arXiv subjects

Uros Seljak

Publications and source records attributed to Uros Seljak.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Density profiles of galaxy groups and clusters from SDSS galaxy-galaxy weak lensing

We present results of a measurement of the shape of the density profile of galaxy groups and clusters traced by 43 335 Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) with spectroscopic redshifts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The galaxies are selected such that they are the brightest within a cylindrical aperture, split into two luminosity samples, and modeled as the sum of stellar and dark matter components. We present a detailed investigation of many possible systematic effects that could contaminate our signal and develop methods to remove them, including a detected intrinsic alignment for galaxies within 100 kpc/h of LRGs which we remove using photometric redshift information. The resulting lensing signal is consistent with NFW profile dark matter halos; the SIS profile is ruled out at the 96 (conservatively) and 99.96 per cent confidence level (CL) for the fainter and brighter lens samples (respectively) when we fit using lensing data between 40 kpc/h and 2 Mpc/h with total signal-to-noise of 19 and 25 for the two lens samples. The lensing signal amplitude suggests that the faint and bright sample galaxies typically reside in haloes of mass (2.9+/-0.4)x10^{13} M_{sun}/h and (6.7+/-0.8)x10^{13} M_{sun}/h respectively, in good agreement with predictions based on halo spatial density with normalization lower than the 'concordance' sigma_8=0.9. When fitting for the concentration parameter in the NFW profile, we find c = 5.0+/-0.6 (stat) +/-1 (sys), and c = 5.6+/-0.6 (stat) +/-1 (sys) for the faint and bright samples, consistent with Lambda-CDM simulations. We also split the bright sample further to determine masses and concentrations for cluster-mass halos, finding mass (1.3+/-0.2)x10^{14} M_{sun}/h for the sample of LRGs brighter than -22.6 in r. (Abridged)

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arXiv2006

Ellipticity of dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy weak lensing

We present the results of attempts to detect the ellipticity of dark matter halos using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing with SDSS data. We use 2,020,256 galaxies brighter than r=19 with photometric redshifts (divided into colour and luminosity subsamples) as lenses and 31,697,869 source galaxies. We search for and identify several signal contaminants, which if not removed lead to a spurious detection. These include systematic shear that leads to a slight spurious alignment of lens and source ellipticities, intrinsic alignments (due to contamination of the source sample by physically-associated lens source pairs), and anisotropic magnification bias. We develop methods that allow us to remove these contaminants to the signal. We split the analysis into blue (spiral) and red (elliptical) galaxies. Assuming Gaussian errors as in previous work and a power-law profile, we find f_h=e_h/e_g=0.1+/-0.06 for red galaxies and -0.8+/-0.4 for blue galaxies using 20-300 kpc/h, averaged over luminosity. Inclusion of the more realistic non-Gaussian error distributions and of the NFW density profile (which predicts much smaller ellipticity of the shear for scales above the scale radius) yields 0.60+/-0.38 for ellipticals and -1.4+1.7-2.0 for spirals. While there is no concrete detection of alignment in either case, there is a suggestion in the data of a positive alignment in the brightest lens sample of ellipticals. Our results appear to be mildly inconsistent with a previously reported detection by Hoekstra et al. (2004), but more data and further tests are needed to clarify whether the discrepancy is real or a consequence of differences in the lens galaxy samples used and analysis methods.

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arXiv2006

Galaxy halo masses and satellite fractions from galaxy-galaxy lensing in the SDSS: stellar mass, luminosity, morphology, and environment dependencies

The relationship between galaxies and dark matter can be characterized by the halo mass of the central galaxy and the fraction of galaxies that are satellites. Here we present observational constraints from the SDSS on these quantities as a function of r-band luminosity and stellar mass using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, with a total of 351,507 lenses. We use stellar masses derived from spectroscopy and virial halo masses derived from weak gravitational lensing to determine the efficiency with which baryons in the halo of the central galaxy have been converted into stars. We find that an L* galaxy with a stellar mass of 6x10^{10} M_{sun} is hosted by a halo with mass of 1.4x10^{12} M_{sun}/h, independent of morphology, yielding baryon conversion efficiencies of 17_{-5}^{+10} (early types) and 16_{-6}^{+15} (late types) per cent at the 95 per cent CL (statistical, not including systematic uncertainty due to assumption of a universal initial mass function, or IMF). We find that for a given stellar mass, the halo mass is independent of morphology below M_{stellar}=10^{11} M_{sun}, in contrast to typically a factor of two difference in halo mass between ellipticals and spirals at a fixed luminosity. This suggests that stellar mass is a good proxy for halo mass in this range and should be used preferentially whenever a halo mass selected sample is needed. For higher stellar masses, the conversion efficiency is a declining function of stellar mass, and the differences in halo mass between early and late types become larger, reflecting the fact that most group and cluster halos with masses above 10^{13} M_{sun} host ellipticals at the center, while even the brightest central spirals are hosted by halos of mass below 10^{13} M_{sun}. (Abridged)

