arXiv subjects

Zuhui Fan

Publications and source records attributed to Zuhui Fan.

70 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

Weak lensing measurement of galaxy clusters in the CFHTLS-Wide survey

We present the first weak gravitational lensing analysis of the completed Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). We study the 64 square degrees W1 field, the largest of the CFHTLS-Wide survey fields, and present the largest contiguous weak lensing convergence "mass map" yet made. 2.66 million galaxy shapes are measured, using a KSB pipeline verified against high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging that covers part of the CFHTLS. Our i'-band measurements are also consistent with an analysis of independent r'-band imaging. The reconstructed lensing convergence map contains 301 peaks with signal-to-noise ratio ν>3.5, consistent with predictions of a ΛCDM model. Of these peaks, 126 lie within 3.0' of a BCG identified from multicolor optical imaging in an independent, red sequence survey. We also identify 7 counterparts for massive clusters previously seen in X-ray emission within 6 square degrees XMM-LSS survey. With photometric redshift estimates for the source galaxies, we use a tomographic lensing method to fit the redshift and mass of each convergence peak. Matching these to the optical observations, we confirm 85 groups/clusters with χ^2 reduced < 3.0, at a mean redshift = 0.36 and velocity dispersion <σ_c> = 658.8 km/s. Future surveys, such as DES, LSST, KDUST and EUCLID, will be able to apply these same techniques to map clusters in much larger volumes and thus tightly constrain cosmological models.

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arXiv2011

Simulation studies of dark energy clustering induced by the formation of dark matter halos

In this paper, we present a simulation method within the two-component spherical collapse model to investigate dark energy perturbations associated with the formation of dark matter halos. The realistic mass accretion history of a dark matter halo taking into account its fast and slow growth is considered by imposing suitable initial conditions and isotropized virializations for the spherical collapse process. The dark energy component is treated as a perfect fluid described by two important parameters, the equation of state parameter $w$ and the sound speed $c_s$. Quintessence models with $w>-1$ are analyzed. We adopt the Newtonian gauge to describe the spacetime which is perturbed mainly by the formation of a dark matter halo. It is found that the dark energy density perturbation $δ_{DE}$ depends on $w$ and $c_s$, and its behavior follows closely the gravitational potential $Φ$ of the dark matter halo with $δ_{DE}\approx -(1+w)Φ/c_s^2$. For $w>-1$, the dark energy perturbation presents a clustering behavior with $δ_{DE}>0$ during the entire formation of the dark matter halo, from linear to nonlinear and virialized stages. The value of $δ_{DE}$ increases with the increase of the halo mass. For a cluster of mass $M\sim 10^{15} M_{\odot}$, $δ_{DE}\sim 10^{-5}$ within the virialized region for $c_s^2 \in [0.5, 1]$, and it can reach $δ_{DE}=O(1)$ with $c_s^2=0.00001$. For a scalar-field dark energy model, we find that with suitably modeled $w$ and $c_s$, its perturbation behavior associated with the nonlinear formation of dark matter halos can well be analyzed using the fluid approach, demonstrating the validity of the fluid description for dark energy even considering its perturbation in the stage of nonlinear dark matter structure formation.

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arXiv2011

Statistical Properties of Supercluster-Like Filaments from Cosmological Simulations

We study large-scale structures from numerical simulations, paying particular attention to supercluster-like structures. A grid-density-contour based algorithm is adopted to locate connected groups. With the increase of the linking density threshold, the foam- like cosmic web is subsequently broken into individual supercluster-like groups and further halos which are in accordance to groups with the linking density threshold ρ/ρ= 1 + δ = 80. By analyzing sets of cosmological simulations with varying cosmological parameters, we find that an universal mass function exists not only for halos but also for low-density supercluster-like groups until the linking density threshold decreases to a density where the global percolation of large-scale structures occurs. We further show that the mass functions of different groups can be well described by the Jenkins form with the parameters being dependent on the linking density threshold. On the other hand, these low- density supercluster-like groups cannot be directly associated with the predictions from the excursion set theory with effective barriers obtained from dynamical collapse models, and the peak exclusion effect must be taken into account. Including such an effect, the mass function of groups with the linking density threshold 1 + δ = 16 is in good agreements with that from the excursion set theory with a nearly flat effective barrier. A simplified analysis of the ellipsoidal collapse model indicates that the barrier for collapses along two axes to form filaments is approximately flat in scales, thus we define groups identified with 1 + δ = 16 as filaments. We then further study the halo-filament conditional mass function and the filament-halo conditional mass function, and compare them with the predictions from the two-barrier excursion set theory. The shape statistics for filaments are also presented.

