The prevalence of core emission in faint radio galaxies in the SKA Simulated Skies

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 471:1 (2017) 908-913

Authors:

IH Whittam, Matthew Jarvis, DA Green, I Heywood, JM Riley

Abstract:

Empirical simulations based on extrapolations from well-established low-frequency (<5 GHz) surveys fail to accurately model the faint, high frequency (>10 GHz) source population; they underpredict the number of observed sources by a factor of 2 below S18GHz = 10 mJy and fail to reproduce the observed spectral index distribution. We suggest that this is because the faint radio galaxies are not modelled correctly in the simulations and show that by adding a flat-spectrum core component to the Fanaroff and Riley type-I (FRI) sources in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Simulated Skies, the observed 15 GHz source counts can be reproduced. We find that the observations are best matched by assuming that the fraction of the total 1.4 GHz flux density that originates from the core varies with 1.4 GHz luminosity; sources with 1.4 GHz luminosities < 1025 W Hz − 1 require a core fraction ∼0.3, while the more luminous sources require a much smaller core fraction of 5 × 10−4. The low luminosity FRI sources with high core fractions that were not included in the original simulation may be equivalent to the compact ‘FR0’ sources found in recent studies.

KiDS-450: Testing extensions to the standard cosmological model

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (2017)

Authors:

Shahab Joudaki, Alexander Mead, Chris Blake, Ami Choi, Jelte de Jong, Thomas Erben, Catherine Heymans, Hendrik Hildebrandt, Henk Hoekstra, Benjamin Joachimi, Dominik Klaes, Fabian Köhlinger, Konrad Kuijken, John McFarland, Lance Miller, Peter Schneider, Massimo Viola

Abstract:

We test extensions to the standard cosmological model with weak gravitational lensing tomography using 450 deg$^2$ of imaging data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS). In these extended cosmologies, which include massive neutrinos, nonzero curvature, evolving dark energy, modified gravity, and running of the scalar spectral index, we also examine the discordance between KiDS and cosmic microwave background measurements from Planck. The discordance between the two datasets is largely unaffected by a more conservative treatment of the lensing systematics and the removal of angular scales most sensitive to nonlinear physics. The only extended cosmology that simultaneously alleviates the discordance with Planck and is at least moderately favored by the data includes evolving dark energy with a time-dependent equation of state (in the form of the $w_0-w_a$ parameterization). In this model, the respective $S_8 = \sigma_8 \sqrt{\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3}$ constraints agree at the $1\sigma$ level, and there is `substantial concordance' between the KiDS and Planck datasets when accounting for the full parameter space. Moreover, the Planck constraint on the Hubble constant is wider than in LCDM and in agreement with the Riess et al. (2016) direct measurement of $H_0$. The dark energy model is moderately favored as compared to LCDM when combining the KiDS and Planck measurements, and remains moderately favored after including an informative prior on the Hubble constant. In both of these scenarios, the dark energy parameters are discrepant with a cosmological constant at the $3\sigma$ level. Moreover, KiDS constrains the sum of neutrino masses to 4.0 eV (95% CL), finds no preference for time or scale dependent modifications to the metric potentials, and is consistent with flatness and no running of the spectral index. The analysis code is publicly available at https://github.com/sjoudaki/kids450

CODEX weak lensing: Concentration of galaxy clusters at z ~ 0.5

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 468:1 (2017) 1092-1116

Authors:

Nathália Cibirka, Eduardo S Cypriano, Fabrice Brimioulle, Daniel Gruen, Thomas Erben, Ludovic van Waerbeke, Lance Miller, Alexis Finoguenov, Charles Kirkpatrick, J Patrick Henry, Eli Rykoff, Eduardo Rozo, Renato A Dupke, Jean-Paul Kneib, Huanyuan Shan, Patricia Spinelli

Abstract:

We present a stacked weak lensing analysis of 27 richness selected galaxy clusters at $0.40 \leqslant z \leqslant 0.62$ in the CODEX survey. The fields were observed in 5 bands with the CFHT. We measure the stacked surface mass density profile with a $14\sigma$ significance in the radial range $0.1 < R\ Mpc\ h^{-1} < 2.5$. The profile is well described by the halo model, with the main halo term following an NFW profile and including the off-centring effect. We select the background sample using a conservative colour-magnitude method to reduce the potential systematic errors and contamination by cluster member galaxies. We perform a Bayesian analysis for the stacked profile and constrain the best-fit NFW parameters $M_{200c} = 6.6^{+1.0}_{-0.8} \times 10^{14} h^{-1} M_{\odot}$ and $c_{200c} = 3.7^{+0.7}_{-0.6}$. The off-centring effect was modelled based on previous observational results found for redMaPPer SDSS clusters. Our constraints on $M_{200c}$ and $c_{200c}$ allow us to investigate the consistency with numerical predictions and select a concentration-mass relation to describe the high richness CODEX sample. Comparing our best-fit values for $M_{200c}$ and $c_{200c}$ with other observational surveys at different redshifts, we find no evidence for evolution in the concentration-mass relation, though it could be mitigated by particular selection functions. Similar to previous studies investigating the X-ray luminosity-mass relation, our data suggests a lower evolution than expected from self-similarity.

Measuring light echoes in NGC 4051

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 467:4 (2017) 3924-3933

Authors:

TJ Turner, Lance Miller, JN Reeves, V Braito

Abstract:

Five archived X-ray observations of NGC 4051, taken using the NuSTAR observatory, have been analysed, revealing lags between flux variations in bands covering a wide range of X-ray photon energy. In all pairs of bands compared, the harder band consistently lags the softer band by at least 1000s, at temporal frequencies ~5E-5 Hz. In addition, soft-band lags up to 400s are measured at frequencies ~2E-4 Hz. Light echos from an excess of soft band emission in the inner accretion disk cannot explain the lags in these data, as they are seen in cross-correlations with energy bands where the softer band is expected to have no contribution from reflection. The basic properties of the time delays have been parameterised by fitting a top hat response function that varies with photon energy, taking fully into account the covariance between measured time lag values. The low-frequency hard-band lags and the transition to soft-band lags are consistent with time lags arising as reverberation delays from circumnuclear scattering of X-rays, although greater model complexity is required to explain the entire spectrum of lags. The scattered fraction increases with increasing photon energy as expected, and the scattered fraction is high, indicating the reprocessor to have a global covering fraction ~50% around the continuum source. Circumnuclear material, possibly associated with a disk wind at a few hundred gravitational radii from the primary X-ray source, may provide suitable reprocessing.

Galaxy-halo alignments in the Horizon-AGN cosmological hydrodynamical simulation

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (2017)

Authors:

Nora E Chisari, Nick Koukoufilippas, Abhinav Jindal, Sébastien Peirani, Ricarda S Beckmann, Sandrine Codis, Julien EG Devriendt, Lance Miller, Yohan Dubois, Clotilde MC Laigle, Adrianne Slyz, Christophe Pichon

Abstract:

Intrinsic alignments of galaxies are a significant astrophysical systematic affecting cosmological constraints from weak gravitational lensing. Obtaining numerical predictions from hydrodynamical simulations of expected survey volumes is expensive, and a cheaper alternative relies on populating large dark matter-only simulations with accurate models of alignments calibrated on smaller hydrodynamical runs. This requires connecting the shapes and orientations of galaxies to those of dark matter halos and to the large-scale structure. In this paper, we characterise galaxy-halo alignments in the Horizon-AGN cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We compare the shapes and orientations of galaxies in the redshift range $0