Search results in Astrophysics from PIRSA
1093 - 1104 of 2134 Results
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Staring into the Abyss
Avery Broderick University of Waterloo
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Feedback-regulated star formation on galactic and cosmological scales
Claude-André Faucher-Giguère University of California, Berkeley
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Mapping Mass Across The Sky: CMB Lensing Measurements Past and Future
Blake Sherwin Princeton University
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Hybrid quantization of the Gowdy model within loop quantum cosmology
Mercedes Martin-Benito Complutense University of Madrid
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A Nearly Gaussian Hubble-patch in a non-Gaussian Universe
Marilena LoVerde University of Washington
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ΛCDM Large Scale Triumphs and Small Scale Challenges
Joel Primack University of California, Santa Cruz
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Is there evidence for additional neutrino species from cosmology?
It has been suggested that recent cosmological and flavor-oscillation data favor the existence of additional neutrino species beyond the three standard flavors. We apply Bayesian model selection to determine whether there is any evidence from current cosmological datasets for the standard cosmological model to be extended to include additional neutrino flavors. The datasets employed include cosmic microwave background temperature, polarization and lensing data, and measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillation scale and the Hubble constant. We also consider other additional neutrino physics, such as massive neutrinos, and possible degeneracies with other cosmological parameters. -
New Constraints on the Amplitude of Cosmic Density Fluctuations and Intracluster Gas from the Thermal SZ Signal Measured by Planck and ACT
Galaxy clusters form from the rarest peaks in the initial matter distribution, and hence are a sensitive probe of the amplitude of density fluctuations (sigma_8), the amount of matter in the universe, and the growth rate of structure. Galaxy clusters have the potential to constrain dark energy and neutrino masses. However, cluster cosmology is currently limited by systematic uncertainties due to poorly understood intracluster gas physics. I will present new statistical approaches to understand clusters and improve their cosmological constraining power through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. First, I will describe a forthcoming first detection of the cross-correlation of the tSZ signal reconstructed from Planck data with the large-scale matter distribution traced by the Planck CMB lensing potential. This statistic measures the amount of hot gas found in moderately massive groups and clusters (M ~ 10^13-10^14.5 M_sun), a mass scale below that probed by direct cluster detections. Second, I will describe the first measurement of the PDF of the tSZ field using ACT 148 GHz maps. This measurement contains information from all (zero-lag) moments of the tSZ field, beyond simply the 2- or 3-point functions. It is a very sensitive probe of sigma_8 and may also provide a method with which to break the degeneracy between sigma_8 and uncertainties in the physics of the intracluster gas. -
Staring into the Abyss
Avery Broderick University of Waterloo
Nearly a century after their discovery, black holes remain one of the most striking, and problematic predictions of general relativity. Even more unsettling is the fact that they actually appear to exist! With only a handful of exceptions, every galaxy contains a supermassive behemoth, millions to billions as massive as the sun, at their center. These supermassive black holes are hardly incidental, they gravitationally power enormous outflows that rule the fates of their hosts. Despite the critical role they play in our understanding of gravity and impact upon the visible universe, actually testing their nature has remained beyond our reach - until now. Dr. Broderick will describe how astronomers are currently constructing (and operating) facilities that will image the horizons of black holes, and what we can already say about these enigmatic monsters in the dark. -
Feedback-regulated star formation on galactic and cosmological scales
Claude-André Faucher-Giguère University of California, Berkeley
A central problem in galaxy formation is to understand why star formation is so inefficient. Within individual galaxies, gas is converted into stars at a rate two orders of magnitude slower than unimpeded gravitational collapse predicts, a fact embodied in the low normalization of the observed Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) relationship between star formation rate surface density and gas surface density. Star formation in galaxies is also globally inefficient in the sense that the stellar mass in dark matter halos is a small fraction of the universal baryon fraction. I will show that these two facts can be explained by the self-regulation of star formation by feedback from massive stars. Within galaxies, stellar feedback drives turbulence that supports the interstellar medium against collapse and the K-S law is set by the low strength of gravity relative to stellar feedback. The energy input from the same stellar feedback processes drive powerful galactic outflows that remove most of the gas accreted from the intergalactic medium before it has time to turn into stars. Using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations from our FIRE project ("Feedback In Realistic Environments"), I will show that gas removal by star formation-driven galactic winds successfully explains the observed galaxy stellar mass function, at least for galaxies less massive than the Milky Way. Feedback from massive black holes may be required to explain the quenching of more massive galaxies. Motivated by recent observations, I will discuss the physics of galactic winds driven by active galactic nuclei. -
Aspects of Modified Gravity
Jeremy Sakstein University of Pennsylvania
In this talk I will give an introduction to some of my research into modified gravity over the last three years. I will begin by describing my implementation of chameleon models into supersymmetry and discuss some of the new features and cosmology that arise in this formalism. I will then change direction and talk about my work using astrophysical effects as novel probes of modified gravity theories and present some new results on modified gravity stellar oscillation theory. I will end by discussing work in progress and the possible future constraints that could be placed. -
