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Marina Dodgson

Publications and source records attributed to Marina Dodgson.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Deceleration without dark matter

In homogeneous isotropic cosmological models the angular size theta of a standard measuring rod changes with redshift z in a manner that depends upon the parameters of the model. It has been argued that as a population ultracompact (milliarcsecond) radio sources measured by very long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) do not evolve with cosmic epoch, and thus comprise a set of standard objects, at least in a statistical sense. Here we examine the angular-size/redshift relation for 256 ultracompact sources with z in the range 0.5 to 3.8 for cosmological models with two degrees of freedom (Omega_0 and Lambda_0). The canonical inflationary cold dark matter model(Omega_0=1, Lambda_0=0) appears to be ruled out by the observed relationship, whereas low-density models with a cosmological constant of either sign are favoured.

astro-ph

Decelerating universes older than their Hubble times

Recent observations suggest that Hubble's constant is large, and hence that the Universe appears to be younger than some of its constituents. The traditional escape route, which assumes that the expansion is accelerating, appears to be blocked by observations of Type 1a supernovae, which suggest(ed) that the Universe is decelerating. These observations are reconciled in a model in which the Universe has experienced an inflationary phase in the recent past, driven by an ultra-light inflaton whose Compton wavelength is of the same order as the Hubble radius.

astro-ph

Determination of cosmology and evolution from K-band magnitude-redshift and number count observations

We determine cosmological and evolutionary parameters from the 3CR K-band Hubble diagram and K-band number counts, assuming that the galaxies in question undergo pure luminosity evolution. Separately the two data sets are highly degenerate with respect to choice of cosmological and evolutionary parameters, but in combination the degeneracy is resolved. Of models which are either flat or have $Ω_Λ=0$, the preferred ones are close to the canonical case $Ω_\CdM=1$, $Ω_Λ=0$, with luminosity evolution amounting to one magnitude brighter at z=1.

astro-ph