arXiv subjects

Rupert Croft

Publications and source records attributed to Rupert Croft.

63 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Constraining quasar host halo masses with the strength of nearby Lyman-alpha forest absorption

Using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations we measure the mean transmitted flux in the Lyman alpha forest for quasar sightlines that pass near a foreground quasar. We find that the trend of absorption with pixel-quasar separation distance can be fitted using a simple power law form including the usual correlation function parameters r_{0} and γso that ( = \sum exp(-tau_eff*(1+(r/r_{0})^(-γ)))). From the simulations we find the relation between r_{0} and quasar mass and formulate this as a way to estimate quasar host dark matter halo masses, quantifying uncertainties due to cosmological and IGM parameters, and redshift errors. With this method, we examine data for ~3000 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3, assuming that the effect of ionizing radiation from quasars (the so-called transverse proximity effect) is unimportant (no evidence for it is seen in the data.) We find that the best fit host halo mass for SDSS quasars with mean redshift z=3 and absolute G band magnitude -27.5 is log10(M/M_sun) = 12.48^{+0.53}_{-0.89}. We also use the Lyman-Break Galaxy (LBG) and Lyman alpha forest data of Adelberger et al in a similar fashion to constrain the halo mass of LBGs to be log10(M/M_sun) = 11.13^{+0.39}_{-0.55}, a factor of ~20 lower than the bright quasars. In addition, we study the redshift distortions of the Lyman alpha forest around quasars, using the simulations. We use the quadrupole to monopole ratio of the quasar-Lyman alpha forest correlation function as a measure of the squashing effect. We find that this does not have a measurable dependence on halo mass, but may be useful for constraining cosmic geometry.

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arXiv2006

A potentially pure test of cosmic geometry: galaxy clusters and the real space Alcock-Paczynski test

We investigate the possibility of probing dark energy by measuring the isotropy of the galaxy cluster autocorrelation function (an Alcock-Paczynski test). The correlation function is distorted in redshift space because of the cluster peculiar velocities, but if these are known and can be subtracted, the correlation function measurement becomes in principle a pure test of cosmic geometry. Galaxy cluster peculiar velocities can be measured using the kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect. Upcoming CMB surveys, e.g., ACT, SPT, Planck, are expected to do this with varying levels of accuracy, dependent on systematic errors due to cluster temperature measurements, radio point sources, and the primary CMB anisotropy. We use the Hubble volume N-body simulation and the hydrodynamic simulation results of Nagai et. al (2003) to simulate various kSZ surveys. We find by model fitting that a measurement of the correlation function distortion can be used to recover the cosmological parameters that have been used to generate the simulation. However, the low space density of galaxy clusters requires larger surveys than are taking place at present to place tight constraints on cosmology. For example, with the SPT and ACT surveys, Omega_Lambda could be measured to within 0.1 and 0.2 respectively at one sigma, but only upper limits on the equation of state parameter w will be possible. Nevertheless, with accurate measurements of the kSZ effect, this test can eventually be used to probe the dark energy equation of state and its evolution with redshift, with different systematic errors than other methods.

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arXiv2004

Gravitational Redshifts in Simulated Galaxy Clusters

We predict the amplitude of the gravitational redshift of galaxies in galaxy clusters using an N-body simulation of a Lambda CDM universe. We examine if it might be possible to detect the gravitational effect on the total redshift observed for galaxies. For clusters of mass M ~10^15 m_sun, the difference in gravitational redshift between the brightest galaxy and the rest of the cluster members is ~10 km/s. The most efficient way to detect gravitational redshifts using information from galaxies only involves using the full gravitational redshift profile of clusters. Massive clusters, while having the largest gravitational redshift suffer from large galaxy peculiar velocities and substructure, which act as a source of noise. This and their low number density make it more reasonable to try averaging over many clusters and groups of relatively low mass. We examine publicly available data for 107 rich clusters from the ESO Nearby Abell Clusters Survey (ENACS), finding no evidence for gravitational redshifts. Tests on our simulated clusters show that we need at least ~2500 clusters/groups with M > 5*10^13 m_sun for a detection of gravitational redshifts at the 2 sigma level.

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arXiv1998

Cosmology from the structure of the Lyman-alpha forest

A convincing physical picture for the Lyman-alpha forest has emerged from simulations and related semi-analytic studies of structure formation models. Observations can be be used in the context of this picture to study cosmology using the structure of the forest. With the availability of well motivated predictions, not only has it become possible to test models directly, but the physical processes involved appear to be simple enough that we can attempt to reconstruct aspects of the underlying cosmology from observations. We briefly summarise the method of Croft et al (1997) (astro-ph/9708018) for recovering the primordial mass power spectrum from Lyman-alpha forest data, emphasising the physical reasons that the derived P(k) is independent of unknown "bias factors". We present an illustrative application of the method to four quasar "spectra" reconstructed from published line lists.

