arXiv subjects

Mohamed Rameez

Publications and source records attributed to Mohamed Rameez.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Response to: "Isotropic deceleration and near-zero baseline acceleration in Pantheon+ supernovae: new arguments in the dark energy debate''

Ray et al. [1] have claimed that the acceleration of the Hubble expansion rate inferred from Type Ia supernovae in the Pantheon+ catalogue "is equally strong in the CMB dipole ($q_m = + 1.45$) and anti-dipole hemispheres ($+ 1.55$), directly contradicting the SRS26 anisotropy argument". Here SRS26 refers to our analysis [2] which showed that "locally $q_0$ has a strong dipole anisotropy aligned approximately with the bulk flow, and only a small monopole component remains at distances exceeding a few hundred Mpc". We find that these authors confused Equatorial with Galactic coordinates, thereby getting the CMB dipole direction wrong. Hence their conclusion is baseless.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Parameterizing the Standing Accretion Shock Instability for Inference with Galactic Supernova Neutrino Signals at IceCube

Simulations of core-collapse supernovae have revealed an epoch of hydrodynamic instability in which the matter of the collapsing star undergoes quasi-periodic oscillations, known as the standing accretion shock instability (SASI). Neutrinos produced in the core of the star travel through this oscillating matter, and information about this epoch is encoded in their high-statistics event rate observable at neutrino observatories. We propose a parametrization of the SASI-modulation to study its broad features, enabling statistical inference of SASI parameters. For the benchmark Galactic supernovae considered, we show that IceCube can identify this epoch of instability and reconstruct its parameters with precision at the sub-percent level for the SASI frequency, percent level for the peak time, and a few to ten percent level for the amplitude and duration.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

Pantheon+ supernovae corrected for progenitor age indicate the universe is decelerating

We examine the impact of progenitor age-dependent luminosity evolution of Type Ia supernovae on a cosmographic measurement of the deceleration parameter $q_0$. Our recent redshift tomographic analysis showed that locally $q_0$ has a strong dipole anisotropy aligned approximately with the bulk flow, and only a small monopole component remains at distances exceeding a few hundred Mpc. Applying redshift-dependent corrections for progenitor age to the Pantheon+ catalogue, we find that this shifts the monopole component of $q_0$ to positive values (i.e. deceleration), while leaving the local dipole component essentially unchanged.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Clustering properties of the CatWISE2020 quasar catalogue and their impact on the cosmic dipole anomaly

The cosmic dipole anomaly -- the observation of a significant mismatch between the dipole observed in the matter distribution and that expected given the kinematic interpretation of the cosmic microwave background dipole -- poses a serious challenge to the Cosmological Principle upon which the standard model of cosmology rests. Measurements of the dipole ($\ell=1$) in a given sample crucially depend on having control over other large-scale power ($\ell > 1$) so as to avoid biases, in particular those potentially caused by correlations among multipoles during fitting, and those by local source clustering. Currently, the most powerful catalogue that exhibits the cosmic dipole anomaly is the sample of 1.6~million mid-infrared quasars derived from CatWISE2020. We therefore analyse clustering properties of this catalogue by performing an inference analysis of large-scale multipoles in real space, and by computing its angular power spectrum on small scales to test for convergence with $Λ$CDM. After accounting for the known trend of the quasar number counts with ecliptic latitude, we find that any other large-scale power is consistent with noise, find no evidence for the presence of an octupole ($\ell=3$) in the data, and quantify the clustering dipole's proportion to be marginal. Our results therefore reaffirm the anomalously high dipole in the distribution of quasars.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Colloquium: The Cosmic Dipole Anomaly

