No Arabic abstract
Public data from the 2dF quasar survey (2QZ) and 2dF/SDSS LRG & QSO (2SLAQ), with their vast reservoirs of spectroscopically located and identified sources, afford us the chance to more accurately study their real space correlations in the hopes of identifying the physical processes that trigger quasar activity. We have used these two public databases to measure the projected cross correlation, $omega_p$, between quasars and luminous red galaxies. We find the projected two-point correlation to have a fitted clustering radius of $r_0, = 5.3 pm 0.6 $ and a slope, $gamma =1.83 pm 0.42 $ on scales from 0.7-27$h^{-1}$Mpc. We attempt to understand this strong correlation by separating the LRG sample into 2 populations of blue and red galaxies. We measure at the cross correlation with each population. We find that these quasars have a stronger correlation amplitude with the bluer, more recently starforming population in our sample than the redder passively evolving population, which has a correlation that is much more noisy and seems to flatten on scales $< 5h^{-1}$Mpc. We compare this result to published work on hierarchical models. The stronger correlation of bright quasars with LRGs that have undergone a recent burst of starformation suggests that the physical mechanisms that produce both activities are related and that minor mergers or tidal effects may be important triggers of bright quasar activity and/or that bright quasars are less highly biased than faint quasars.
Nonlinear redshift-space distortions, the Finger-of-God (FoG) effect, can complicate the interpretation of the galaxy power spectrum. Here, we demonstrate the method proposed by Hikage et al. (2012) to use complimentary observations to directly constrain this effect on the data. We use catalogs of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) and photometric galaxies from the SDSS DR7 to measure the redshift-space power spectrum of LRGs, the cross-correlation of LRGs with the shapes of background photometric galaxies (galaxy-galaxy weak lensing), and the projected cross-correlation of LRGs with photometric galaxies having similar photometric redshifts to the LRG spectroscopic redshift. All of these measurements use a reconstructed halo field. While we use the position of each LRG for single LRG systems, we compare the measurements using different halo-center proxies for multiple-LRG systems (4.5 per cent of all the halos): the brightest LRG position (BLRG), the faintest LRG position (FLRG) and their arithmetical mean position (Mean), respectively, in each system. We find significant differences in the measured correlations of different centers, showing consistent off-centering effects in the three observables. By comparing the measurements with a halo model that treats the satellite photometric galaxies as being distributed according to a generalized NFW profile, we find that about 40 (70) per cent of BLRGs (FLRGs) are off-centered satellite galaxies in the multiple-LRG systems. The satellite LRGs have typical off-centering radius of about 400 kpc/h, and velocity dispersion of about 500 km/s in host halos with a mean mass of 1.6x10^14 Ms/h. We show that, if LRGs in the single LRG systems have similar offsets, the residual FoG contamination in the LRG power spectrum can be significant at k>0.1 h/Mpc, which may cause a bias in cosmological parameters such as the neutrino mass.
Cross-correlations between the lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and other tracers of large-scale structure provide a unique way to reconstruct the growth of dark matter, break degeneracies between cosmology and galaxy physics, and test theories of modified gravity. We detect a cross-correlation between DESI-like luminous red galaxies (LRGs) selected from DECaLS imaging and CMB lensing maps reconstructed with the Planck satellite at a significance of $S/N = 27.2$ over scales $ell_{rm min} = 30$, $ell_{rm max} = 1000$. To correct for magnification bias, we determine the slope of the LRG cumulative magnitude function at the faint limit as $s = 0.999 pm 0.015$, and find corresponding corrections on the order of a few percent for $C^{kappa g}_{ell}, C^{gg}_{ell}$ across the scales of interest. We fit the large-scale galaxy bias at the effective redshift of the cross-correlation $z_{rm eff} approx 0.68$ using two different bias evolution agnostic models: a HaloFit times linear bias model where the bias evolution is folded into the clustering-based estimation of the redshift kernel, and a Lagrangian perturbation theory model of the clustering evaluated at $z_{rm eff}$. We also determine the error on the bias from uncertainty in the redshift distribution; within this error, the two methods show excellent agreement with each other and with DESI survey expectations.
The clustering properties of the Universe at large-scales are currently being probed at various redshifts through several cosmological tracers and with diverse statistical estimators. Here we use the three-point angular correlation function (3PACF) to probe the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) features in the quasars catalogue from the twelfth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with mean redshift z = 2.225, detecting the BAO imprint with a statistical significance of 2.9{sigma}, obtained using lognormal mocks. Following a quasi model-independent approach for the 3PACF, we find the BAO transversal signature for triangles with sides $theta_1 = 1.0^circ$ and $theta_2 = 1.5^circ$ and the angle between them of $alpha = 1.59 pm 0.17$ rad, a value that corresponds to the angular BAO scale ${theta}_{BAO} = 1.82^circ pm 0.21^circ$ , in excellent agreement with the value found in a recent work (${theta}_{BAO} = 1.77^circ pm 0.31^circ$ ) applying the 2PACF to similar data. Moreover, we performed two type of tests: one to confirm the robustness of the BAO signal in the 3PACF through random displacements in the dataset, and the other to verify the suitability of our random samples, a null test that in fact does not show any signature that could bias our results.
We investigate the effects of the nonminimal coupling between the scalar field dark energy (quintessence) and the dark matter on the two- point correlation function. It is well known that this coupling shifts the turnover scale as well as suppresses the amplitude of the matter power spectrum. However, these effects are too small to be observed when we limit the coupling strength to be consistent with observations. Since the coupling of quintessence to baryons is strongly constrained, species dependent coupling may arise. This results in a baryon bias that is dif- ferent from unity. Thus, we look over the correlation function in this coupled model. We find that even the non-coupled quintessence model gives the better fit to the correlation function compared to the cosmo- logical constant model. We are also able to observe the enhancement of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak due to the increasing bias factor of baryon from this species dependent coupling. In order to avoid the damping effect of the BAO signature in the matter power spectrum due to nonlinear clustering, we consider the coupling effect on the BAO bump in the linear regime. This provides an alternative method to constrain the coupling of dark energy to dark matter.
We provide constraints on the accuracy with which the neutrino mass fraction, $f_{ u}$, can be estimated when exploiting measurements of redshift-space distortions, describing in particular how the error on neutrino mass depends on three fundamental parameters of a characteristic galaxy redshift survey: density, halo bias and volume. In doing this, we make use of a series of dark matter halo catalogues extracted from the BASICC simulation. The mock data are analysed via a Markov Chain Monte Carlo likelihood analysis. We find a fitting function that well describes the dependence of the error on bias, density and volume, showing a decrease in the error as the bias and volume increase, and a decrease with density down to an almost constant value for high density values. This fitting formula allows us to produce forecasts on the precision achievable with future surveys on measurements of the neutrino mass fraction. For example, a Euclid-like spectroscopic survey should be able to measure the neutrino mass fraction with an accuracy of $delta f_{ u} approx 6.7times10^{-4}$, using redshift-space clustering once all the other cosmological parameters are kept fixed to the $Lambda$CDM case.