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arXiv2011

Probing Hot Gas in Galaxy Groups through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect

We investigate the potential of exploiting the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) to study the properties of hot gas in galaxy groups. It is shown that, with upcoming SZE surveys, one can stack SZE maps around galaxy groups of similar halo masses selected from large galaxy redshift surveys to study the hot gas in halos represented by galaxy groups. We use various models for the hot halo gas to study how the expected SZE signals are affected by gas fraction, equation of state, halo concentration, and cosmology. Comparing the model predictions with the sensitivities expected from the SPT, ACT and Planck surveys shows that a SPT-like survey can provide stringent constraints on the hot gas properties for halos with masses M ~> 10^{13} h^{-1}Msun. We also explore the idea of using the cross correlation between hot gas and galaxies of different luminosity to probe the hot gas in dark matter halos without identifying galaxy groups to represent dark halos. Our results show that, with a galaxy survey as large as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and with the help of the conditional luminosity function (CLF) model, one can obtain stringent constraints on the hot gas properties in halos with masses down to 10^{13} h^{-1}Msun. Thus, the upcoming SZE surveys should provide a very promising avenue to probe the hot gas in relatively low-mass halos where the majority of L*-galaxies reside.

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arXiv2010

Comparison of Halo Detection from Noisy Weak Lensing Convergence Maps with Gaussian Smoothing and MRLens Treatment

Taking into account the noise from intrinsic ellipticities of source galaxies, we study the efficiency and completeness of halo detections from weak lensing convergence maps. Particularly, with numerical simulations, we compare the Gaussian filter with the so called MRLens treatment based on the modification of the Maximum Entropy Method. For a pure noise field without lensing signals, a Gaussian smoothing results a residual noise field that is approximately Gaussian in statistics if a large enough number of galaxies are included in the smoothing window. On the other hand, the noise field after the MRLens treatment is significantly non-Gaussian, resulting complications in characterizing the noise effects. Considering weak-lensing cluster detections, although the MRLens treatment effectively deletes false peaks arising from noise, it removes the real peaks heavily due to its inability to distinguish real signals with relatively low amplitudes from noise in its restoration process. The higher the noise level is, the larger the removal effects are for the real peaks. For a survey with a source density n_g~30 arcmin^(2), the number of peaks found in an area of 3x3 sq.deg after MRLens filtering is only ~50 for the detection threshold kappa=0.02, while the number of halos with M>5x10^{13} M_{\odot} and with redshift z<=2 in the same area is expected to be ~530. For the Gaussian smoothing treatment, the number of detections is ~260, much larger than that of the MRLens. The Gaussianity of the noise statistics in the Gaussian smoothing case adds further advantages for this method to circumvent the problem of the relatively low efficiency in weak-lensing cluster detections. Therefore, in studies aiming to construct large cluster samples from weak-lensing surveys, the Gaussian smoothing method performs significantly better than the MRLens.

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arXiv2010

Noisy weak-lensing convergence peak statistics near clusters of galaxies and beyond

Taking into account noise from intrinsic ellipticities of source galaxies, in this paper, we study the peak statistics in weak-lensing convergence maps around clusters of galaxies and beyond. We emphasize how the noise peak statistics is affected by the density distribution of nearby clusters, and also how cluster-peak signals are changed by the existence of noise. These are the important aspects to be understood thoroughly in weak-lensing analyses for individual clusters as well as in cosmological applications of weak-lensing cluster statistics. We adopt Gaussian smoothing with the smoothing scale $θ_G=0.5\hbox{ arcmin}$ in our analyses. It is found that the noise peak distribution near a cluster of galaxies depends sensitively on the density profile of the cluster. For a cored isothermal cluster with the core radius $R_c$, the inner region with $R\le R_c$ appears noisy containing on average $\sim 2.4$ peaks with $ν\ge 5$ for $R_c= 1.7\hbox{ arcmin}$ and the true peak height of the cluster $ν=5.6$, where $ν$ denotes the convergence signal to noise ratio. For a NFW cluster of the same mass and the same central $ν$, the average number of peaks with $ν\ge 5$ within $R\le R_c$ is $\sim 1.6$. Thus a high peak corresponding to the main cluster can be identified more cleanly in the NFW case. In the outer region with $R_c<R\le 5R_c$, the number of high noise peaks is considerably enhanced in comparison with that of the pure noise case without the nearby cluster. (abridged)

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arXiv2010

Probing Dark Energy with the Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope

Dark energy is an important science driver of many upcoming large-scale surveys. With small, stable seeing and low thermal infrared background, Dome A, Antarctica, offers a unique opportunity for shedding light on fundamental questions about the universe. We show that a deep, high-resolution imaging survey of 10,000 square degrees in \emph{ugrizyJH} bands can provide competitive constraints on dark energy equation of state parameters using type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, and weak lensing techniques. Such a survey may be partially achieved with a coordinated effort of the Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope (KDUST) in \emph{yJH} bands over 5000--10,000 deg$^2$ and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in \emph{ugrizy} bands over the same area. Moreover, the joint survey can take advantage of the high-resolution imaging at Dome A to further tighten the constraints on dark energy and to measure dark matter properties with strong lensing as well as galaxy--galaxy weak lensing.

