We present a general relativistic description of galaxy clustering in a FLRW universe. The observed redshift and position of galaxies are affected by the matter fluctuations and the gravity waves between the source galaxies and the observer, and the volume element constructed by using the observables differs from the physical volume occupied by the observed galaxies. Therefore, the observed galaxy fluctuation field contains additional contributions arising from the distortion in observable quantities and these include tensor contributions as well as numerous scalar contributions. We generalize the linear bias approximation to relate the observed galaxy fluctuation field to the underlying matter distribution in a gauge-invariant way. Our full formalism is essential for the consistency of theoretical predictions. As our first application, we compute the angular auto correlation of large-scale structure and its cross correlation with CMB temperature anisotropies. We comment on the possibility of detecting primordial gravity waves using galaxy clustering and discuss further applications of our formalism.
The general relativistic description of galaxy clustering provides a complete and unified treatment of all the effects in galaxy clustering such as the redshift-space distortion, gravitational lensing, Sachs-Wolfe effects, and their relativistic effects. In particular, the relativistic description resolves the gauge issues in the standard Newtonian description of galaxy clustering by providing the gauge-invariant expression for the observed galaxy number density. The relativistic effect in galaxy clustering is significant on large scales, in which dark energy models or alternative theories of …
Relativistic effects in clustering observations have been shown to introduce scale-dependent corrections to the galaxy over-density field on large scales, which may hamper the detection of primordial non-Gaussianity $f_\textrm{NL}$ through the scale-dependent halo bias. The amplitude of relativistic corrections depends not only on the cosmological background expansion, but also on the redshift evolution and sensitivity to the luminosity threshold of the tracer population being examined, as parametrised by the evolution bias $b_\textrm{e}$ and magnification bias $s$. In this work, we propagate …
We explore the signatures of quintessence and modified gravity theories in the relativistic description of galaxy clustering within a parametrized post-Friedmann framework. For this purpose, we develop a calibration method to consistently account for horizon-scale effects in the linear parametrized Post-Friedmann perturbations of minimally and nonminimally coupled scalar-tensor theories and test it against the full model-specific fluctuations. We further study the relativistic effects in galaxy clustering for the normal and self-accelerating branches of the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati braneworld m…
Kaiser redshift-space distortion formula describes well the clustering of galaxies in redshift surveys on small scales, but there are numerous additional terms that arise on large scales. Some of these terms can be described using Newtonian dynamics and have been discussed in the literature, while the others require proper general relativistic description that was only recently developed. Accounting for these terms in galaxy clustering is the first step toward tests of general relativity on horizon scales. The effects can be classified as two terms that represent the velocity and the gravitati…
We present the second-order general relativistic description of the observed galaxy number density in a cosmological framework. The observed galaxy number density is affected by the volume and the source effects, both of which arise due to the mismatch between physical and observationally inferred quantities such as the redshift, the angular position, the volume, and the luminosity of the observed galaxies. These effects are computed to the second order in metric perturbations without choosing a gauge condition or adopting any restrictions on vector and tensor perturbations, extending the prev…
We investigate the formation, gravitational clustering and interactions of solitons in a self-interacting, non-relativistic scalar field in an expanding universe. Rapid formation of large number of solitons is driven by attractive self-interactions of the field, whereas the slower clustering of solitons is driven by gravitational forces. Driven closer together by gravity, we see a rich plethora of dynamics in the soliton "gas" including mergers, scatterings and formation of soliton binaries. The numerical simulations are complemented by analytic calculations and estimates of (i) the relevant i…
Several recent studies have shown how to properly calculate the observed clustering of galaxies in a relativistic context, and uncovered corrections to the Newtonian calculation that become significant on scales near the horizon. Here, we retrace these calculations and show that, on scales approaching the horizon, the observed galaxy power spectrum depends strongly on which gauge is assumed to relate the intrinsic fluctuations in galaxy density to matter perturbations through a linear bias relation. Starting from simple physical assumptions, we derive a gauge-invariant expression relating gala…
We perform an all-sky analysis of the general relativistic galaxy power spectrum using the well-developed spherical Fourier decomposition. Spherical Fourier analysis expresses the observed galaxy fluctuation in terms of the spherical harmonics and spherical Bessel functions that are angular and radial eigenfunctions of the Helmholtz equation, providing a natural orthogonal basis for all-sky analysis of the large-scale mode measurements. Accounting for all the relativistic effects in galaxy clustering, we compute the spherical power spectrum and its covariance matrix and compare it to the stand…
We derive all contributions to the dispersion measure (DM) of electromagnetic pulses to linear order in cosmological perturbations, including both density fluctuations and relativistic effects. We then use this result to calculate the power spectrum of DM-based cosmological observables to linear order in perturbations. In particular, we study two cases: maps of the dispersion measure from a set of localized sources (including the effects of source clustering), and fluctuations in the density of DM-selected sources. The impact of most relativistic effects is limited to large angular scales, and…
The Standard Cosmological Model predicts the existence of relic neutrinos, which are indirectly probed through the effective number of relativistic species in the early Universe. In addition, from neutrino flavour oscillations we know that at least two of the neutrino mass states have a non-zero mass. Since the expansion of the Universe has diluted the energy of relic neutrinos, those that are massive are also non relativistic today. This means that they can be trapped in strong gravitational potentials, such as the one of the Milky Way. We review the calculation of the local overdensity of re…
General relativistic effects have long been predicted to subtly influence the observed large-scale structure of the universe. The current generation of galaxy redshift surveys have reached a size where detection of such effects is becoming feasible. In this paper, we report the first detection of the redshift asymmetry from the cross-correlation function of two galaxy populations which is consistent with relativistic effects. The dataset is taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR12 CMASS galaxy sample, and we detect the asymmetry at the $2.7σ$ level by applying a shell-averaged estimator to…
Assuming a LCDM universe in a single-field inflationary scenario, we compute the three-point correlation function of the observed matter density fluctuation in the squeezed triangular configuration, accounting for all the relativistic effects at the second order in perturbations. This squeezed three-point correlation function characterizes the local-type primordial non-Gaussianity, and it has been extensively debated in literature whether there exists a prominent feature in galaxy clustering on large scales in a single-field inflationary scenario either from the primordial origin or the intrin…
Large redshift surveys of galaxies and clusters are providing the first opportunities to search for distortions in the observed pattern of large-scale structure due to such effects as gravitational redshift. We focus on non-linear scales and apply a quasi-Newtonian approach using N-body simulations to predict the small asymmetries in the cross-correlation function of two galaxy different populations. Following recent work by Bonvin et al., Zhao and Peacock and Kaiser on galaxy clusters, we include effects which enter at the same order as gravitational redshift: the transverse Doppler effect, l…
We present a first English translation and analysis of a little-known review of relativistic cosmology written by Albert Einstein in late 1932. The article, which was published in 1933 in a book of Einstein papers translated into French, contains a substantial review of static and dynamic relativistic models of the cosmos, culminating in a discussion of the Einstein-de Sitter model. The article offers a valuable contemporaneous insight into Einstein's cosmology in the 1930s and confirms that his interest lay in the development of the simplest model of the cosmos that could account for observat…
In a galaxy redshift survey the objects to be targeted for spectra are selected from a photometrically observed sample. The observed magnitudes and colours of galaxies in this parent sample will be affected by their peculiar velocities, through relativistic Doppler and relativistic beaming effects. In this paper we compute the resulting expected changes in galaxy photometry. The magnitudes of the relativistic effects are a function of redshift, stellar mass, galaxy velocity and velocity direction. We focus on the CMASS sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Baryon Oscillation Spectro…
