arXiv subjects

Hiroaki Nishioka

Publications and source records attributed to Hiroaki Nishioka.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

The AMiBA Hexapod Telescope Mount

AMiBA is the largest hexapod astronomical telescope in current operation. We present a description of this novel hexapod mount with its main mechanical components -- the support cone, universal joints, jack screws, and platform -- and outline the control system with the pointing model and the operating modes that are supported. The AMiBA hexapod mount performance is verified based on optical pointing tests and platform photogrammetry measurements. The photogrammetry results show that the deformations in the inner part of the platform are less than 120 micron rms. This is negligible for optical pointing corrections, radio alignment and radio phase errors for the currently operational 7-element compact configuration. The optical pointing error in azimuth and elevation is successively reduced by a series of corrections to about 0.4 arcmin rms which meets our goal for the 7-element target specifications.

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arXiv2009

The Yuan-Tseh Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy

The Yuan-Tseh Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA) is the first interferometer dedicated to studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation at 3mm wavelength. The choice of 3mm was made to minimize the contributions from foreground synchrotron radiation and Galactic dust emission. The initial configuration of seven 0.6m telescopes mounted on a 6-m hexapod platform was dedicated in October 2006 on Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Scientific operations began with the detection of a number of clusters of galaxies via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. We compare our data with Subaru weak lensing data in order to study the structure of dark matter. We also compare our data with X-ray data in order to derive the Hubble constant.

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arXiv2009

Mass and Hot Baryons in Massive Galaxy Clusters from Subaru Weak Lensing and AMiBA SZE Observations

We present a multiwavelength analysis of a sample of four hot (T_X>8keV) X-ray galaxy clusters (A1689, A2261, A2142, and A2390) using joint AMiBA Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) and Subaru weak lensing observations, combined with published X-ray temperatures, to examine the distribution of mass and the intracluster medium (ICM) in massive cluster environments. Our observations show that A2261 is very similar to A1689 in terms of lensing properties. Many tangential arcs are visible around A2261, with an effective Einstein radius \sim 40 arcsec (at z \sim 1.5), which when combined with our weak lensing measurements implies a mass profile well fitted by an NFW model with a high concentration c_{vir} \sim 10, similar to A1689 and to other massive clusters. The cluster A2142 shows complex mass substructure, and displays a shallower profile (c_{vir} \sim 5), consistent with detailed X-ray observations which imply recent interaction. The AMiBA map of A2142 exhibits an SZE feature associated with mass substructure lying ahead of the sharp north-west edge of the X-ray core suggesting a pressure increase in the ICM. For A2390 we obtain highly elliptical mass and ICM distributions at all radii, consistent with other X-ray and strong lensing work. Our cluster gas fraction measurements, free from the hydrostatic equilibrium assumption, are overall in good agreement with published X-ray and SZE observations, with the sample-averaged gas fraction of = 0.133 \pm 0.027, for our sample = (1.2 \pm 0.1) \times 10^{15} M_{sun} h^{-1}. When compared to the cosmic baryon fraction f_b = Ω_b/Ω_m constrained by the WMAP 5-year data, this indicates /f_b = 0.78 \pm 0.16, i.e., (22 \pm 16)% of the baryons are missing from the hot phase of clusters.

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arXiv2008

Tests of AMiBA Data Integrity

We describe methods used to validate data from the Y.T. Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA), an interferometric array designed to measure the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and the anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We perform several statistical tests on data from pointed galaxy cluster observations taken in 2007 and noise data from long-term blank sky observations and measurements with the feeds covered by the absorbers. We apply power spectrum analysis, cross power spectrum analysis among different outputs with different time lags in our analog correlator, and sample variance law tests to noise data. We find that (1) there is no time variation of electronic offsets on the time scale of our two-patch observations (~10 minutes); (2) noise is correlated by less than 10% between different lags; and (3) the variance of noise scales with the inverse of time. To test the Gaussianity of the data, we apply Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) tests to cluster data, and find that a 5% significance level efficiently detects data sets with known hardware problems without rejecting an excess of acceptable data. We also calculate third- and fourth-order moments and cumulants for the noise residual visibilities and find that about 95% of our data are within the 99% confidence regions of Gaussianity.

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arXiv2005

A Measurement of the Quadrupole Power Spectrum in the Clustering of the 2dF QSO Survey

We report a measurement of the quadrupole power spectrum in the two degree field (2dF) QSO redshift (2QZ) survey. The analysis uses an algorithm parallel to that for the estimation of the standard monopole power spectrum without first requiring computation of the correlation function or the anisotropic power spectrum. The error on the quadrupole spectrum is rather large but the best fit value of the bias parameter from the quadrupole spectrum is consistent with that from previous investigations of the 2dF data.

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arXiv2004

Dark energy reflections in the redshift-space quadrupole

We show that the redshift-space quadrupole will be a powerful tool for constraining dark energy even if the baryon oscillations are missing from the usual monopole power spectrum and even if bias is scale- and time-dependent. We calculate the accuracy with which a next-generation galaxy survey based on KAOS will measure the quadrupole power spectrum, which gives the leading anisotropies in the power spectrum in redshift space due to the linear velocity, Finger of God and Alcock-Paczynski effects. Combining the monopole and quadrupole power spectra breaks the degeneracies between the multiple bias parameters and dark energy both in the linear and nonlinear regimes and, in the complete absence of baryon oscillations ($Ω_b=0$), leads to a roughly 500% improvement in constraints on dark energy compared with those from the monopole spectrum alone. As a result the worst case - with no baryon oscillations - has dark energy errors only mildly degraded relative to the ideal case, providing insurance on the robustness of next-generation galaxy survey constraints on dark energy.

