No Arabic abstract
The intra-cluster and inter-galactic media (ICM, IGM) that pervade the large scale structure of the Universe are known to be magnetised at sub-micro Gauss to micro Gauss levels and to contain cosmic rays (CRs). The acceleration of CRs and their evolution along with that of magnetic fields in these media is still not well understood. Diffuse radio sources of synchrotron origin associated with the ICM such as radio halos, relics and mini-halos are direct probes of the underlying mechanisms of CR acceleration. Observations with radiotelescopes such as the GMRT, the VLA and the WSRT (0.15 - 2 GHz) have revealed scaling relations between the thermal and non-thermal properties of clusters and favour the role of shocks in the formation of radio relics and of turbulent re-acceleration in the formation of radio halos and mini-halos. Due to the limitations of current radio telescopes, wide-band studies and exploration of low mass and supercluster-scale systems is difficult. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is a next generation radio telescope that will operate in the frequency range of 0.05 - 20 GHz with unprecedented sensitivities and resolutions. The expected detection limits of SKA will reveal a few hundred to thousand new radio halos, relics and mini-halos providing the first large and comprehensive samples for their study. The wide frequency coverage along with sensitivity to extended structures will be able to constrain the CR acceleration mechanisms. The higher frequency (> 5 GHz) observations will be able to use the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect to probe the ICM pressure in addition to the tracers such as lobes of head-tail radio sources. The SKA also opens prospects to detect the off-state radio emission from the ICM predicted by the hadronic models and the turbulent re-acceleration models. [abridged]
The 80% of the matter in the Universe is in the form of dark matter that comprises the skeleton of the large-scale structure called the Cosmic Web. As the Cosmic Web dictates the motion of all matter in galaxies and inter-galactic media through gravity, knowing the distribution of dark matter is essential for studying the large-scale structure. However, the Cosmic Webs detailed structure is unknown because it is dominated by dark matter and warm-hot inter-galactic media, both of which are hard to trace. Here we show that we can reconstruct the Cosmic Web from the galaxy distribution using the convolutional-neural-network-based deep-learning algorithm. We find the mapping between the position and velocity of galaxies and the Cosmic Web using the results of the state-of-the-art cosmological galaxy simulations, Illustris-TNG. We confirm the mapping by applying it to the EAGLE simulation. Finally, using the local galaxy sample from Cosmicflows-3, we find the dark-matter map in the local Universe. We anticipate that the local dark-matter map will illuminate the studies of the nature of dark matter and the formation and evolution of the Local Group. High-resolution simulations and precise distance measurements to local galaxies will improve the accuracy of the dark-matter map.
The dipole anisotropy seen in the {cosmic microwave background radiation} is interpreted as due to our peculiar motion. The Cosmological Principle implies that this cosmic dipole signal should also be present, with the same direction, in the large-scale distribution of matter. Measurement of the cosmic matter dipole constitutes a key test of the standard cosmological model. Current measurements of this dipole are barely above the expected noise and unable to provide a robust test. Upcoming radio continuum surveys with the SKA should be able to detect the dipole at high signal to noise. We simulate number count maps for SKA survey specifications in Phases 1 and 2, including all relevant effects. Nonlinear effects from local large-scale structure contaminate the {cosmic (kinematic)} dipole signal, and we find that removal of radio sources at low redshift ($zlesssim 0.5$) leads to significantly improved constraints. We forecast that the SKA could determine the kinematic dipole direction in Galactic coordinates with an error of $(Delta l,Delta b)sim(9^circ,5^circ)$ to $(8^circ, 4^circ)$, depending on the sensitivity. The predicted errors on the relative speed are $sim 10%$. These measurements would significantly reduce the present uncertainty on the direction of the radio dipole, and thus enable the first critical test of consistency between the matter and CMB dipoles.
We investigate the alignment of haloes with the filaments of the cosmic web using an unprecedently large sample of dark matter haloes taken from the P-Millennium $Lambda$CDM cosmological N-body simulation. We use the state-of-the-art NEXUS morphological formalism which, due to its multiscale nature, simultaneously identifies structures at all scales. We find strong and highly significant alignments, with both the major axis of haloes and their peculiar velocity tending to orient along the filament. However, the spin - filament alignment displays a more complex trend changing from preferentially parallel at low masses to preferentially perpendicular at high masses. This spin flip occurs at an average mass of $5times10^{11}~h^{-1}M_odot$. This mass increases with increasing filament diameter, varying by more than an order of magnitude between the thinnest and thickest filament samples. We also find that the inner parts of haloes have a spin flip mass that is several times smaller than that of the halo as a whole. These results confirm that recent accretion is responsible for the complex behaviour of the halo spin - filament alignment. Low-mass haloes mainly accrete mass along directions perpendicular to their host filament and thus their spins tend to be oriented along the filaments. In contrast, high-mass haloes mainly accrete along their host filaments and have their spins preferentially perpendicular to them. Furthermore, haloes located in thinner filaments are more likely to accrete along their host filaments than haloes of the same mass located in thicker filaments.
The $beta$-skeleton is a mathematical method to construct graphs from a set of points that has been widely applied in the areas of image analysis, machine learning, visual perception, and pattern recognition. In this work, we apply the $beta$-skeleton to study the cosmic web. We use this tool on observed and simulated data to identify the filamentary structures and characterize the statistical properties of the skeleton. In particular, we compare the $beta$-skeletons built from SDSS-III galaxies to those obtained from MD-PATCHY mocks, and also to mocks directly built from the Big MultiDark $N$-body simulation. We find that the $beta$-skeleton is able to reveal the underlying structures in observed and simulated samples without any parameter fine-tuning. A different degree of sparseness can be obtained by adjusting the value of $beta$; in addition, the statistical properties of the length and direction of the skeleton connections show a clear dependence on redshift space distortions (RSDs), cosmological effects and galaxy bias. We also find that the $N$-body simulation accurately reproduces the RSD effect in the data, while the MD-PATCHY mocks appear to underestimate its magnitude. Our proof-of-concept study shows that the statistical properties of the $beta$-skeleton can be used to probe cosmological parameters and galaxy evolution.
Increasing evidence suggests that cosmological sheets, filaments, and voids may be substantially magnetized today. The origin of magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is, however, currently uncertain. It seems well known that non-standard extensions to the physics of the standard model can provide mechanisms susceptible of magnetizing the universe at large. Perhaps less well known is the fact that standard, classical physics of matter--radiation interactions actually possesses the same potential. We discuss a magnetogenesis mechanism based on the exchange of momentum between hard photons and electrons in an inhomogeneous IGM. Operating in the neighborhood of ionizing sources during the epoch of reionization, this mechanism is capable of generating magnetic seeds of relevant strengths over scales comparable to the distance between ionizing sources. In addition, summing up the contributions of all ionizing sources and taking into account the distribution of gas inhomogeneities, we show that this mechanism leaves the IGM, at the end of reionization, with a level of magnetization that might account, when amplification mechanisms take over, for the magnetic fields strengths in the current cosmic web.