scholarly journals Inferring dark matter substructure with astrometric lensing beyond the power spectrum

Author(s):  
Siddharth Mishra-Sharma

Abstract Astrometry---the precise measurement of positions and motions of celestial objects---has emerged as a promising avenue for characterizing the dark matter population in our Galaxy. By leveraging recent advances in simulation-based inference and neural network architectures, we introduce a novel method to search for global dark matter-induced gravitational lensing signatures in astrometric datasets. Our method based on neural likelihood-ratio estimation shows significantly enhanced sensitivity to a cold dark matter population and more favorable scaling with measurement noise compared to existing approaches based on two-point correlation statistics, establishing machine learning as a powerful tool for characterizing dark matter using astrometric data.

2020 ◽  
Vol 494 (4) ◽  
pp. 4706-4712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Robertson ◽  
Richard Massey ◽  
Vincent Eke

ABSTRACT We assess a claim that observed galaxy clusters with mass ${\sim}10^{14} \mathrm{\, M_\odot }$ are more centrally concentrated than predicted in lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM). We generate mock strong gravitational lensing observations, taking the lenses from a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, and analyse them in the same way as the real Universe. The observed and simulated lensing arcs are consistent with one another, with three main effects responsible for the previously claimed inconsistency. First, galaxy clusters containing baryonic matter have higher central densities than their counterparts simulated with only dark matter. Secondly, a sample of clusters selected because of the presence of pronounced gravitational lensing arcs preferentially finds centrally concentrated clusters with large Einstein radii. Thirdly, lensed arcs are usually straighter than critical curves, and the chosen image analysis method (fitting circles through the arcs) overestimates the Einstein radii. After accounting for these three effects, ΛCDM predicts that galaxy clusters should produce giant lensing arcs that match those in the observed Universe.


2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (12a) ◽  
pp. 2055-2063 ◽  
Author(s):  
HONGSHENG ZHAO

The phenomena customarily described with the standard ΛCDM model are broadly reproduced by an extremely simple model in TeVeS, Bekenstein's1 modification of general relativity motivated by galaxy phenomenology. Our model can account for the acceleration of the Universe seen at SNeIa distances without a cosmological constant, and the accelerations seen in rotation curves of nearby spiral galaxies and gravitational lensing of high-redshift elliptical galaxies without cold dark matter. The model is consistent with BBN and the neutrino mass between 0.05 eV to 2 eV. The TeVeS scalar field is shown to play the effective dual roles of dark matter and dark energy, with the amplitudes of the effects controlled by a μ function of the scalar field, called the μ essence here. We also discuss outliers to the theory's predictions on multiimaged galaxy lenses and outliers on the subgalaxy scale.


2019 ◽  
Vol 488 (4) ◽  
pp. 5085-5092 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brennan ◽  
Andrew J Benson ◽  
Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine ◽  
Charles R Keeton ◽  
Leonidas A Moustakas ◽  
...  

Abstract In the cold dark matter (CDM) picture of structure formation, galaxy mass distributions are predicted to have a considerable amount of structure on small scales. Strong gravitational lensing has proven to be a useful tool for studying this small-scale structure. Much of the attention has been given to detecting individual dark matter subhaloes through lens modelling, but recent work has suggested that the full population of subhaloes could be probed using a power spectrum analysis. In this paper, we quantify the power spectrum of small-scale structure in simulated galaxies, with the goal of understanding theoretical predictions and setting the stage for using measurements of the power spectrum to test dark matter models. We use a sample of simulated galaxies generated from the galacticus semi-analytic model to determine the power spectrum distribution first in the CDM paradigm and then in a warm dark matter scenario. We find that a measurement of the slope and amplitude of the power spectrum on galaxy strong lensing scales (k ∼ 1 kpc−1) could be used to distinguish between CDM and alternate dark matter models, especially if the most massive subhaloes can be directly detected via gravitational imaging.