The Cosmological Principle, which states that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic (when averaged on large scales), is the foundational assumption of Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmologies such as the current standard Lambda-Cold-Dark-Matter (ΛCDM) model. This simplification yields an exact solution to the Einstein field equations that relates space and time through a single time-dependent scale factor, which defines cosmological observables such as the Hubble parameter and the cosmological redshift. The validity of the Cosmological Principle, which underpins modern cosmology, can now be rigorously tested with the advent of large, nearly all-sky catalogs of radio galaxies and quasars. Surprisingly, the dipole anisotropy in the large-scale distribution of matter is found to be inconsistent with the expectation from kinematic aberration and Doppler boosting effects in a perturbed FLRW universe, which is the standard interpretation of the observed dipole in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Although the matter dipole agrees in direction with that of the CMB dipole, it is anomalously larger, demonstrating that either the rest frames in which matter and radiation appear isotropic are not the same, or that there is an unexpected intrinsic anisotropy in at least one of them. This discrepancy now exceeds 5σ in significance. We review these recent findings, as well as the potential biases, systematic issues, and alternate interpretations that have been suggested to help alleviate the tension. We conclude that the cosmic dipole anomaly poses a serious challenge to FLRW cosmology, and the standard ΛCDM model in particular, as an adequate description of our Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Anisotropy in Pantheon+ supernovae

We employ Maximum Likelihood Estimators to examine the Pantheon+ catalogue of Type Ia supernovae for large scale anisotropies in the expansion rate of the Universe. The analyses are carried out in the heliocentric frame, the CMB frame, as well as the Local Group frame. In all frames, the Hubble expansion rate in the redshift range 0.023 < z < 0.15 is found to have a statistically significant dipolar variation exceeding 1.5 km/s/Mpc, i.e. bigger than the claimed 1% uncertainty in the SH0ES measurement of the Hubble parameter H_0. The deceleration parameter too has a redshift-dependent dipolar modulation at > 5 sigma significance, consistent with previous findings using the SDSSII/SNLS3 Joint Lightcurve Analysis catalogue. The inferred cosmic acceleration cannot therefore be due to a Cosmological Constant, but is likely a general relativistic effect due to the anomalous bulk flow in our local Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Forty years of the Ellis-Baldwin test

Modern cosmology is built on the assumption that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales - but this is challenged by results of the Ellis-Baldwin test that show an unexplained anomaly in the distribution of distant galaxies and quasars.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Anisotropy in the cosmic acceleration inferred from supernovae

Under the assumption that they are standard(isable) candles, the lightcurves of Type Ia supernovae have been analyzed in the framework of the standard Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmology to conclude that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating due to dark energy. While the original claims in the late 1990s were made using overlapping samples of less than 100 supernovae in total, catalogues of nearly 2000 supernovae are now available. In light of recent developments such as the cosmic dipole anomaly and the larger than expected bulk flow in the local Universe (which does not converge to the Cosmic Rest Frame), we analyze the newer datasets using a Maximum Likelihood Estimator and find that the acceleration of the expansion rate of the Universe is unequivocally anisotropic. The associated debate in the literature highlights the artifices of using supernovae as standardisable candles, while also providing deeper insights into a consistent relativistic view of peculiar motions as departures from the Hubble expansion of the Universe. The effects of our being `tilted observers' embedded in a deep bulk flow may have been mistaken for cosmic acceleration.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Cosmological inference from within the peculiar local universe

The existence of 'peculiar' velocities due to the formation of cosmic structure marks a point of discord between the real Universe and the usually assumed Friedmann-Lemaítre-Robertson-Walker metric which accomodates only the smooth Hubble expansion on large scales. In the standard $Λ$CDM model framework, Type Ia supernovae data are routinely "corrected" for the peculiar velocities of both the observer and the supernova host galaxies relative to the cosmic rest frame, in order to infer evidence for acceleration of the expansion rate from their Hubble diagram. However observations indicate a strong, coherent local bulk flow that continues outward without decaying out to a redshift $z \gtrsim 0.1$, contrary to the $Λ$CDM expectation. By querying the halo catalogue of the Dark Sky Hubble-volume N-body simulation, we find that an observer placed in an unusual environment like our local Universe should see correlations between supernovae in the JLA catalogue that are 2-8 times stronger than seen by a typical or Copernican observer. This accounts for our finding that peculiar velocity corrections have a large impact on the value of the Cosmological Constant inferred from supernova data. We also demonstrate that local Universe-like observers will infer a downward biased value of the clustering parameter $S_8$ from comparing the density and velocity fields. More realistic modelling of the peculiar local Universe is thus essential for correctly interpreting cosmological data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