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arXiv2006

B polarization of cosmic microwave background as a tracer of strings

String models can produce successful inflationary scenarios in the context of brane collisions and in many of these models cosmic strings may also be produced. In scenarios such as KKLMMT the string contribution is naturally predicted to be well below the inflationary signal for cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies, in agreement with the existing limits. We find that for $B$ type polarization of CMB the situation is reversed and the dominant signal comes from vector modes generated by cosmic strings, which exceeds the gravity wave signal from both inflation and strings. The signal can be detected for a broad range of parameter space: future polarization experiments may be able to detect the string signal down to the string tension $Gμ=10^{-9}$, although foregrounds and lensing are likely to worsen these limits. We argue that the optimal scale to search for the string signature is at $\ell\sim 1000$, but in models with high optical depth the signal from reionization peak at large scales is also significant. The shape of the power spectrum allows one to distinguish the string signature from the gravity waves from inflation, but only with a sufficiently high angular resolution experiment

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arXiv2006

Detection of large scale intrinsic ellipticity-density correlation from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and implications for weak lensing surveys

The power spectrum of weak lensing shear caused by large-scale structure is an emerging tool for precision cosmology, in particular for measuring the effects of dark energy on the growth of structure at low redshift. One potential source of systematic error is intrinsic alignments of ellipticities of neighbouring galaxies (II correlation) that could mimic the correlations due to lensing. A related possibility pointed out by Hirata and Seljak (2004) is correlation between the intrinsic ellipticities of galaxies and the density field responsible for gravitational lensing shear (GI correlation). We present constraints on both the II and GI correlations using 265 908 spectroscopic galaxies from the SDSS, and using galaxies as tracers of the mass in the case of the GI analysis. The availability of redshifts in the SDSS allows us to select galaxies at small radial separations, which both reduces noise in the intrinsic alignment measurement and suppresses galaxy- galaxy lensing (which otherwise swamps the GI correlation). While we find no detection of the II correlation, our results are nonetheless statistically consistent with recent detections found using the SuperCOSMOS survey. In contrast, we have a clear detection of GI correlation in galaxies brighter than L* that persists to the largest scales probed (60 Mpc/h) and with a sign predicted by theoretical models. This correlation could cause the existing lensing surveys at z~1 to underestimate the linear amplitude of fluctuations by as much as 20% depending on the source sample used, while for surveys at z~0.5 the underestimation may reach 30%. (Abridged.)

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arXiv2006

Can sterile neutrinos be the dark matter?

We use the Ly-alpha forest power spectrum measured by the SDSS and high-resolution spectroscopy observations in combination with cosmic microwave background and galaxy clustering constraints to place limits on a sterile neutrino as a dark matter candidate in the warm dark matter (WDM) scenario. Such a neutrino would be created in the early universe through mixing with an active neutrino and would suppress structure on scales smaller than its free streaming scale. We ran a series of high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations with varying neutrino mass to describe the effect of a sterile neutrino on the Ly-alpha forest power spectrum. We find that the mass limit is m_s >14 keV at 95% c.l. (10keV at 99.9%), which is nearly an order of magnitude tighter constraint than previously published limits and is above the upper limit allowed by X-ray constraints, excluding this candidate as dark matter in this model. The corresponding limit for a neutrino that decoupled early while in thermal equilibrium is 2.5keV (95% c.l.).

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arXiv2006

Detectability of tensor modes in the presence of foregrounds

In inflationary models, gravitational waves are produced and generate B-type polarization in the CMB. Since B polarization is only generated by gravity waves it does not suffer from the cosmic variance. A perfect decomposition of the CMB into B-modes and E-modes would require data from the entire sky, which in practice is not possible because of the foreground contaminants. This leads to mixing of E polarization into B, which introduces cosmic variance conta- mination of B polarization and reduces sensitivity to gravity wave amplitude even in absence of detector noise. We present numerical results for the uncertainty in the tensor-to-scalar ratio using the Fisher matrix formalism for various resolutions, using foreground models based on dust maps and assuming 90 GHz operating frequency. We find that the usual scaling delta(T/S) ~ f_sky^(-1/2) is significantly degraded and becomes delta(T/S) ~ f_sky^(-2) for f_sky>0.7. This dependence is affected only weakly by the choice of sky cuts. To achieve a T/S=10^(-3) detection at 3 sigma one needs to observe 15% of the sky as opposed to naive expectation of 0.3%. To prevent contamination over this large sky area at required level one must be able to remove polarized dust emission at or better than 0.1% of unpolarized intensity, assuming the cleanest part of the sky has been chosen. To achieve T/S=10^(-4) detection at 3 sigma one needs to observe 70% of the sky, which is only possible if dust emission is removed everywhere over this region at 0.01% level. Reaching T/S=10^(-2) should be easier: 1% of the sky is needed over which polarized emission needs to be removed at 1% of total intensity if the cleanest region is chosen. These results suggest that foreground contamination may make it difficult to achieve levels below T/S=10^(-3). (abridged)

