No Arabic abstract
How do peculiar velocities affect observed voids? To answer this question we use the VIDE toolkit to identify voids in mock galaxy populations embedded within an N-body simulation both with and without peculiar velocities included. We compare the resulting void populations to assess the impact on void properties. We find that void abundances and spherically-averaged radial density profiles are mildly affected by peculiar velocities. However, peculiar velocities can distort by up to 10% the shapes for a particular subset of voids depending on the void size and density contrast, which can lead to increased variance in Alcock-Paczynski test. We offer guidelines for performing optimal cuts on the void catalogue to reduce this variance by removing the most severely affected voids while preserving the unaffected ones. In addition, since this shape distortion is largely limited to the line of sight, we show that the void radii are only affected at the $sim$ 10% level and the macrocenter positions at the $sim$ 20% (even before performing cuts), meaning that cosmological probes based on the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe and gravitational lensing are not severely impacted by peculiar velocities.
The line-of-sight peculiar velocities of galaxies contribute to their observed redshifts, breaking the translational invariance of galaxy clustering down to a rotational invariance around the observer. This becomes important when the line-of-sight direction varies significantly across a survey, leading to what are known as `wide angle effects in redshift space distortions. Wide-angle effects will also be present in measurements of the momentum field, i.e. the galaxy density-weighted velocity field, in upcoming peculiar velocity surveys. In this work we study how wide-angle effects modify the predicted correlation function and power spectrum for momentum statistics, both in auto-correlation and in cross-correlation with the density field. Using both linear theory and the Zeldovich approximation, we find that deviations from the plane-parallel limit are large and could become important in data analysis for low redshift surveys. We point out that even multipoles in the cross-correlation between density and momentum are non-zero regardless of the choice of line of sight, and therefore contain new cosmological information that could be exploited. We discuss configuration-space, Fourier-space and spherical analyses, providing exact expressions in each case rather than relying on an expansion in small angles. We hope these expressions will be of use in the analysis of upcoming surveys for redshift-space distortions and peculiar velocities.
The discrepancy between estimates of the Hubble Constant ($H_0$) measured from local ($z lesssim 0.1$) scales and from scales of the sound horizon is a crucial problem in modern cosmology. Peculiar velocities ($v_{pec}$) of standard candle distance indicators can systematically affect local $H_0$ measurements. We here use 2MRS galaxies to measure the local galaxy density field, finding a notable $z$ < 0.05 under-density in the SGC-6dFGS region of 27 $pm$ 2 %. However, no strong evidence for a Local Void pertaining to the full 2MRS sky coverage is found. Galaxy densities are used to measure a density parameter, $Delta phi_{+-}$, which we introduce as a proxy for $v_{pec}$ which quantifies density gradients along a SN line-of-sight. $Delta phi_{+-}$ is found to correlate with local $H_0$ estimates from 88 Pantheon SNeIa (0.02 < $z$ < 0.05). Density structures on scales of $sim$ 50 Mpc are found to correlate strongest with $H_0$ estimates in both the observational data and in mock data from the MDPL2-Galacticus simulation. Using trends of $H_0$ with $Delta phi_{+-}$, we can correct for the effects of density structure on local $H_0$ estimates, even in the presence of biased $v_{pec}$. However, the difference in the inferred $H_0$ estimate with and without the peculiar velocity correction is limited to < 0.1 %. We conclude that accounting for environmentally-induced peculiar velocities of SNIa host galaxies does not resolve the tension between local and CMB-derived $H_0$ estimates.
It is known that the large-scale structure (LSS) mapped by a galaxy redshift survey is subject to distortions by the galaxies peculiar velocities. Besides the signatures generated in common N-point statistics, such as the anisotropy in the galaxy 2-pt correlation function, the peculiar velocities also induce distinct features in LSSs morphological properties, which are fully described by four Minkowski functionals (MFs), i.e., the volume, surface area, mean curvature and Euler characteristic (or genus). In this work, by using large suite of N-body simulations, we present and analyze these important features in the MFs of LSS on both (quasi-)linear and non-linear scales. With a focus on non-linear scale, we identify the features uniquely induced by the fingers-of-God effect that show up only on non-linear scales, especially in the surface-area weighted mean curvature in high density threshold regions. We also find the MFs may give competitive constraints on cosmological parameters compared to the power spectrum. These results are important for cosmological applications of MFs of LSS, and probablly open up a new way to study the peculiar velocity field itself.
Peculiar velocities are an important probe of the growth rate of mass density fluctuations in the Universe. Most previous studies have focussed exclusively on measuring peculiar velocities at intermediate ($0.2 < z < 1$) redshifts using statistical redshift-space distortions. Here we emphasize the power of peculiar velocities obtained directly from distance measurements at low redshift ($z lesssim 0.05$), and show that these data break the usual degeneracies in the Omega_{m,0} -- $sigma_{8,0}$ parameter space. Using only peculiar velocity data, we find $Omega_{m,0} = 0.259pm0.045$ and $sigma_{8,0} = 0.748pm0.035$. Fixing the amplitude of fluctuations at very high redshift using observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the same data can be used to constrain the growth index $gamma$, with the strongest constraints coming from peculiar velocity measurements in the nearby Universe. We find $gamma = 0.619pm 0.054$, consistent with LCDM. Current peculiar velocity data already strongly constrain modified gravity models, and will be a powerful test as data accumulate.
We present an analysis of peculiar velocities and their effect on supernova cosmology. In particular, we study (a) the corrections due to our own motion, (b) the effects of correlations in peculiar velocities induced by large-scale structure, and (c) uncertainties arising from a possible local under- or over-density. For all of these effects we present a case study of their impact on the cosmology derived by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey (SDSS-II SN Survey). Correcting supernova redshifts for the CMB dipole slightly over-corrects nearby supernovae that share some of our local motion. We show that while neglecting the CMB dipole would cause a shift in the derived equation of state of Delta w ~ 0.04 (at fixed matter density) the additional local-motion correction is currently negligible (Delta w<0.01). We use a covariance-matrix approach to statistically account for correlated peculiar velocities. This down-weights nearby supernovae and effectively acts as a graduated version of the usual sharp low-redshift cut. Neglecting coherent velocities in the current sample causes a systematic shift of ~2% in the preferred value of w and will therefore have to be considered carefully when future surveys aim for percent-level accuracy. Finally, we perform n-body simulations to estimate the likely magnitude of any local density fluctuation (monopole) and estimate the impact as a function of the low-redshift cutoff. We see that for this aspect the low-z cutoff of z=0.02 is well-justified theoretically, but that living in a putative local density fluctuation leaves an indelible imprint on the magnitude-redshift relation.