No Arabic abstract
The peculiar velocity of a mass tracer is on average aligned with the dipole modulation of the surrounding mass density field. We present a first measurement of the correlation between radial peculiar velocities of objects in the cosmicflows-3 catalog and the dipole moment of the 2MRS galaxy distribution in concentric spherical shells centered on these objects. Limiting the analysis to cosmicflows-3 objects with distances of $100 rm Mpc h^{-1}$, the correlation function is detected at a confidence level $> 4sigma$. The measurement is found consistent with the standard $Lambda$CDM model at $< 1.7sigma$ level. We formally derive the constraints $0.32<Omega^{0.55}sigma_8<0.48$ ($68% $ confidence level) or equivalently $0.34<Omega^{0.55}/b<0.52$, where $b$ is the galaxy bias factor. Deeper and improved peculiar velocity catalogs will substantially reduce the uncertainties, allowing tighter constraints from this type of correlations.
In this study, we present an update of a compilation of line width measurements of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) galaxy spectra at 21 cm wavelength. Our All Digital HI (ADHI) catalog consists of the previous release augmented with our new HI observations and an analysis of archival data. This study provides the required HI information to measure the distances of spiral galaxies through the application of the Tully-Fisher (TF) relation. We conducted observations at the Green Bank telescope (GBT) and reprocessed spectra obtained at the Nancay radiotelescope by the Nancay Interstellar Baryons Legacy Extragalactic Survey (NIBLES) and Kinematics of the Local Universe (KLUN) collaborations and we analyzed the recently published full completion Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) 100% survey in order to identify galaxies with good quality HI line width measurements. This paper adds new HI data adequate for TF use for 385 galaxies observed at GBT, 889 galaxies from archival Nancay spectra, and 1,515 rescaled Arecibo ALFALFA spectra. In total, this release adds 1,274 new good quality measurements to the ADHI catalog. Today, the ADHI database contains 18,874 galaxies, for which 15,433 have good quality data for TF use. The final goal is to compute accurate distances to spiral galaxies, which will be included in the next generation of peculiar velocities catalog: Cosmicflows-4.
The Cosmicflows-2 catalogue is a compendium of peculiar velocity measurements. While it has many objects in common with the COMPOSITE catalogue, a previously analysed collection of peculiar velocity data found to give an unexpectedly large bulk flow on large scales, the data in Cosmicflows-2 have been reanalysed to ensure consistency between distances measured using different methods. In particular, a focus on accurate distances led the authors of the Cosmicflows-2 to not correct for homogeneous or inhomogeneous Malmquist bias, both or which are corrected for in the COMPOSITE compilation. We find remarkable agreement between the COMPOSITE and the Cosmicflows-2 if the small EFAR sample of clusters located in two dense superclusters is removed from both surveys, giving results that are inconsistent with the $Lambda$ cold dark matter standard model with Planck central parameters at the 98% level. On smaller scales we find overall agreement between data sets and consistency with the standard model.
Velocity and density field reconstructions of the volume of the universe within 0.05c derived from the Cosmicflows-3 catalog of galaxy distances has revealed the presence of a filamentary structure extending across ~ 0.11c. The structure, at a characteristic redshift of 12,000 km/s, has a density peak coincident with the celestial South Pole. This structure, the largest contiguous feature in the local volume and comparable to the Sloan Great Wall at half the distance, is given the name the South Pole Wall.
Surveys of galaxy distances and radial peculiar velocities can be used to reconstruct the large scale structure. Other than systematic errors in the zero-point calibration of the galaxy distances the main source of uncertainties of such data are errors on the distance moduli, assumed here to be Gaussian and thus turn into lognormal errors on distances and velocities. Naively treated, it leads to spurious nearby outflow and strong infall at larger distances. The lognormal bias is corrected here and tested against mock data extracted from a $Lambda$CDM simulation, designed to statistically follow the grouped Cosmicflows-3 (CF3) data. Considering a subsample of data points, all of which have the same true distances or same redshifts, the lognormal bias arises because the means of the distributions of observed distances and velocities are skewed off the means of the true distances and velocities. Yet, the medians are invariant under the lognormal transformation. That invariance allows the Gaussianization of the distances and velocities and the removal of the lognormal bias. This Bias Gaussianization correction (BGc) algorithm is tested against mock CF3 catalogs. The test consists of a comparison of the BGC estimated with the simulated distances and velocities and of an examination of the Wiener filter reconstruction from the BGc data. Indeed, the BGc eliminates the lognormal bias. The estimation of Hubbles ($H_{0}$) constant is also tested. The residual of the BGc estimated $H_{0}$ from the simulated values is $0.6 pm 0.7 {rm kms}^{-1}{rm Mpc}^{-1}$ and is dominated by the cosmic variance. The BGc correction of the actual CF3 data yields $H_{0} = 75.8 pm 1.1 {rm kms}^{-1}{rm Mpc}^{-1}$ .
Key cosmological applications require the three-dimensional galaxy distribution on the entire celestial sphere. These include measuring the gravitational pull on the Local Group, estimating the large-scale bulk flow and testing the Copernican principle. However, the largest all-sky redshift surveys -- the 2MRS and IRAS PSCz -- have median redshifts of only z=0.03 and sample the very local Universe. There exist all-sky galaxy catalogs reaching much deeper -- SuperCOSMOS in the optical, 2MASS in the near-IR and WISE in the mid-IR -- but these lack complete redshift information. At present, the only rapid way towards larger 3D catalogs covering the whole sky is through photometric redshift techniques. In this paper we present the 2MASS Photometric Redshift catalog (2MPZ) containing 1 million galaxies, constructed by cross-matching 2MASS XSC, WISE and SuperCOSMOS all-sky samples and employing the artificial neural network approach (the ANNz algorithm), trained on such redshift surveys as SDSS, 6dFGS and 2dFGRS. The derived photometric redshifts have errors nearly independent of distance, with an all-sky accuracy of sigma_z=0.015 and a very small percentage of outliers. In this way, we obtain redshift estimates with a typical precision of 12% for all the 2MASS XSC galaxies that lack spectroscopy. In addition, we have made an early effort towards probing the entire 3D sky beyond 2MASS, by pairing up WISE with SuperCOSMOS and training the ANNz on GAMA redshift data reaching currently to z_med~0.2. This has yielded photo-z accuracies comparable to those in the 2MPZ. These all-sky photo-z catalogs, with a median z~0.1 for the 2MPZ, and significantly deeper for future WISE-based samples, will be the largest and most complete of their kind for the foreseeable future.