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arXiv2009

The 21 cm Forest as a Probe of the Reionization and the Temperature of the Intergalactic Medium

Using high redshift radio sources as background, the 21cm forest observations probe the neutral hydrogen absorption signatures of early structures along the lines of sight. Directly sensitive to the spin temperature, it complements the 21cm tomography observations, and provides information on the temperature as well as the ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We use a radiative transfer simulation to investigate the 21cm forest signals during the epoch of reionization. We first confirmed that the optical depth and equivalent width (EW) are good representations of the ionization and thermal state of the IGM. The features selected by their relative optical depth are excellent tracers of ionization fields, while those selected by absolute optical depth are very sensitive to the IGM temperature, so the IGM temperature information could potentially be extracted, thus breaking a degeneracy in 21cm tomographic observation. From the distributions of EWs and the number evolution of absorbers and leakers with different EWs, we see clearly the cosmological evolution of ionization state of the IGM. The number density of potentially observable features decreases rapidly with increasing gas temperature. The sensitivity of the proposed EW statistic to the IGM temperature makes it a unique and potentially powerful probe of reionization. Missing small-scale structures, such as small filaments and minihalos that are unresolved in our current simulation, and lack of an accurate calculation of the IGM temperature, however, likely have rendered the presented signals quantitatively inaccurate. Finally we discuss the requirements of the background radio sources for such observations, and find that signals with equivalent widths larger than 1kHz are hopeful to be detected.(Abridged)

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arXiv2009

Dynamical evolutin of quintessence dark energy in collapsing dark matter halos

In this paper, we analyze the dynamical evolution of quintessence dark energy induced by the collapse of dark matter halos. Different from other previous studies, we develop a numerical strategy which allows us to calculate the dark energy evolution for the entire history of the spherical collapse of dark matter halos, without the need of separate treatments for linear, quasi-linear and nonlinear stages of the halo formation. It is found that the dark energy perturbations evolve with redshifts, and their specific behaviors depend on the quintessence potential as well as the collapsing process. The overall energy density perturbation is at the level of $10^{-6}$ for cluster-sized halos. The perturbation amplitude decreases with the decrease of the halo mass. At a given redshift, the dark energy perturbation changes with the radius to the halo center, and can be either positive or negative depending on the contrast of $\partial_t ϕ$, $\partial_r ϕ$ and $ϕ$ with respect to the background, where $ϕ$ is the quintessence field. For shells where the contrast of $\partial_r ϕ$ is dominant, the dark energy perturbation is positive and can be as high as about $10^{-5}$.

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arXiv2009

Modeling Galaxy-Galaxy Weak Lensing with SDSS Groups

We use galaxy groups selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) together with mass models for individual groups to study the galaxy-galaxy lensing signals expected from galaxies of different luminosities and morphological types. We compare our model predictions with the observational results obtained from the SDSS by Mandelbaum et al. (2006) for the same samples of galaxies. The observational results are well reproduced in a $Λ$CDM model based on the WMAP 3-year data, but a $Λ$CDM model with higher $σ_8$, such as the one based on the WMAP 1-year data,significantly over-predicts the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal. We model, separately, the contributions to the galaxy-galaxy lensing signals from different galaxies: central versus satellite, early-type versus late-type, and galaxies in halos of different masses. We also examine how the predicted galaxy-galaxy lensing signal depends on the shape, density profile, and the location of the central galaxy with respect to its host halo.

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arXiv2008

Probing for cosmological parameters with LAMOST measurement

In this paper we study the sensitivity of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) project to the determination of cosmological parameters, employing the Monte Carlo Markov Chains (MCMC) method. For comparison, we first analyze the constraints on cosmological parameters from current observational data, including WMAP, SDSS and SN Ia. We then simulate the 3D matter power spectrum data expected from LAMOST, together with the simulated CMB data for PLANCK and the SN Ia from 5-year Supernovae Legacy Survey (SNLS). With the simulated data, we investigate the future improvement on cosmological parameter constraints, emphasizing the role of LAMOST. Our results show the potential of LAMOST in probing for the cosmological parameters, especially in constraining the equation-of-state (EoS) of the dark energy and the neutrino mass.

