Astrophysics

Velocity fields are a powerful probe of structure formation and the energy content of our Universe. Additionally, the motion of ionized gas on intermediate scales can be used to measure the clustering of baryons and shed light on galaxy formation and feedback mechanisms.  I will discuss techniques that can be used to both constrain cosmology and measure baryon properties. I will also present some preliminary results.

A modified gravity (MOG) theory is explored that can explain current observational data in the present universe without detectable dark matter. This data includes galaxy rotation curves, cluster dynamics, gravitational lensing, globular clusters, the Bullet Cluster and solar system experiments. A vector field in the MOG action is a hidden, dark and massive photon that acts as a collisionless particle in the early universe and explains structure growth. The vector field evolves to an ultralight hidden photon in the present universe after the formation of stars and galaxies, and it cannot play the role of detectable dark matter. The theory successfully describes the CMB data. The matter power spectrum is fitted without dark matter and can distinguish between modified gravity and dark matter scenarios in the present universe.

We are investigating modifications of general relativity that are operative at the largest observable scales. In this context, we are investigating the model of brane induced gravity in 6D, a higher dimensional generalization of the DGP model. As opposed to different claims in the literature, we have proven the quantum stability of the theory in a weakly coupling regime on a Minkowski background. In particular, we have shown that the Hamiltonian of the linear theory is bounded from below. This result opened a new window of opportunity for consistent modified Friedmann cosmologies. In our recent work it is shown that a brane with FRW symmetries necessarily acts as a source of cylindrically symmetric gravitational waves, so called Einstein-Rosen waves. Their existence essentially distinguishes this model from its codimension-one counterpart and necessitates to solve the non-linear system of bulk and brane-matching equations. A numerical analysis is performed and two qualitatively different and dynamically separated classes of cosmologies are derived: degravitating solutions for which the Hubble parameter settles to zero despite the presence of a non-vanishing energy density on the brane and super-accelerating solutions for which Hubble grows unbounded. The parameter space of both the stable and unstable regime is derived and observational consequences are discussed: It is argued that the degravitating regime does not allow for a phenomenologically viable cosmology. On the other hand, the super-accelerating solutions are potentially viable, however, their unstable behavior questions their physical relevance.

Quasars are highly biased tracers of the large-scale structure and therefore powerful probes of the initial conditions and the evolution of the universe. However, current spectroscopic catalogues are relatively small for studying the clustering of quasars on large-scales and over extended redshift ranges. Hence one must resort to photometric catalogues, which include large numbers of quasars identified using imaging data but suffer from significant stellar contamination and systematic uncertainties. I will present a detailed analysis of the photometric quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the resulting constraints on the quasar bias and primordial non-Gaussianity. The constraints on $f_{rm NL}$, its spectral index, and $g_{rm NL}$, are the tightest ever obtained from a single population of quasars or galaxies, and are competitive with the results obtained with WMAP, demonstrating the potential of quasars to complement CMB experiments. These results take advantage of a novel technique, 'extended mode projection', to mitigate the complex spatially-varying systematics present in the survey in a blind and robust fashion. This work is a new step towards the exploitation of data from the Dark Energy Survey, Euclid and LSST, which will require a careful mitigation of systematics in order to robustly constrain new physics.