A Challenge to the Standard Cosmological Model

We present the first joint analysis of catalogs of radio galaxies and quasars to determine if their sky distribution is consistent with the standard $Λ$CDM model of cosmology. This model is based on the cosmological principle, which asserts that the universe is statistically isotropic and homogeneous on large scales, so the observed dipole anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) must be attributed to our local peculiar motion. We test the null hypothesis that there is a dipole anisotropy in the sky distribution of radio galaxies and quasars consistent with the motion inferred from the CMB, as is expected for cosmologically distant sources. Our two samples, constructed respectively from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, are systematically independent and have no shared objects. Using a completely general statistic that accounts for correlation between the found dipole amplitude and its directional offset from the CMB dipole, the null hypothesis is independently rejected by the radio galaxy and quasar samples with $p$-value of $8.9\times10^{-3}$ and $1.2\times10^{-5}$, respectively, corresponding to $2.6σ$ and $4.4σ$ significance. The joint significance, using sample size-weighted $Z$-scores, is $5.1σ$. We show that the radio galaxy and quasar dipoles are consistent with each other and find no evidence for any frequency dependence of the amplitude. The consistency of the two dipoles improves if we boost to the CMB frame assuming its dipole to be fully kinematic, suggesting that cosmologically distant radio galaxies and quasars may have an intrinsic anisotropy in this frame.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Is there really a Hubble tension?

The heliocentric redshifts ($z_\mathrm{hel}$) reported for 150 Type Ia supernovae in the Pantheon compilation are significantly discrepant from their corresponding values in the JLA compilation. Both catalogues include corrections to the redshifts and magnitudes of the supernovae to account for the motion of the heliocentric frame relative to the `CMB rest frame', as well as corrections for the directionally coherent bulk motion of local galaxies with respect to this frame. The latter is done employing modelling of peculiar velocities which assume the $Λ$CDM cosmological model but nevertheless provide evidence for residual bulk flows which are discordant with this model (implying that the observed Universe is in fact anisotropic). Until recently such peculiar velocity corrections in the Pantheon catalogue were made at redshifts exceeding 0.2 although there is no data on which to base such corrections. We study the impact of these vexed issues on the 4.4 $σ$ discrepancy between the Hubble constant of $H_0 = 67.4 \pm 0.5$ km/s/Mpc inferred from observations of CMB anisotropies by Planck assuming $Λ$CDM, and the measurement of $H_0 = 73.5 \pm 1.4$ km/s/Mpc by the SH0ES project which extended the local distance ladder using Type Ia supernovae. Using the same methodology as the latter study we find that for supernovae whose redshifts are discrepant between Pantheon and JLA with $Δz_\mathrm{hel} > 0.0025$, the Pantheon redshifts favour $H_0 \simeq 72$ km/s/Mpc, while the JLA redshifts favour $H_0 \simeq 68$ km/s/Mpc. Thus the discrepancies between SNe Ia datasets are sufficient to undermine the claimed `Hubble tension'. We further note the systematic variation of $H_0$ by $\sim$ 6-9 km/s/Mpc across the sky seen in multiple datasets, implying that it cannot be measured locally to better than $\sim$ 10% in a model-independent manner.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Do supernovae indicate an accelerating universe?