1988 ◽  
Vol 231 (1) ◽  
pp. 97P-103P ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Narayan ◽  
Simon D. M. White

Author(s):  
Stuart Marongwe

We report the use of Einstein rings to reveal the quantized and dynamical states of space-time in a region of impressed gravitational field as predicted by the Nexus Paradigm of quantum gravity. This in turn reveals the orbital speeds of objects found therein and the radius of curvature of the quantized space-time. Similarities between the Nexus graviton and the singular isothermal sphere (SIS) in the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm are highlighted. However unlike the singular isothermal sphere, the Nexus graviton does not contain singularities or divergent integrals. This solves the core cusp problem. In this work, data from a sample of fifteen Einstein rings published on the Cfa-Arizona Space Telescope Lens Survey (CASTLES) website is used to probe the quantized properties of space-time.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (40) ◽  
pp. 12249-12255 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Weinberg ◽  
James S. Bullock ◽  
Fabio Governato ◽  
Rachel Kuzio de Naray ◽  
Annika H. G. Peter

The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model has been remarkably successful in explaining cosmic structure over an enormous span of redshift, but it has faced persistent challenges from observations that probe the innermost regions of dark matter halos and the properties of the Milky Way’s dwarf galaxy satellites. We review the current observational and theoretical status of these “small-scale controversies.” Cosmological simulations that incorporate only gravity and collisionless CDM predict halos with abundant substructure and central densities that are too high to match constraints from galaxy dynamics. The solution could lie in baryonic physics: Recent numerical simulations and analytical models suggest that gravitational potential fluctuations tied to efficient supernova feedback can flatten the central cusps of halos in massive galaxies, and a combination of feedback and low star formation efficiency could explain why most of the dark matter subhalos orbiting the Milky Way do not host visible galaxies. However, it is not clear that this solution can work in the lowest mass galaxies, where discrepancies are observed. Alternatively, the small-scale conflicts could be evidence of more complex physics in the dark sector itself. For example, elastic scattering from strong dark matter self-interactions can alter predicted halo mass profiles, leading to good agreement with observations across a wide range of galaxy mass. Gravitational lensing and dynamical perturbations of tidal streams in the stellar halo provide evidence for an abundant population of low-mass subhalos in accord with CDM predictions. These observational approaches will get more powerful over the next few years.


Author(s):  
Takashi Hamana ◽  
Masato Shirasaki ◽  
Satoshi Miyazaki ◽  
Chiaki Hikage ◽  
Masamune Oguri ◽  
...  

Abstract We present measurements of cosmic shear two-point correlation functions (TPCFs) from Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC) first-year data, and derive cosmological constraints based on a blind analysis. The HSC first-year shape catalog is divided into four tomographic redshift bins ranging from $z=0.3$ to 1.5 with equal widths of $\Delta z =0.3$. The unweighted galaxy number densities in each tomographic bin are 5.9, 5.9, 4.3, and $2.4\:$arcmin$^{-2}$ from the lowest to highest redshifts, respectively. We adopt the standard TPCF estimators, $\xi _\pm$, for our cosmological analysis, given that we find no evidence of significant B-mode shear. The TPCFs are detected at high significance for all 10 combinations of auto- and cross-tomographic bins over a wide angular range, yielding a total signal-to-noise ratio of 19 in the angular ranges adopted in the cosmological analysis, $7^{\prime }<\theta <56^{\prime }$ for $\xi _+$ and $28^{\prime }<\theta <178^{\prime }$ for $\xi _-$. We perform the standard Bayesian likelihood analysis for cosmological inference from the measured cosmic shear TPCFs, including contributions from intrinsic alignment of galaxies as well as systematic effects from PSF model errors, shear calibration uncertainty, and source redshift distribution errors. We adopt a covariance matrix derived from realistic mock catalogs constructed from full-sky gravitational lensing simulations that fully account for survey geometry and measurement noise. For a flat $\Lambda$ cold dark matter model, we find $S\,_8 \equiv \sigma _8\sqrt{\Omega _{\rm m}/0.3}=0.804_{-0.029}^{+0.032}$, and $\Omega _{\rm m}=0.346_{-0.100}^{+0.052}$. We carefully check the robustness of the cosmological results against astrophysical modeling uncertainties and systematic uncertainties in measurements, and find that none of them has a significant impact on the cosmological constraints.


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