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Keiichi Umetsu

Publications and source records attributed to Keiichi Umetsu.

165 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

The topology of weak lensing field in the neighborhood of MS1054-03

We report the first measurement of genus curves for the two-dimensional mass map in the neighborhood of rich, X-ray luminous galaxy cluster MS1054-03 at z=0.83, reconstructed from weak lensing data obtained by Suprime-Cam on the prime focus of 8.2m Subaru telescope. We find that the genus curve measured in the whole survey field deviates from that expected from a random Gaussian field. We show that this non-Gaussianity is induced by the rich cluster in this region, and that the genus curve for the region without the cluster is consistent with the prediction for a random Gaussian field. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the genus statistics to examine the non-Gaussianity due to the large scale structures and to probe the statistical properties of the large scale clustering.

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Cluster Mass Reconstruction by a Weak Shear Field

The tidal gravitational field of galaxy clusters causes a coherent distortion of the images of background sources. Since the distribution of image distortions, namely the shear field, traces the local gravitational potential of a deflector, it can be used to reconstruct the two-dimensional mass distribution of clusters of galaxies. Moreover, the shear field can provide unique information on the redshift distribution of high-redshift galaxies. In this review we summarize recently-developed parameter-free methods of cluster-mass reconstruction based on the shear field, and we apply a mass-reconstruction method to the cluster Abell 370 at redshift 0.375.

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A possible route to spontaneous reduction of the heat conductivity by a temperature gradient driven instability in electron-ion plasmas

We have shown that there exists low-frequency growing modes driven by a global temperature gradient in electron and ion plasmas, by linear perturbation analysis within the frame work of plasma Kinetic theory. The driving force of the instability is the local deviation of the distribution function from the Maxwell-Boltzmann due to global temperature gradient. Application to the intracluster medium shows that scattering of the particles due to waves excited by the instability is possible to reduce mean free paths of electron and ion down to five to seven order of magnitude than the mean free paths due to Coulomb collisions. This may provide a hint to explain why hot and cool gas can co-exist in the intracluster medium in spite of the very short evaporation time scale due to thermal conduction if the conductivity is the classical Spitzer value. Our results suggest that the realization of the global thermal equilibrium is postponed by the local instability which is induced for quicker realization of local thermal equilibrium state in plasmas. The instability provides a new possibility to create and grow cosmic magnetic fields without any seed magnetic field.

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