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arXiv2005

Pairwise velocities in the Halo Model: Luminosity and Scale Dependence

We investigate the properties of the pairwise velocity dispersion as a function of galaxy luminosity in the context of a halo model. We derive the distribution of velocities of pairs at a given separation taking into account both one-halo and two-halo contributions. We show that pairwise velocity distribution in real space is a complicated mixture of host-satellite, satellite-satellite and two-halo pairs. The peak value is reached at around 1$h^{-1}$Mpc and does not reflect the velocity dispersion of a typical halo hosting these galaxies, but is instead dominated by the satellite-satellite pairs in high mass clusters. This is true even for cross-correlations between bins separated in luminosity. As a consequence the velocity dispersion at a given separation can decrease with luminosity, even if the underlying typical halo host mass is increasing, in agreement with recent observations. We compare our findings to numerical simulations and find a good agreement. Numerical simulations also suggest a luminosity dependent velocity bias, which depends on the subhalo mass. We develop models of the auto- and cross-correlation function of luminosity subsamples of galaxies in the observable $r_\proj - π$ space and calculate the inferred velocity dispersion as a function of wave vector if dispersion model is fit to the redshift space power spectrum. We find that so derived pairwise velocity dispersion also exhibits a bump at $k\sim 1 h/{\rm Mpc}$.

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arXiv2005

Galaxy-galaxy Lensing: Dissipationless Simulations Versus the Halo Model

Galaxy-galaxy lensing is a powerful probe of the relation between galaxies and dark matter halos, but its theoretical interpretation requires a careful modeling of various contributions, such as the contribution from central and satellite galaxies. For this purpose, a phenomenological approach based on the halo model has been developed, allowing for fast exploration of the parameter space of models. In this paper, we investigate the ability of the halo model to extract information from the g-g weak lensing signal by comparing it to high-resolution dissipationless simulations that resolve subhalos. We find that the halo model reliably determines parameters such as the host halo mass of central galaxies, the fraction of galaxies that are satellites, and their radial distribution inside larger halos. If there is a significant scatter present in the central galaxy host halo mass distribution, then the mean and median mass of that distribution can differ significantly from one another, and the halo model mass determination lies between the two. This result suggests that when analyzing the data, galaxy subsamples with a narrow central galaxy halo mass distribution, such as those based on stellar mass, should be chosen for a simpler interpretation of the results.

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arXiv2005

Systematic errors in weak lensing: application to SDSS galaxy-galaxy weak lensing

Weak lensing is emerging as a powerful observational tool to constrain cosmological models, but is at present limited by an incomplete understanding of many sources of systematic error. Many of these errors are multiplicative and depend on the population of background galaxies. We show how the commonly cited geometric test, which is rather insensitive to cosmology, can be used as a ratio test of systematics in the lensing signal at the 1 per cent level. We apply this test to the galaxy-galaxy lensing analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which at present is the sample with the highest weak lensing signal to noise and has the additional advantage of spectroscopic redshifts for lenses. This allows one to perform meaningful geometric tests of systematics for different subsamples of galaxies at different mean redshifts, such as brighter galaxies, fainter galaxies and high-redshift luminous red galaxies, both with and without photometric redshift estimates. We use overlapping objects between SDSS and the DEEP2 and 2SLAQ spectroscopic surveys to establish accurate calibration of photometric redshifts and to determine the redshift distributions for SDSS. We use these redshift results to compute the projected surface density contrast DeltaSigma around 259 609 spectroscopic galaxies in the SDSS; by measuring DeltaSigma with different source samples we establish consistency of the results at the 10 per cent level (1-sigma). We also use the ratio test to constrain shear calibration biases and other systematics in the SDSS survey data to determine the overall galaxy-galaxy weak lensing signal calibration uncertainty. We find no evidence of any inconsistency among many subsamples of the data.