Mapping Mass Across The Sky: CMB Lensing Measurements Past and Future
Blake Sherwin Princeton University
Measurements of gravitational lensing in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) directly probe the projected distribution of dark matter out to high redshifts. The CMB lensing maps thus encode a wealth of information about both fundamental physics (e.g., dark energy and neutrino properties) and high-redshift astrophysics. I will illustrate this by first reviewing measurements of CMB lensing with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, discussing both CMB lensing auto-correlations and cross-correlations with quasars, galaxies and optical lensing. I will then discuss ongoing and upcoming measurements of CMB polarization lensing with the POLARBEAR and ACTPol experiments and explain the great scientific potential of such polarization lensing studies in the very near future. -
Conformal symmetry and cosmology
Austin Joyce University of Chicago
We will explore the role that conformal symmetries may play in cosmology. First, we will discuss the symmetries underlying the statistics of the primordial perturbations which seeded the temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background. I will show how symmetry considerations lead us to three broad classes of theories to explain these perturbations: single-field inflation, multi-field inflation, and the conformal mechanism. We will discuss the symmetries in each case and derive their model-independent consequences. Finally, we will examine the possibility of violating the null energy condition with a well-behaved quantum field theory. -
Hybrid quantization of the Gowdy model within loop quantum cosmology
Mercedes Martin-Benito Complutense University of Madrid
Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) proposes a quantization for homogeneous cosmologies which success in solving the classical singularity problem. Realistic scenarios call for the consideration of inhomogeneities. Focusing on the simplest inhomogenous cosmological model, the Gowdy model with three-torus spatial topology and linearly polarized gravitational waves, I'll describe an approach to treat inhomogeneities in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. This is a hybrid approach that combines LQC methods with Fock quantization. Furthermore, I'll discuss justified approximations that allow us to find approximate solutions to the (very complicated) Hamiltonian constraint of the model. -
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A Nearly Gaussian Hubble-patch in a non-Gaussian Universe
Marilena LoVerde University of Washington
Local-type primordial non-Gaussianity couples statistics of the curvature perturbation \zeta on vastly different physical scales. Because of this coupling, statistics (i.e. the polyspectra) of \zeta in our Hubble volume may not be representative of those in the larger universe -- that is, they may be biased. The bias depends on the local background value of \zeta, which includes contributions from all modes with wavelength k ~< H_0 and is therefore enhanced if the entire post-inflationary patch is large compared with our Hubble volume. I will discuss the bias to locally-measured statistics for general local-type non-Gaussianity. I will discuss three examples in detail: (i) the usual fNL, gNL model, (ii) a strongly non-Gaussian model with \zeta ~ \zeta_G^p, and (iii) two-field non-Gaussian initial conditions. In each scenario one may generate statistics in a Hubble-size patch that are weakly Gaussian and consistent with observations despite the fact that the statistics in the larger, post-inflationary patch look very different. Finally, I will present a worked example of how the variation in local statistics arises in the curvaton scenario. -
Not so random walks in cosmology
Ravi Sheth University of Pennsylvania
I'll discuss a number of insights into the process of nonlinear structure formation which come from the study of random walks crossing a suitably chosen barrier. These derive from a number of new results about walks with correlated steps, and include a unified framework for the peaks and excursion set frameworks for estimating halo abundances, evolution and clustering, as well as nonlinear, nonlocal and stochastic halo bias, all of which matter for the next generation of large scale structure datasets. -
ΛCDM Large Scale Triumphs and Small Scale Challenges
Joel Primack University of California, Santa Cruz
ΛCDM has become the standard cosmological model because its predictions agree so well with observations of the cosmic microwave background and the large-scale structure of the universe. However ΛCDM has faced challenges on smaller scales. Some of these challenges, including the “angular momentum catastrophe" and the absence of density cusps in the centers of small galaxies, may be overcome with improvements in simulation resolution and feedback. Recent simulations appear to form realistic galaxies in agreement with observed scaling relations. Although dark matter halos start small and grow by accretion, the existence of a star-forming band of halo masses naturally explains why the most massive galaxies have the oldest stars, a phenomenon known as galactic “downsizing." The discovery of many faint galaxies in the Local Group is consistent with the large number of subhalos in ΛCDM simulations. There is increasing evidence for such substructure in galaxy dark matter halos from gaps in cold stellar streams in the Milky Way and Andromeda and from gravitational lensing flux anomalies, with the prospect of rapidly increasing data on that from ALMA. The “too big to fail" (TBTF) problem is the latest apparent challenge to ΛCDM. It arose from analysis of the Aquarius and Via Lactea very-high-resolution ΛCDM simulations of Milky-Way-mass dark matter halos. Each simulated halo has ∼10 subhalos so massive and dense that they would appear to be too big to fail to form lots of stars. The TBTF problem is that none of the observed dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way or Andromeda have stars moving as fast as would be expected in these densest subhalos. This may indicate the need for a more complex theory of dark matter – but several recent papers have shown that subhalos in pure dark matter simulations like Aquarius or Via Lactea are significantly modified when baryonic effects are included, so as to solve the TBTF problem. Higher resolution simulations are needed to verify this.