No Arabic abstract
We examine the formation of clusters of galaxies in numerical simulations of a QUMOND cosmogony with massive sterile neutrinos. Clusters formed in these exploratory simulations develop higher velocities than those found in {Lambda}CDM simulations. The bulk motions of clusters attain about 1000 km/s by low redshift, comparable to observations whereas {Lambda}CDM simulated clusters tend to fall short. Similarly, high pairwise velocities are common in cluster-cluster collisions like the Bullet cluster. There is also a propensity for the most massive clusters to be larger in QUMOND and to appear earlier than in {Lambda}CDM, potentially providing an explanation for pink elephants like El Gordo. However, it is not obvious that the cluster mass function can be recovered.
The line-of-sight peculiar velocities are good indicators of the gravitational fluctuation of the density field. Techniques have been developed to extract cosmological information from the peculiar velocities in order to test the cosmological models. These techniques include measuring cosmic flow, measuring two-point correlation and power spectrum of the peculiar velocity fields, reconstructing the density field using peculiar velocities. However, some measurements from these techniques are biased due to the non-Gaussianity of the estimated peculiar velocities. Therefore, we use the 2MTF survey to explore a power transform that can Gaussianize the estimated peculiar velocities. We find a tight linear relation between the transformation parameters and the measurement errors of log-distance ratio. To show an example for the implement of the Gaussianized peculiar velocities in cosmology, we develop a bulk flow estimator and estimate bulk flow from the Gaussianized peculiar velocities. We use 2MTF mocks to test the algorithm, we find the algorithm yields unbiased measurements. We also find this technique gives smaller measurement errors compared to other techniques. Under the Galactic coordinates, at the depth of $30$ $h^{-1}$ Mpc, we measure a bulk flow of $332pm27$ km s$^{-1}$ in the direction $(l,b)=(293pm 5^{circ}, 13pm 4^{circ})$. The measurement is consistent with the $Lambda$CDM prediction.
Using N-body simulations we study the impact of various systematic effects on the bulk flow (BF) and the Cosmic Mach Number (CMN). We consider two types of systematics: those related to survey properties and those induced by observers location in the Universe. In the former category we model sparse sampling, velocity errors, and survey incompleteness. In the latter, we consider Local Group (LG) analogue observers, placed in a specific location within the Cosmic Web, satisfying various observational criteria. We differentiate such LG observers from Copernican ones, who are at random locations. We report strong systematic effects on the measured BF and CMN induced by sparse sampling, velocity errors and radial incompleteness. For BF most of these effects exceed 10% for scales $Rleq100h^{-1}$Mpc. For CMN some of these systematics can be catastrophically large ($>50%$) also on bigger scales. Moreover, we find that the position of the observer in the Cosmic Web significantly affects the locally measured BF (CMN), with effects as large as $sim20%$ ($30%)$ at $Rleq50h^{-1}$Mpc for a LG-like observer as compared to a random one. This effect is comparable to the sample variance. To highlight the importance of these systematics, we additionally study a model of modified gravity (MG) with $sim15%$ enhanced growth rate. We found that the systematic effects can mimic the modified gravity signal. The worst-case scenario is realized for a case of a LG-like observer, when the effects induced by local structures are degenerate with the enhanced growth rate fostered by MG. Our results indicate that dedicated constrained simulations and realistic mock galaxy catalogs will be absolutely necessary to fully benefit from the statistical power of the forthcoming peculiar velocity data from surveys such as TAIPAN, WALLABY, Cosmic Flows-4 and SKA.