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arXiv2001

Can Geometric Test Probe the Cosmic Equation of State ?

Feasibility of the geometric test as a probe of the cosmic equation of state of the dark energy is discussed assuming the future 2dF QSO sample. We examine sensitivity of the QSO two-point correlation functions, which are theoretically computed incorporating the light-cone effect and the redshift distortions, as well as the nonlinear effect, to a bias model whose evolution is phenomenologically parameterized. It is shown that the correlation functions are sensitive on a mean amplitude of the bias and not to the speed of the redshift evolution. We will also demonstrate that an optimistic geometric test could suffer from confusion that a signal from the cosmological model can be confused with that from a stochastic character of the bias.

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arXiv2000

The effect of bias and redshift distortions on a geometric test for the cosmological constant

We revisit the feasibility of a cosmological test with the geometric distortion focusing on an ambiguous factor of the evolution of bias. Starting from defining estimators for the spatial two-point correlation function and the power spectrum, in a rigorous manner, we derive useful formulas for the two-point clustering statistics which take the light-cone effect and the redshift-space distortions into account. Then we investigate how the predicted correlation functions are affected by the redshift-space distortions and the bias assuming quasar samples which roughly match the 2dF survey. Effect of the bias is crucial, in particular, on anisotropic component of the clustering statistics in redshift-space. By surveying behavior of the predicted correlation functions to parameters of a phenomenological model for the evolution of bias, it is shown that the correlation functions on the light-cone is sensitive to a mean amplitude of the bias and rather insensitive to the speed of its redshift-evolution. This feature is useful for an analysis of the geometric test.

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arXiv2000

Nonlinear Evolution of Very Small Scale Cosmological Baryon Perturbations at Recombination

The evolution of baryon density perturbations on very small scales is investigated. In particular, the nonlinear growth induced by the radiation drag force from the shear velocity field on larger scales during the recombination epoch, which is originally proposed by Shaviv in 1998, is studied in detail. It is found that inclusion of the diffusion term which Shaviv neglected in his analysis results in rather mild growth whose growth rate is $\ll 100$ instead of enormous amplification $\sim 10^4$ of Shaviv's original claim since the diffusion suppresses the growth. The growth factor strongly depends on the amplitude of the large scale velocity field. The nonlinear growth mechanism is applied to density perturbations of general adiabatic cold dark matter (CDM) models. In these models, it has been found in the previous works that the baryon density perturbations are not completely erased by diffusion damping if there exists gravitational potential of CDM. With employing the perturbed rate equation which is derived in this paper, the nonlinear evolution of baryon density perturbations is investigated. It is found that: (1) The nonlinear growth is larger for smaller scales. This mechanism only affects the perturbations whose scales are smaller than $\sim 10^2M_\odot$, which are coincident with the stellar scales. (2) The maximum growth factors of baryon density fluctuations for various COBE normalized CDM models are typically less than factor 10 for $3-σ$ large scale velocity peaks. (3) The growth factor depends on $Ω_{\rm b}$.

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arXiv1999

Redshift-space Distortions of the Power Spectrum of Cosmological Objects on a Light Cone : Explicit Formulations and Theoretical Implications

We examine the effects of the linear and the cosmological redshift-space distortions on the power spectrum of cosmological objects on a light cone. We develop theoretical formulae for the power spectrum in linear theory of density perturbations in a rigorous manner starting from first principle corresponding to Fourier analysis. Approximate formulae, which are useful properly to incorporate the redshift-space distortion effects into the power spectrum are derived, and the validity is examined. Applying our formulae to galaxy and quasar samples which roughly match the SDSS survey, we will show how the redshift-space distortions distort the power spectrum on the light cone quantitatively.

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arXiv1999

The cosmological light-cone effect on the power spectrum of galaxies and quasars in wide-field redshift surveys

We examine observational consequences of the cosmological light-cone effect on the power spectrum of the distribution of galaxies and quasars from upcoming redshift surveys. First we derive an expression for the power spectrum of cosmological objects in real space on a light cone, $P^{\rm LC}_{\rm R,lin}(k)$, which is exact in linear theory of density perturbations. Next we incorporate corrections for the nonlinear density evolution and redshift-space distortion in the formula in a phenomenological manner which is consistent with recent numerical simulations. On the basis of this formula, we predict the power spectrum of galaxies and quasars on the light cone for future redshift surveys taking account of the selection function properly. We demonstrate that this formula provides a reliable and useful method to compute the power spectrum on the light cone given an evolution model of bias.

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arXiv1999

Two-point correlation function of high-redshift objects on a light-cone: Effect of the linear redshift-space distortion

A theoretical formulation for the two-point correlation function on a light-cone is developed in the redshift space. On the basis of the previous work by Yamamoto & Suto (1999), in which a theoretical formula for the two-point correlation function on a light-cone has been developed in the real space, we extend it to the formula in the redshift space by taking the peculiar velocity of the sources into account. A simple expression for the two-point correlation function is derived. We briefly discuss QSO correlation functions on a light-cone adopting a simple model of the sources.

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