Using a mass threshold for cluster detection expected to be typical for upcoming SZE surveys, we find that constraints on Omega_m and sigma_8 at the level of roughly 5% or better can be expected, assuming redshift information is known at least to z=0.5 and in the absence of significant systematic errors. Without information past this redshift, Omega_L is constrained to 25%. With complete redshift information, deep (M_{lim}= 10^{14}h^{-1}{M_sun}), relatively small solid angle (roughly 12 {deg}^2) surveys can further constrain Omega_L to an accuracy of 15%, while large solid angle surveys with ground-based large-format bolometer arrays could measure Omega_L to a precision of 4% or better.

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