We report ALMA Early Science CO(1-0) and CO(3-2) observations of the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in Abell 1664. The BCG contains 1.1x10^{10} solar masses of molecular gas divided roughly equally between two distinct velocity systems: one from -250 to +250 km/s centred on the BCGs systemic velocity and a high velocity system blueshifted by 570 km/s with respect to the systemic velocity. The BCGs systemic component shows a smooth velocity gradient across the BCG center with velocity proportional to radius suggestive of solid body rotation about the nucleus. However, the mass and velocity structure are highly asymmetric and there is little star formation coincident with a putative disk. It may be an inflow of gas that will settle into a disk over several 10^8 yr. The high velocity system consists of two gas clumps, each ~2 kpc across, located to the north and southeast of the nucleus. Each has a line of sight velocity spread of 250-300 km/s. The velocity of the gas in the high velocity system tends to increase towards the BCG center and could signify a massive high velocity flow onto the nucleus. However, the velocity gradient is not smooth and these structures are also coincident with low optical-UV surface brightness regions, which could indicate dust extinction associated with each clump. If so, the high velocity gas would be projected in front of the BCG and moving toward us along the line of sight in a massive outflow most likely driven by the AGN. A merger origin is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.
We demonstrate a novel technique for calibrating the energy scale of the XMM EPIC-pn detector, which allows us to measure bulk flows in the intracluster medium (ICM) of the Perseus and Coma clusters. The procedure uses the instrumental lines present in all observations, in particular, Cu-Ka. By studying their spatial and temporal variations, in addition to incorporating calibration observations, we refined the absolute energy scale to better than 150 km/s at the Fe-K line, a large improvement over the nominal accuracy of 550 km/s. We then mapped the bulk motions over much of the central 1200 and 800 kpc of Perseus and Coma, respectively, in spatial regions down to 65 and 140 kpc size. We cross-checked our procedure by comparing our measurements with those found in Perseus by Hitomi for an overlapping region, finding consistent results. For Perseus, there is a LoS velocity increase of 480+-210 km/s (1sigma) 250 kpc east of the nucleus. This region is associated with a cold front, providing direct evidence of the ICM sloshing in the potential well. Assuming the intrinsic distribution of bulk motions is Gaussian, its width is 214+-85 km/s, excluding systematics. Removing the sloshing region, this is reduced to 20-150 km/s, which is similar in magnitude to the Hitomi line width measurements in undisturbed regions. In Coma, the line-of-sight velocity of the ICM varies between the velocities of the two central galaxies. Maps of the gas velocity and metallicity provide clues about the merger history of the Coma, with material to the north and east of the cluster core having a velocity similar to NGC 4874, while that to the south and west has velocities close to NGC 4889. Our results highlight the difference between a merging system, such as Coma, where we observe a ~1000 km/s range in velocity, and a relatively relaxed system, such as Perseus, with much weaker bulk motions. [abridged]
We measure the bulk flow of the local Universe using the 6dF Galaxy Survey peculiar velocity sample (6dFGSv), the largest and most homogeneous peculiar velocity sample to date. 6dFGSv is a Fundamental Plane sample of $sim10^4$ peculiar velocities covering the whole southern hemisphere for galactic latitude $|b| > 10^circ$, out to redshift ${z=0.0537}$. We apply the `Minimum Variance bulk flow weighting method, which allows us to make a robust measurement of the bulk flow on scales of $50$ and $70,h^{-1}{rm Mpc}$. We investigate and correct for potential bias due to the lognormal velocity uncertainties, and verify our method by constructing $Lambda{rm CDM}$ 6dFGSv mock catalogues incorporating the survey selection function. For a hemisphere of radius $50,h^{-1}{rm Mpc}$ we find a bulk flow amplitude of $U=248pm58,{rm km},{rm s}^{-1}$ in the direction $(l,b) = (318^circpm20^circ,40^circpm13^circ)$, and for $70,h^{-1}{rm Mpc}$ we find $U=243pm58,{rm km},{rm s}^{-1}$, in the same direction. Our measurement gives us a constraint on $sigma_8$ of $1.01^{+1.07}_{-0.58}$. Our results are in agreement with other recent measurements of the direction of the bulk flow, and our measured amplitude is consistent with a $Lambda{rm CDM}$ prediction.