118867010
Inferring the redshift distribution of the cosmic infrared background
Cross-correlating the Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) maps against quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7, we estimate the intensity distribution of the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) over the redshift range 0 < z < 5.We detect redshift-dependent spatial cross-correlations between the two datasets using the 857, 545 and 353 GHz channels and we obtain upper limits at 217 GHz consistent with expectations. At all frequencies with detectable signal we infer a redshift distribution peaking around z ~ 1.2 and find the recovered spectrum to be consistent with emission arising from star forming galaxies. By assuming simple modified blackbody and Kennicutt relations, we estimate dust and star formation rate density as a function of redshift, finding results consistent with earlier multiwavelength measurements over a large portion of cosmic history. However, we note that, lacking mid-infrared coverage, we are not able to make an accurate determination of the mean temperature for the dust responsible for the CIB. Our results demonstrate that clustering-based redshift inference is a valuable tool for measuring the entire evolution history of the cosmic star formation rate from a single and homogeneous dataset.
16712090
The DRaGONS Survey: A Search for High Redshift Radio Galaxies And Heavily Obscured AGNs
We present the first results from the Distant Radio Galaxies Optically Non-detected in the SDSS (DRaGONS) Survey. Using a novel selection technique for identifying high redshift radio galaxy (HzRG) candidates, a large sample of bright (S_{1.4GHz} > 100mJy) radio sources from the FIRST survey having no optical counterpart in the SDSS is compiled. K-band imaging with the FLAMINGOS instrument on the 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak for 96 such candidates allows preliminary identification of HzRG candidates through the well-known K-z relation. Of the initial candidates, we identify 70 with magnitudes brighter than K \approx 19.5, and compute limiting magnitudes for the remainder. Assigning redshifts based on the K-z Hubble diagram gives a mean redshift for our sample of z=2.5 and a median redshift of z=2.0. This selection is also sensitive to a previously unseen population of anomalously red radio galaxies (r-K > 6.5-7), which may indicate significant obscuration at moderate redshifts. These obscured objects can be used to test the completeness of QSO surveys to the effects of reddenning. More than ten percent of our sample falls into this category, which may represent a sizable radio loud population missing from current optically selected AGN samples. We additionally identify 479 bright Extremely Red Objects (EROs) in the fields surrounding our HzRG candidates, to a magnitude of K=17.5, within a non-contiguous area of 2.38 square degrees. This constitutes a small overdensity of EROs surrounding the radio galaxy candidates over random fields, and we see possible evidence for a physical association of the EROs with the radio galaxies. However, examining the clustering of all K < 19.0 galaxies around the radio targets reveals no evidence of a global galaxy excess.
118589337
Improved photometric redshifts via enhanced estimates of system response, galaxy templates and magnitude priors
Wide, deep photometric surveys require robust photometric redshift estimates (photo-z's) for studies of large-scale structure. These estimates depend critically on accurate photometry. We describe the improvements to the photometric calibration and the photo-z estimates in the Deep Lens Survey (DLS) from correcting three of the inputs to the photo-z calculation: the system response as a function of wavelength, the spectral energy distribution templates, and template prior probabilities as a function of magnitude. We model the system response with a physical model of the MOSAIC camera's CCD, which corrects a 0.1 magnitude discrepancy in the colours of type M2 and later stars relative to the SDSS z-band photometry. We provide our estimated z-band response function for the use of other surveys that used MOSAIC before its recent detector upgrade. The improved throughput curve, template set, and Bayesian prior lead to a 20 per cent reduction in photo-z scatter and a reduction of the bias by a factor of more than two. This paper serves as both a photo-z data release description for DLS and a guide for testing the quality of photometry and resulting photo-z's generally.