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arXiv1998

The APM cluster-galaxy cross-correlation function : Constraints on Omega and galaxy bias

(abridged) We estimate the cluster-galaxy cross-correlation function (Xi_cg), from the APM galaxy and galaxy cluster surveys, both in real space from the inversion of projected statistics and in redshift space using the galaxy and cluster redshift samples. The amplitude of Xi_cg is found to be almost independent of cluster richness. At large separations, r >~5 h^-1 Mpc, Xi_cg has a similar shape to the galaxy-galaxy and cluster-cluster autocorrelation functions. Xi_cg in redshift space can be related to the real space Xi_cg by convolution with an appropriate velocity field model. Here we apply a spherical collapse model, which we have tested against N-body simulations, finding that it provides a surprisingly accurate description of the averaged infall velocity of matter into galaxy clusters. We use this model to estimate beta (Omega^{0.6}/b) and find that it tends to overestimate the true result in simulations by only ~10-30%. Application to the APM results yields beta=0.43 with beta < 0.87 at 95% confidence. We also compare the APM Xi_cg and galaxy autocorrelations to results from popular cosmological models and derive two independent estimates of the galaxy biasing expected as a function of scale. Both low and critical density CDM models require anti-biasing by a factor ~2 on scales r <~ 2 h^-1Mpc and an MDM model is consistent with a constant biasing factor on all scales. We use the velocity fields predicted from the different models to distort the APM real space cross-correlation function. Comparison with the APM redshift space Xi_cg yields an estimate of the value of Omega^0.6 needed in each model. Only the low Omega model is fully consistent with observations, with MDM marginally excluded at the ~2 sigma level.

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arXiv1997

Recovery of the mass power spectrum from the Lyman-alpha forest: The effect of ionizing background fluctuations from discrete QSO sources

In gravitational instability models, there is a close relationship between most Lyman-alpha absorption and the matter density along the line of sight. Croft et al. (1997) have shown that it is possible to use this relationship with some additional assumptions (such as Gaussianity of the initial density) to recover the power spectrum of mass fluctuations, P(k), from QSO absorption spectra. The relative uniformity of the ionizing radiation background on the scales of interest is an additional assumption required by the technique. Here we examine the fluctuations in Lyman-alpha spectra caused if the ionizing background radiation is generated by discrete QSO sources. We present our results alongside the preliminary application of the P(k) recovery technique to the QSO Q1422+231. We find the ionizing background fluctuations to have an effect orders of magnitude smaller than the matter fluctuations at the scales on which we measure P(k) (lambda < 10 h^-1Mpc).

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arXiv1997

Hubble Flow Broadening of the Lyman-alpha Forest and its Implications

Lyman-alpha forest lines in QSO spectra have typical widths of 20-50 km/s. Low column density absorbers in cosmological simulations are large, diffuse structures, and the Hubble flow across the spatially extended absorber is usually the dominant contribution to the width of its associated absorption line. Thermal broadening is unimportant over most of the spectrum, and peculiar velocities tend to make absorption features narrower rather than broader. As a consequence of Hubble flow broadening, there is a close relation between local Lyman-alpha optical depth and local neutral hydrogen density, which is well approximated by the Gunn-Peterson formula. The physics that governs the unshocked intergalactic medium leads to a tight correlation between the neutral hydrogen density and the underlying gas and dark matter overdensity. For many purposes, it is simpler to regard a Lyman-alpha forest spectrum as a continuous, non-linear map of the density field rather than a collection of discrete lines. This continuous field view of the Lyman-alpha forest can be applied to measurement of the baryon density parameter, testing of cosmological models, and robust determination of the shape and amplitude of the primordial mass power spectrum.

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arXiv1995

Variance, Skewness & Kurtosis: results from the APM Cluster Redshift Survey and model predictions

We estimate the variance $\xibar_2$, the skewness $\xibar_3$ and the kurtosis $\xibar_4$ in the distribution of density fluctuations in a complete sample from the APM Cluster Redshift Survey with 339 clusters and a mean depth $ \sim 250\Mpc$. We are able to measure the statistics of fluctuations in spheres of radius $R \simeq 5-80 \Mpc$, with reasonable errorbars. The statistics in the cluster distribution follow the hierarchical pattern $\xibar_J=S_J~\xibar_2^{J-1}$ with $S_J$ roughly constant, $S_3 \simeq 2$ and $S_4 \sim 8$. We analyse the distribution of clusters taken from N-body simulations of different dark matter models. The results are compared with an alternative method of simulating clusters which uses the truncated Zel'dovich approximation. We argue that this alternative method is not reliable enough for making quantitative predictions of $\xibar$. The N-body simulation results follow similar hierarchical relations to the observations, with $S_J$ almost unaffected by redshift distortions from peculiar motions. The standard $Ω=1$ Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model is inconsistent with either the second, third or fourth order statistics at all scales. However both a hybrid Mixed Dark Matter model and a low density CDM variant agree with the $\xibar_J$ observations.

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arXiv1994

Constraints on the Power Spectrum of Mass Fluctuations from from Galaxy Cluster Peculiar Velocities

We investigate the feasibility of carrying out likelihood analysis on the velocities of galaxy clusters to determine power spectrum parameters. Using N-body simulations of cosmological density fields we show that the velocity field traced by clusters is highly non-linear on small scales (r < 10 h^-1 Mpc), mostly due to strong infall into superclusters. The transverse and line of sight velocity correlation functions relevant to likelihood analysis deviate significantly from the linear theory values. Unfortunately, the sparseness of cluster samples means that they are not amenable to any rigorous smoothing procedure to rectify this. We are forced instead to remove close pairs of clusters which would contribute disproportionately to the likelihood. This reduces the size still further of the small samples of observed clusters available to us, forcing us into the conclusion that using straightfoward linear theory covariance analysis on clusters is unpromising. Nevertheless we apply the technique to two sets of observational data and find marginal evidence for more power in the mass density field than standard CDM. The normalisation is consistent with Ω^{0.6}σ_{8} \sim 0.7 for both data sets, within the (large) errors.

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