No Arabic abstract
Using $N$-body simulations of cosmological large-scale structure formation, for the first time, we show that the anisotropic primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) causes a scale-dependent modification, given by $1/k^2$ at small $k$ limit, in the three-dimensional power spectra of halo shapes (intrinsic alignments), whilst the conventional power spectrum of halo number density field remains unaffected. We discuss that wide-area imaging and spectrocopic surveys observing the same region of the sky allow us to constrain the quadrupole PNG coefficient $f_{rm NL}^{s=2}$ at a precision comparable with or better than that of the cosmic microwave background.
A wide range of multifield inflationary models generate non-Gaussian initial conditions in which the initial adiabatic fluctuation is of the form (zeta_G + g_{NL} zeta_G^3). We study halo clustering in these models using two different analytic methods: the peak-background split framework, and brute force calculation in a barrier crossing model, obtaining agreement between the two. We find a simple, theoretically motivated expression for halo bias which agrees with N-body simulations and can be used to constrain g_{NL} from observations. We discuss practical caveats to constraining g_{NL} using only observable properties of a tracer population, and argue that constraints obtained from populations whose observed bias is <~ 2.5 are generally not robust to uncertainties in modeling the halo occupation distribution of the population.
Here we review the present status of modelling of and searching for primordial non-Gaussianity of cosmological perturbations. After introducing the models for non-Gaussianity generation during inflation, we discuss the search for non-Gaussian signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background and in the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe.
Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of galaxies tracing the large scale structure (LSS) of the Universe. One key ingredient that underlies cosmological observables is that the field that sources the observed structure is assumed to be initially Gaussian with high precision. Nevertheless, a minimal deviation from Gaussianityis perhaps the most robust theoretical prediction of models that explain the observed Universe; itis necessarily present even in the simplest scenarios. In addition, most inflationary models produce far higher levels of non-Gaussianity. Since non-Gaussianity directly probes the dynamics in the early Universe, a detection would present a monumental discovery in cosmology, providing clues about physics at energy scales as high as the GUT scale.
Galaxy shapes have been observed to align with external tidal fields generated by the large-scale structures of the Universe. While the main source for these tidal fields is provided by long-wavelength density perturbations, tensor perturbations also contribute with a non-vanishing amplitude at linear order. We show that parity-breaking gravitational waves produced during inflation leave a distinctive imprint in the galaxy shape power spectrum which is not hampered by any scalar-induced tidal field. We also show that a certain class of tensor non-Gaussianities produced during inflation can leave a signature in the density-weighted galaxy shape power spectrum. We estimate the possibility of observing such imprints in future galaxy surveys.
The anisotropy or triaxiality of massive dark matter haloes largely defines the structure of the cosmic web, in particular the filaments that join the haloes together. Here we investigate such oriented correlations in mass-Peak Patch halo catalogues by using the initial strain tensor of spherical proto-halo regions to orient the haloes. To go beyond the spherically averaged two-point correlation function of haloes we use oriented stacks to compute oriented two-point correlations: we explicitly break isotropy by imposing a local frame set by the strain tensor of the reference halo before stacking neighbouring haloes. Beyond the exclusion zone of the reference halo, clustering is found to be strongly enhanced along the major direction of the strain tensor as expected. This anisotropic clustering of haloes along filaments is further quantified by using a spherical harmonics decomposition. Furthermore, we compute the evolution of cluster-scale halo principal directions relative to those of their neighbours and show that there are strong correlations extending up to very large scales. In order to provide calculations more suitable to observational confrontations, we also utilize 2D project