In the late 1990's, observations of 93 Type Ia supernovae were analysed in the framework of the FLRW cosmology assuming these to be `standard(isable) candles'. It was thus inferred that the Hubble expansion rate is accelerating as if driven by a positive Cosmological Constant $Λ$. This is still the only direct evidence for the `dark energy' that is the dominant component of the standard $Λ$CDM cosmological model. Other data such as BAO, CMB anisotropies, stellar ages, the rate of structure growth, etc are all `concordant' with this model but do not provide independent evidence for accelerated expansion. Analysis of a larger sample of 740 SNe Ia shows that these are not quite standard candles, and highlights the "corrections" applied to analyse the data in the FLRW framework. The latter holds in the reference frame in which the CMB is isotropic, whereas observations are made in our heliocentric frame in which the CMB has a large dipole anisotropy. This is assumed to be of kinematic origin i.e. due to our non-Hubble motion driven by local inhomogeneity in the matter distribution. The $Λ$CDM model predicts how this peculiar velocity should fall off as the averaging scale is raised and the universe becomes sensibly homogeneous. However observations of the local `bulk flow' are inconsistent with this expectation and convergence to the CMB frame is not seen. Moreover the kinematic interpretation implies a corresponding dipole in the sky distribution of high redshift quasars, which is rejected by observations at 4.9$σ$. The acceleration of the Hubble expansion rate is also anisotropic at 3.9$σ$ and aligned with the bulk flow. Thus dark energy may be an artefact of analysing data assuming that we are idealised observers in an FLRW universe, when in fact the real universe is inhomogeneous and anisotropic out to distances large enough to impact on cosmological analyses.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

A Test of the Cosmological Principle with Quasars

We study the large-scale anisotropy of the Universe by measuring the dipole in the angular distribution of a flux-limited, all-sky sample of 1.36 million quasars observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This sample is derived from the new CatWISE2020 catalog, which contains deep photometric measurements at 3.4 and 4.6 $μ$m from the cryogenic, post-cryogenic, and reactivation phases of the WISE mission. While the direction of the dipole in the quasar sky is similar to that of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), its amplitude is over twice as large as expected, rejecting the canonical, exclusively kinematic interpretation of the CMB dipole with a p-value of $5\times10^{-7}$ ($4.9σ$ for a normal distribution, one-sided), the highest significance achieved to date in such studies. Our results are in conflict with the cosmological principle, a foundational assumption of the concordance $Λ$CDM model.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

A response to Rubin & Heitlauf: "Is the expansion of the universe accelerating? All signs still point to yes"

We have shown (Colin et al., 2019) that the acceleration of the Hubble expansion rate inferred from Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is, at $3.9σ$ significance, a dipole approximately aligned with the CMB dipole, while its monopole component, which can be interpreted as due to a Cosmological Constant or dark energy, is consistent with zero at $1.4σ$. This has been challenged by Rubin & Heitlauf (2019) who assert that the dipole arises because we made an incorrect assumption about the SNe Ia light-curve parameters (viz. took them to be sample- and redshift independent), and did not allow for the motion of the Solar system (w.r.t. the 'CMB frame' in which the CMB dipole supposedly vanishes). In fact what has an even larger impact on our finding is that we reversed the inconsistent "corrections" made for the peculiar velocities of the SNe Ia host galaxies w.r.t the CMB frame, which in fact serve to bias the lever arm of the Hubble diagram towards higher inferred values of the monopole. We demonstrate that even if all such corrections are made consistently and both sample- and redshift-dependence is allowed for in the standardisation of supernova light curves, the evidence for isotropic acceleration rises to just $2.8\,σ$. Thus the criticism of Rubin & Heitlauf serves only to highlight that "corrections" must be made to the SNe Ia data assuming the standard $Λ$CDM model, in order to recover it from the data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Evidence for anisotropy of cosmic acceleration

Observations reveal a `bulk flow' in the local Universe which is faster and extends to much larger scales than is expected around a typical observer in the standard $Λ$CDM cosmology. This is expected to result in a scale-dependent dipolar modulation of the acceleration of the expansion rate inferred from observations of objects within the bulk flow. From a maximum-likelihood analysis of the Joint Lightcurve Analysis (JLA) catalogue of Type Ia supernovae we find that the deceleration parameter, in addition to a small monopole, indeed has a much bigger dipole component aligned with the CMB dipole which falls exponentially with redshift $z$: $q_0 = q_\mathrm{m} + \vec{q}_\mathrm{d}.\hat{n}\exp(-z/S)$. The best fit to data yields $q_\mathrm{d} = -8.03$ and $S = 0.0262~(\Rightarrow d \sim 100~\mathrm{Mpc})$, rejecting isotropy ($q_\mathrm{d} = 0$) with $3.9σ$ statistical significance, while $q_\mathrm{m} = -0.157$ and consistent with no acceleration ($q_\mathrm{m} = 0$) at $1.4σ$. Thus the cosmic acceleration deduced from supernovae may be an artefact of our being non-Copernican observers, rather than evidence for a dominant component of `dark energy' in the Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Concerns about the reliability of publicly available SNe Ia data