119232505
Cosmic shear results from the deep lens survey - I: Joint constraints on omega_m and sigma_8 with a two-dimensional analysis
We present a cosmic shear study from the Deep Lens Survey (DLS), a deep BVRz multi-band imaging survey of five 4 deg2 fields with two National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) 4 m telescopes at Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo. For both telescopes, the change of the point-spread-function (PSF) shape across the focal plane is complicated, and the exposure-to-exposure variation of this position-dependent PSF change is significant. We overcome this challenge by modeling the PSF separately for individual exposures and CCDs with principal component analysis (PCA). We find that stacking these PSFs reproduces the final PSF pattern on the mosaic image with high fidelity, and the method successfully separates PSF-induced systematics from gravitational lensing effects. We calibrate our shears and estimate the errors, utilizing an image simulator, which generates sheared ground-based galaxy images from deep Hubble Space Telescope archival data with a realistic atmospheric turbulence model. For cosmological parameter constraints, we marginalize over shear calibration error, photometric redshift uncertainty, and the Hubble constant. We use cosmology-dependent covariances for the Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis and find that the role of this varying covariance is critical in our parameter estimation. Our current non-tomographic analysis alone constrains the Ω M -σ8 likelihood contour tightly, providing a joint constraint of Ω M = 0.262 ± 0.051 and σ8 = 0.868 ± 0.071. We expect that a future DLS weak-lensing tomographic study will further tighten these constraints because explicit treatment of the redshift dependence of cosmic shear more efficiently breaks the Ω M -σ8 degeneracy. Combining the current results with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 year (WMAP7) likelihood data, we obtain Ω M = 0.278 ± 0.018 and σ8 = 0.815 ± 0.020.
119244278
DISCOVERY OF A DISSOCIATIVE GALAXY CLUSTER MERGER WITH LARGE PHYSICAL SEPARATION
We present DLSCL J0916.2+2951 (z = 0.53), a newly discovered major cluster merger in which the collisional cluster gas has become dissociated from the collisionless galaxies and dark matter (DM). We identified the cluster using optical and weak-lensing observations as part of the Deep Lens Survey. Our follow-up observations with Keck, Subaru, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra show that the cluster is a dissociative merger and constrain the DM self-interaction cross-section {sigma}{sub DM} m{sup -1}{sub DM} {approx}< 7 cm{sup 2} g{sup -1}. The system is observed at least 0.7 {+-} 0.2 Gyr since first pass-through, thus providing a picture of cluster mergers 2-5 times further progressed than similar systems observed to date. This improved temporal leverage has implications for our understanding of merging clusters and their impact on galaxy evolution.
54796299
Galaxy-Mass Correlations on 10 Mpc Scales in the Deep Lens Survey
We examine the projected correlation of galaxies with mass from small scales (<few hundred kpc), where individual dark matter halos dominate, out to 15 Mpc, where correlated large-scale structure dominates. We investigate these profiles as a function of galaxy luminosity and redshift. Selecting 0.8 million galaxies in the Deep Lens Survey, we use photometric redshifts and stacked weak gravitational lensing shear tomography out to radial scales of 1° from the centers of foreground galaxies. We detect correlated mass density from multiple halos and large-scale structure at radii larger than the virial radius and find the first observational evidence for growth in the galaxy-mass correlation on 10 Mpc scales with decreasing redshift and fixed range of luminosity. For a fixed range of redshift, we find a scaling of projected halo mass with rest-frame luminosity similar to previous studies at lower redshift. We control systematic errors in shape measurement and photometric redshift, enforce volume completeness through absolute magnitude cuts, and explore residual sample selection effects via simulations.
32252191
Memory effects and thermodynamics in strong field plasmas
We study the evolution of a strong field plasma using a quantum Vlasov equation with a non-Markovian source term and a simple collision term, and calculate the time dependence of the energy and number density, and the temperature. The evolution of a plasma produced with BNL RHIC-like initial conditions is well described by a low density approximation to the source term. However, non-Markovian aspects should be retained to obtain an accurate description of the early stages of a CERN LHC-like plasma. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.