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arXiv2005

Assessing the effects of foregrounds and sky removal in WMAP

Many recent analyses have indicated that large scale WMAP data display anomalies that appear inconsistent with the standard cosmological paradigm. However, the effects of foreground contamination, which require elimination of some fraction of the data, have not been carefully investigated due to the complexity in the analysis. Here we develop a general formalism of how to incorporate these effects in any analysis of this type. Our approach is to compute the full multi-dimensional probability distribution function of all possible sky realizations that are consistent with the data and with the allowed level of contamination. As an example we apply this method to compute the joint probability distribution function for the possible realizations of quadrupole and octopole using the WMAP data. This 12 dimensional distribution function is explored using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique. The resulting chains are used to asses the statistical significance of the low quadrupole using frequentist methods, the quadrupole-octopole alignment using several methods (angular momentum dispersion, multipole vectors and a new method based of feature matching) and the quadrupole-octopole aligment with ecliptic.

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arXiv2005

Calibrating Photometric Redshifts of Luminous Red Galaxies

We discuss the construction of a photometric redshift catalogue of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), emphasizing the principal steps necessary for constructing such a catalogue -- (i) photometrically selecting the sample, (ii) measuring photometric redshifts and their error distributions, (iii) and estimating the true redshift distribution. We compare two photometric redshift algorithms for these data and find that they give comparable results. Calibrating against the SDSS and SDSS-2dF spectroscopic surveys, we find that the photometric redshift accuracy is $σ\sim 0.03$ for redshifts less than 0.55 and worsens at higher redshift ($\sim 0.06$). These errors are caused by photometric scatter, as well as systematic errors in the templates, filter curves, and photometric zeropoints. We also parametrize the photometric redshift error distribution with a sum of Gaussians, and use this model to deconvolve the errors from the measured photometric redshift distribution to estimate the true redshift distribution. We pay special attention to the stability of this deconvolution, regularizing the method with a prior on the smoothness of the true redshift distribution. The methods we develop are applicable to general photometric redshift surveys.

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arXiv2005

Can superhorizon cosmological perturbations explain the acceleration of the universe?

We investigate the recent suggestions by Barausse et al. (astro-ph/0501152) and Kolb et al. (hep-th/0503117) that the acceleration of the universe could be explained by large superhorizon fluctuations generated by inflation. We show that no acceleration can be produced by this mechanism. We begin by showing how the application of Raychaudhuri equation to inhomogeneous cosmologies results in several ``no go'' theorems for accelerated expansion. Next we derive an exact solution for a specific case of initial perturbations, for which application of the Kolb et al. expressions leads to an acceleration, while the exact solution reveals that no acceleration is present. We show that the discrepancy can be traced to higher order terms that were dropped in the Kolb et al. analysis. We proceed with the analysis of initial value formulation of general relativity to argue that causality severely limits what observable effects can be derived from superhorizon perturbations. By constructing a Riemann normal coordinate system on initial slice we show that no infrared divergence terms arise in this coordinate system. Thus any divergences found previously can be eliminated by a local rescaling of coordinates and are unobservable. We perform an explicit analysis of the variance of the deceleration parameter for the case of single field inflation using usual coordinates and show that the infrared divergent terms found by Barausse et al. and Kolb et al. cancel against several additional terms not considered in their analysis. Finally, we argue that introducing isocurvature perturbations does not alter our conclusion that the accelerating expansion of the universe cannot be explained by superhorizon modes.

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arXiv2004

Correlating the CMB with Luminous Red Galaxies : The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect

We present a 2.5 sigma detection of the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect and discuss the constraints it places on cosmological parameters. We cross-correlate microwave temperature maps from the WMAP satellite with a 4000 deg^2 luminous red galaxy (LRG) overdensity map measured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Accurate photometric redshifts allow us to perform a reliable auto-correlation analysis of the LRGs, eliminating the uncertainty in the galaxy bias, and combined with cross correlation signal, constrains cosmological parameters -- in particular, the matter density. We find a 2.5 sigma signal in the Ka, Q, V, and W WMAP bands, after combining the information from multipoles 2 <= l < 400. This is consistent with the expected amplitude of the ISW effect, but requires a lower matter density than is usually assumed: the amplitude, parametrized by the galaxy bias assuming Ω_M=0.3, Ω_Λ=0.7 and σ_8=0.9, is b_g = 4.05 \pm 1.54 for V band, with similar results for the other bands. This should be compared to b_g = 1.82 \pm 0.02 from the auto-correlation analysis. These data provide only a weak confirmation (2.5 sigma) of dark energy, but provide a significant upper limit: Ω_Λ=0.80_{-0.06}^{+0.03} (1 sigma)_{-0.19}^{+0.05} (2 sigma), assuming a cosmology with Ω_M+Ω_Λ=1, Ω_b = 0.05, and σ_8=0.9, and w=-1. The weak cross-correlation signal rules out low matter density/high dark energy density universes and, in combination with other data, strongly constrains models with w<-1.3. We provide a simple prescription to incorporate these constraints into cosmological parameter estimation methods for (Ω_M, σ_8,w). (abridged)