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arXiv2008

Probing the Intrinsic Shape and Alignment of Dark Matter Haloes using SDSS Galaxy Groups

We study the three-dimensional and projected shapes of galaxy groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4, and examine the alignment between the orientation of the central galaxy and the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies. The projected ellipticity of a group is measured using the moments of the discrete distribution of its member galaxies. We infer the three-dimensional and projected axis ratios of their dark matter haloes by comparing the measured ellipticity distributions with those obtained from Monte Carlo simulations of projected, triaxial dark matter haloes with different axis ratios. We find that the halo shape has a strong dependence on the halo mass. While the haloes of low-mass groups are nearly spherical, those of massive groups tend to be prolate. For groups containing at least four members, the statistical distribution of their measured ellipticities does not have a strong dependence on the colors of their central galaxies. Our analysis further shows that the average three-dimensional axis ratio for haloes with $12<{\rm log}[M/(h^{-1}M_{\odot})]\leq15$ is about $1:0.46:0.46$, resulting in a projected axis ratio of $\sim 0.77$. Our results for the alignment between the orientation of the central galaxy of a group and the distribution of their satellite galaxies are in broad agreement with those obtained by Yang et al. The distribution of satellite galaxies preferentially aligns with the major axis of the central galaxy, with a clear dependence on both halo mass and galaxy colors. (abridged)

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arXiv2007

Constraints on Dark Energy Models Including Gamma Ray Bursts

In this paper we analyze the constraints on the property of dark energy from cosmological observations. Together with SNe Ia Gold sample, WMAP, SDSS and 2dFGRS data, we include 69 long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) data in our study and perform global fitting using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique. Dark energy perturbations are explicitly considered. We pay particular attention to the time evolution of the equation of state of dark energy parameterized as $w_{DE}=w_0+w_a(1-a)$ with $a$ the scale factor of the universe, emphasizing the complementarity of high redshift GRBs to other cosmological probes. It is found that the constraints on dark energy become stringent by taking into account high redshift GRBs, especially for $w_a$, which delineates the evolution of dark energy.

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arXiv2006

Gamma Ray Bursts: Complementarity to Other Cosmological Probes

We combine recent long Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) sample including 52 objects out to z$=$6.3 compiled from Swift Gamma Ray Bursts by Schaefer (2006) with Type Ia Supernova (SNIa), Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Baryon Oscillation (BAO) to constrain cosmologies. We study the constraints arising from GRBs alone and the complementarity of GRBs to other cosmological probes. To analyze the cosmological role of GRBs, we adopt the Hubble constant as a free parameter with a prior in the range of $H_0=72\pm8\enspace\kmsmpc$ instead of a fixed $H_0$ used in previous studies. By jointly using SNIa gold/SNLS samples and GRBs, the constraints on \Om -\Ol parameter space are dramatically improved in comparing with those from SNIa data alone. The complementarity of GRBs is mostly from the sub-sample with z$>$1.5 due to the different parameter degeneracies involved in luminosity distances at different redshifts. Including GRB data in addition to SNIa, BAO and CMB in our analysis, we find that the concordance model with \Om $\sim$0.3 and \Ol$\sim$0.7 is still well within 1$σ$ confidence range.

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arXiv2000

Determining the Geometry and the Cosmological Parameters of the Universe through SZE Cluster Counts

We study Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect (SZE) cluster counts in different cosmologies. It is found that even without the full knowledge of the redshift distribution of SZE clusters, one can still readily distinguish a flat universe with a cosmological constant from an open universe. We divide clusters into a low redshift group (with redshift z<0.5) and a high redshift group (with z>1), and compute the relation r=N(z<0.5)/N(z>1), where N is the number of flux-limited (S_lim) SZE clusters. With about the same total number of SZE clusters N(z>0), the r-value for a flat universe with a consmological constant and that for an open universe occupy different regions in the S_lim -- r plot for the most likely cosmological parameters 0.25<Ω_0<0.35 and 0.2<Γ<0.3, where Γis the shape parameter of the initial power spectrum of density fluctuations. Thus, with a deep SZE cluster survey, the ratio r can reveal, independent of the normalization of the power spectrum, whether we are living in a low-density flat universe or an open universe. Within the flat universe scenario, the SZE cluster-normalized σ_8 has also been investigated in this work, where sigma_8 is the r.m.s. density fluctuations within the top-hat scale of 8 h^{-1} Mpc. A functional relation sigma_8 \sim Ω_0^{-0.13} is found. Combining it with the X-ray cluster-normalized σ_8\simΩ_0^{-0.52+0.13Ω_0}, one can put tight constraints on both Ω_0 and σ_8 simulataneously.

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arXiv1995

Distributions of Fourier Modes of Cosmological Density Fields

We discuss the probability distributions of Fourier modes of cosmological density fields using the central limit theorem as it applies to weighted integrals of random fields. It is shown that if the cosmological principle holds in a certain sense, i.e., the universe approaches homogeneity and isotropy sufficiently rapidly on very large scales, the one-point distribution of each Fourier mode of the density field is Gaussian whether or not the density field itself is Gaussian. Therefore, one-point distributions of the power spectrum obtained from observational data or from simulations are not a good test of whether the density field is Gaussian.

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