No Arabic abstract
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.
The linear point (LP), defined as the mid-point between the dip and the peak of the two-point clustering correlation function (TPCF), has been shown to be an excellent standard ruler for cosmology. In fact, it is nearly redshift-independent, being weakly sensitive to non-linearities, scale-dependent halo bias and redshift-space distortions. So far, these findings were tested assuming that neutrinos are massless; in this paper we extend the analysis to massive-neutrino cosmologies. In particular, we examine if the scale-dependent growth induced by neutrinos affects the LP position and if it is possible to detect the neutrino masses using the shift of the LP compared to the massless-neutrino case. For our purposes, we employ two sets of state-of-the-art $N$-body simulations with massive neutrinos. For each of them we measure the TPCF of cold dark matter (CDM) and halos and, to estimate the LP, fit the TPCF with a model-independent parametric fit in the range of scales of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). Overall, we find that the LP retains its features as a standard ruler even when neutrinos are massive. The cosmic distances measured with the LP can therefore be employed to constrain the neutrino mass.
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.
The growth history of large-scale structure in the Universe is a powerful probe of the cosmological model, including the nature of dark energy. We study the growth rate of cosmic structure to redshift $z = 0.9$ using more than $162{,}000$ galaxy redshifts from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. We divide the data into four redshift slices with effective redshifts $z = [0.2,0.4,0.6,0.76]$ and in each of the samples measure and model the 2-point galaxy correlation function in parallel and transverse directions to the line-of-sight. After simultaneously fitting for the galaxy bias factor we recover values for the cosmic growth rate which are consistent with our assumed $Lambda$CDM input cosmological model, with an accuracy of around 20% in each redshift slice. We investigate the sensitivity of our results to the details of the assumed model and the range of physical scales fitted, making close comparison with a set of N-body simulations for calibration. Our measurements are consistent with an independent power-spectrum analysis of a similar dataset, demonstrating that the results are not driven by systematic errors. We determine the pairwise velocity dispersion of the sample in a non-parametric manner, showing that it systematically increases with decreasing redshift, and investigate the Alcock-Paczynski effects of changing the assumed fiducial model on the results. Our techniques should prove useful for current and future galaxy surveys mapping the growth rate of structure using the 2-dimensional correlation function.
We investigate the possibility of constraining coupled dark energy (cDE) cosmologies using the three-point correlation function (3PCF). Making use of the CoDECS N-body simulations, we study the statistical properties of cold dark matter (CDM) haloes for a variety of models, including a fiducial $Lambda$CDM scenario and five models in which dark energy (DE) and CDM mutually interact. We measure both the halo 3PCF, $zeta(theta)$, and the reduced 3PCF, $Q(theta)$, at different scales ($2<r,[$Mpch$]<40$) and redshifts ($0leq zleq2$). In all cDE models considered in this work, $Q(theta)$ appears flat at small scales (for all redshifts) and at low redshifts (for all scales), while it builds up the characteristic V-shape anisotropy at increasing redshifts and scales. With respect to the $Lambda $CDM predictions, cDE models show lower (higher) values of the halo 3PCF for perpendicular (elongated) configurations. The effect is also scale-dependent, with differences between $Lambda$CDM and cDE models that increase at large scales. We made use of these measurements to estimate the halo bias, that results in fair agreement with the one computed from the two-point correlation function (2PCF). The main advantage of using both the 2PCF and 3PCF is to break the bias$-sigma_{8}$ degeneracy. Moreover, we find that our bias estimates are approximately independent of the assumed strength of DE coupling. This study demonstrates the power of a higher-order clustering analysis in discriminating between alternative cosmological scenarios, for both present and forthcoming galaxy surveys, such as e.g. BOSS and Euclid.
We perform theoretical and numerical studies of the full relativistic two-point galaxy correlation function, considering the linear-order scalar and tensor perturbation contributions and the wide-angle effects. Using the gauge-invariant relativistic description of galaxy clustering and accounting for the contributions at the observer position, we demonstrate that the complete theoretical expression is devoid of any long-mode contributions from scalar or tensor perturbations and it lacks the infrared divergences in agreement with the equivalence principle. By showing that the gravitational potential contribution to the correlation function converges in the infrared, our study justifies an IR cut-off $(k_{text{IR}} leq H_0)$ in computing the gravitational potential contribution. Using the full gauge-invariant expression, we numerically compute the galaxy two-point correlation function and study the individual contributions in the conformal Newtonian gauge. We find that the terms at the observer position such as the coordinate lapses and the observer velocity (missing in the standard formalism) dominate over the other relativistic contributions in the conformal Newtonian gauge such as the source velocity, the gravitational potential, the integrated Sachs-Wolf effect, the Shapiro time-delay and the lensing convergence. Compared to the standard Newtonian theoretical predictions that consider only the density fluctuation and redshift-space distortions, the relativistic effects in galaxy clustering result in a few percent-level systematic errors beyond the scale of the baryonic acoustic oscillation. Our theoretical and numerical study provides a comprehensive understanding of the relativistic effects in the galaxy two-point correlation function, as it proves the validity of the theoretical prediction and accounts for effects that are often neglected in its numerical evaluation.