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arXiv2004

Cross-correlation of CMB with large-scale structure: weak gravitational lensing

We present the results of a search for gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in cross-correlation with the projected density of luminous red galaxies (LRGs). The CMB lensing reconstruction is performed using the first year of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data, and the galaxy maps are obtained using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) imaging data. We find no detection of lensing; our constraint on the galaxy bias derived from the galaxy-convergence cross-spectrum is $b_g=1.81\pm 1.92$ ($1σ$, statistical), as compared to the expected result of $b_g\sim 1.8$ for this sample. We discuss possible instrument-related systematic errors and show that the Galactic foregrounds are not important. We do not find any evidence for point source or thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect contamination.

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arXiv2004

Large scale bias and stochasticity of halos and dark matter

On large scales galaxies and their halos are usually assumed to trace the dark matter with a constant bias and dark matter is assumed to trace the linear density field. We test these assumption using several large N-body simulations with 384^3-1024^3 particles and box sizes between 100-1000h/Mpc, which can both resolve the small galactic size halos and sample the large scale fluctuations. We explore the average halo bias relation as a function of halo mass and show that existing fitting formulae overestimate the halo bias by up to 20% in the regime just below the nonlinear mass. We propose a new expression that fits our simulations well. We find that the halo bias is nearly constant, b~0.65-0.7, for masses below one tenth of the nonlinear mass. We explore next the relation between the initial and final dark matter in individual Fourier modes and show that there are significant fluctuations in their ratio, ranging from 10% rms at k~0.03h/Mpc to 50% rms at k~0.1h/Mpc. We argue that these large fluctuations are caused by perturbative effects beyond the linear theory, which are dominated by long wavelength modes with large random fluctuations. Similar or larger fluctuations exist between halos and dark matter and between halos of different mass. While these fluctuations are small compared to the sampling variance, they are significant for attempts to determine the bias by relating directly the maps of galaxies and dark matter or the maps of different galaxy populations, which would otherwise be immune to sampling variance.

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arXiv2004

Prospects for ACT: simulations, power spectrum, and non-Gaussian analysis

A new generation of instruments will reveal the microwave sky at high resolution. We focus on one of these, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, which probes scales 1000<l<10000, where both primary and secondary anisotropies are important. Including lensing, thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effects, and extragalactic point sources, we simulate the telescope's observations of the CMB in three channels, then extract the power spectra of these components in a multifrequency analysis. We present results for various cases, differing in assumed knowledge of the contaminating point sources. We find that both radio and infrared point sources are important, but can be effectively eliminated from the power spectrum given three (or more) channels and a good understanding of their frequency dependence. However, improper treatment of the scatter in the point source frequency dependence relation may introduce a large systematic bias. Even if all thermal SZ and point source effects are eliminated, the kinetic SZ effect remains and corrupts measurements of the primordial slope and amplitude on small scales. We discuss the non-Gaussianity of the one-point probability distribution function as a way to constrain the kinetic SZ effect, and we develop a method for distinguishing this effect from the CMB in a window where they overlap. This method provides an independent constraint on the variance of the CMB in that window and is complementary to the power spectrum analysis.

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arXiv2004

Galaxy-galaxy weak lensing in SDSS: intrinsic alignments and shear calibration errors

Galaxy-galaxy lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the dark matter halos of galaxies, but is subject to contamination if intrinsically aligned satellites of the lens galaxy are used as part of the source sample. We present a measurement of this intrinsic shear using 200,747 lens galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic sample and a sample of satellites selected using photometric redshifts. The mean intrinsic shear at transverse separations of 30--446$h^{-1}$ kpc is constrained to be $-0.0062<Δγ<+0.0066$ (99.9 per cent confidence, including identified systematics), which limits contamination of the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal to at most $\sim 15$ per cent on these scales. We present these limits as a function of transverse separation and lens luminosity. We furthermore investigate shear calibration biases in the SDSS, which can also affect galaxy-galaxy lensing, and conclude that the shear amplitude is calibrated to better than 18 per cent. This includes noise-induced calibration biases in the ellipticity, which are small for the sample considered here, but which can be more important if low signal-to-noise or poorly resolved source galaxies are used.

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