119344902
Valence quark distributions in the pion
We calculate the pion's valence-quark momentum-fraction probability distribution using a Dyson-Schwinger equation model. Valence quarks with an active mass of 0.30 GeV carry 71% of the pion's momentum at a resolving scale q{sub 0}=0.54 GeV=1/(0.37 fm). The shape of the calculated distribution is characteristic of a strongly bound system and, evolved from q{sub 0} to q=2 GeV, it yields first, second, and third moments in agreement with lattice and phenomenological estimates, and valence-quarks carrying 49% of the pion's momentum. However, pointwise there is a discrepancy between our calculated distribution and that hitherto inferred from parametrizations of extant pion-nucleon Drell-Yan data.
119092008
Temperature, chemical potential and the {rho}-meson
Models of QCD must confront nonperturbative phenomena such as confinement, dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB) and the formation of bound states. In addition, a unified approach should describe the deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoring phase transition exhibited by strongly-interacting matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density. Nonperturbative Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) models provide insight into a wide range of zero temperature hadronic phenomena; e.g., non-hadronic electroweak interactions of light- and heavy-mesons, and diverse meson-meson and meson-nucleon form factors. This is the foundation for their application at nonzero-(T, {mu}). Herein the authors describe the calculation of the reconfinement and chiral symmetry restoring phase boundary, and the medium dependence of {rho}-meson properties. They also introduce an extension to describe the time-evolution in the plasma of the quark's scalar and vector self energies based on a Vlasov equation.
53540181
Existence and stability of multiple solutions to the gap equation
We argue by way of examples that, as a nonlinear integral equation, the gap equation can and does possess many physically distinct solutions for the dressed-quark propagator. The examples are drawn from a class that is successful in describing a broad range of hadron physics observables. We apply the homotopy continuation method to each of our four exemplars and thereby find all solutions that exist within the interesting domains of light current-quark masses and interaction strengths; and simultaneously provide an explanation of the nature and number of the solutions, many of which may be associated with dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. Introducing a stability criterion based on the scalar and pseudoscalar susceptibilities we demonstrate, however, that for any nonzero current-quark mass only the regular Nambu solution of the gap equation is stable against perturbations. This guarantees that the existence of multiple solutions to the gap equation cannot complicate the description of phenomena in hadron physics. Dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB) is a particularly striking feature of the Standard Model, playing an important role in formation of the visible matter in the Universe [1]. It is apparent in the existence of a strongly momentum-dependent chiral-limit dressedquark mass function, M(p 2 ), which is obtained in solutions of models for QCD’s gap equation that provide a realistic description of hadron properties [2–4], and in a sharp increase in M(p 2 ) at p 2 . 2GeV 2 when the current-quark mass is nonzero but light. The latter is seen in both Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) studies [5– 7] and numerical simulations of lattice-regularised QCD [8–10]. This behaviour of the mass function must be part of any treatment of continuum strong QCD that aims to be considered realistic. The gap equation is a nonlinear integral equation. The nonlinearity gives it the power to express nonperturbative phenomena; and also leads to the curiosity that the solution is not unique. Mathematically, this should have been anticipated. However, perhaps surprisingly, it has only been established relatively recently that on a bounded, measurable domain of non-negative currentquark mass, realistic models of the QCD’s gap equation simultaneously admit more than one nonequivalent DCSB solution and also distinct solutions that may unambiguously be connected with the realization of chiral symmetry in the Wigner mode [11–13]. This feature can potentially create problems; e.g., if the additional solu
17661148
Pair creation and an x-ray free electron laser.
Using a quantum kinetic equation we study the possibility that focused beams at proposed x-ray free electron laser facilities can initiate spontaneous electron-positron pair production from the QED vacuum. Under conditions reckoned achievable at planned facilities, repeated cycles of particle creation and annihilation will take place in tune with the laser frequency. The peak particle number density is insensitive to this frequency, and one can anticipate the production of a few hundred particle pairs per laser period.