arXiv subjects

Somak Raychaudhury

Publications and source records attributed to Somak Raychaudhury.

94 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2000

Reconstructing the Cosmic Equation of State from Supernova distances

Observations of high-redshift supernovae indicate that the universe is accelerating. Here we present a {\em model-independent} method for estimating the form of the potential $V(ϕ)$ of the scalar field driving this acceleration, and the associated equation of state $w_ϕ$. Our method is based on a versatile analytical form for the luminosity distance $D_L$, optimized to fit observed distances to distant supernovae and differentiated to yield $V(ϕ)$ and $w_ϕ$. Our results favor $w_ϕ\simeq -1$ at the present epoch, steadily increasing with redshift. A cosmological constant is consistent with our results.

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arXiv2000

Observing high-redshift Supernovae in lensed galaxies

Supernovae in distant galaxies that are gravitationally lensed by foreground galaxy clusters make excellent cosmological candles for measuring quantities like the density of the Universe in its various components and the Hubble constant. Distant supernovae will be more easily detectable since foreground cluster lenses would magnify such supernovae by up to 3-4 magnitudes. We show that in the case of the lens cluster Abell 2218, the detectability of high-redshift supernovae is significantly enhanced due to the lensing effects of the cluster. Since lensed supernovae will remain point images even when their host galaxies are stretched into arcs, the signal-to-noise ratio for their observation will be further enhanced, typically by an order of magnitude. We recommend monitoring well-modelled clusters with several known arclets for the detection of cosmologically useful SNe around z=1 and beyond.

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arXiv1997

Tests of the Tully-Fisher Relation II: Scatter Using Optical Rotation Curves

We investigate the amount of scatter in the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR) when using optical long-slit H-alpha rotation curves to determine the velocity widths of spiral galaxies. We study a sample of 25 galaxies in the Coma region of the sky which were shown in Bernstein et al. (1994) to exhibit an extraordinarily low scatter of 0.10 mag RMS in the I magnitude vs 21-cm width TFR. Using the same I magnitudes with new widths derived from high-quality H-alpha rotation curves, we measure an RMS scatter of 0.14 mag in the TFR. This suggests that measurement errors and ``astrophysical errors'' (such as non-circular gas motion) on the H-alpha velocity widths are below 6%, and optical widths are nearly as good for TFR studies as 21-cm widths. The scatter and form of the TFR are found to be robust under choice of velocity width-extraction algorithm, as long as the central portions of the optical rotation curve are ignored and low-S/N points are not weighted too heavily. In this small sample there is no evidence that rotation curve shapes vary systematically with rotation velocity, nor that rotation curve shape can be used to reduce the scatter in the TFR.

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arXiv1996

The observed distribution function of peculiar velocities of galaxies

We give the first determination of the observed peculiar velocity distribution function for a representative sample of galaxies (within 50 Mpc (H=100) of the Local Group), which includes a wide range of clustering properties. We explore in detail the effects of uncertainties in sampling and in distance measures on the estimated distribution function. The observed distribution function is consistent with an earlier prediction of gravitational clustering, over the entire range of peculiar velocities, from field galaxies to rich clusters, on scales up to 50 Mpc (H=100). In the simplest consistent model, most of the inhomogeneous mass of the Universe is in galaxies or their halos. We estimate the ``Mach Number'' for the bulk flow within 50 Mpc (H=100) from us to be approximately 0.8, which includes the effect of high-dispersion galaxies in clusters.

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