I highlight several concerns regarding the consistency of Type Ia supernova data in the publicly available Pantheon and JLA compilations. The measured heliocentric redshifts (zhel) of $\sim$150 SNe Ia as reported in the Pantheon catalogue are significantly discrepant from those in JLA - with 58 having differences amounting to between 5 and 137 times the quoted measurement uncertainty. The discrepancy seems to have been introduced in the process of rectifying a previously reported issue. The Pantheon catalogue until very recently had the redshifts of all SNe Ia up to z $\sim$ 0.3 modified under the guise of 'peculiar velocity corrections' - although there is no information on peculiar velocities at such high redshifts. While this has reportedly been rectified on Github by removing peculiar velocity corrections for z > 0.08, the impact of this on the published cosmological analysis of the Pantheon catalogue is not stated. In JLA, the effect of these 'corrections' is to significantly bias the inferred value of $Ω_Λ$ towards higher values, while the equivalent effect on Pantheon cannot be ascertained due to the unavailability of the individual components of the covariance matrix in the public domain. I provide Jupyter notebooks and URLs in order to allow the reader to ascertain the veracity of these assertions.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Complementarity of DM Searches in a Consistent Simplified Model: the Case of Z'

We analyze the constraints from direct and indirect detection on fermionic Majorana Dark Matter (DM). Because the interaction with the Standard Model (SM) particles is spin-dependent, a priori the constraints that one gets from neutrino telescopes, the LHC, direct and indirect detection experiments are comparable. We study the complementarity of these searches in a particular example, in which a heavy $Z'$ mediates the interactions between the SM and the DM. We find that for heavy dark matter indirect detection provides the strongest bounds on this scenario, while IceCube bounds are typically stronger than those from direct detection. The LHC constraints are dominant for smaller dark matter masses. These light masses are less motivated by thermal relic abundance considerations. We show that the dominant annihilation channels of the light DM in the Sun and the Galactic Center are either $b\bar b$ or $t\bar t$, while the heavy DM annihilation is completely dominated by $Zh$ channel. The latter produces a hard neutrino spectrum which has not been previously analyzed. We study the neutrino spectrum yielded by DM and recast IceCube constraints to allow proper comparison with constraints from direct and indirect detection experiments and LHC exclusions. Note that the original version of the paper contains an important error: the contribution of the $Z$-mediated processes was overlooked. This changes some of the results of the paper. For the details and the correct results please see the erratum attached to this file as an appendix.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Detection prospects for high energy neutrino sources from the anisotropic matter distribution in the local universe

Constraints on the number and luminosity of the sources of the cosmic neutrinos detected by IceCube have been set by targeted searches for point sources. We set complementary constraints by using the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) catalogue, which maps the matter distribution of the local Universe. Assuming that the distribution of the neutrino sources follows that of matter we look for correlations between `warm' spots on the IceCube skymap and the 2MRS matter distribution. Through Monte Carlo simulations of the expected number of neutrino multiplets and careful modelling of the detector performance (including that of IceCube-Gen2) we demonstrate that sources with local density exceeding $10^{-6} \, \text{Mpc}^{-3}$ and neutrino luminosity $L_ν \lesssim 10^{42} \, \text{erg} \, \text{s}^{-1}$ ($10^{41} \, \text{erg} \, \text{s}^{-1}$) will be efficiently revealed by our method using IceCube (IceCube-Gen2). At low luminosities such as will be probed by IceCube-Gen2, the sensitivity of this analysis is superior to requiring statistically significant direct observation of a point source.

astro-ph.HE↗