The number density of small dark matter (DM) halos hosting faint high-redshift galaxies is sensitive to the DM free-streaming properties. However, constraining these DM properties is complicated by degeneracies with the uncertain baryonic physics governing star formation. In this work, we use a flexible astrophysical model and a Bayesian inference framework to analyse ultra-violet (UV) luminosity functions (LFs) at z=6-8. We vary the complexity of the galaxy model (single vs double power law for the stellar -- halo mass relation) as well as the matter power spectrum (cold DM vs thermal relic warm DM), comparing their Bayesian evidences. Adopting a conservatively wide prior range for the WDM particle mass, we show that the UV LFs at z=6-8 only weakly favour CDM over WDM. We find that particle masses of $\lesssim$2 keV are rejected at a 95% credible level in all models that have a WDM-like power spectrum cutoff. This bound should increase to ~2.5 keV with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
In a warm dark matter (WDM) cosmology, the first objects to form at z>=20 are one dimensional filaments with mean length on the order of the WDM free-streaming scale. Gao and Theuns recently claimed by using high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations that the eventual collapse of these WDM filaments along their longest axes may seed the supermassive black holes that power high-z quasars. In this picture, it is supposed that the high-z quasar luminosity function should reflect how abundant the WDM filaments are in the early universe. We derive analytically the mass function of early-universe fila…
In the warm dark matter scenario, the Press-Schechter formalism is valid only for galaxy masses greater than the "velocity dispersion cut-off". In this work we extend the predictions to masses below the velocity dispersion cut-off, and thereby address the "Missing Satellites Problem", and the rest-frame ultra-violet luminosity cut-off required to not exceed the measured reionization optical depth. We find agreement between predictions and observations of these two phenomena. As a by-product, we obtain the empirical Tully-Fisher relation from first principles.
We propose a new mechanism for the delivery of gas to the heart of galactic nuclei. We show that warm halo clouds must periodically impact galactic centers and potentially deliver a large (~10^{4-6} M_{solar}) mass of gas to the galactic nucleus in a singular event. The impact of an accreting warm halo cloud originating far in the galactic halo can, depending on mixing, produce a nuclear starburst of low metallicity stars as well as low luminosity accretion onto the central black hole. Based on multiphase cooling around a LambdaCDM distribution of halos we calculate the nuclear impact rate, th…
We study the far-infrared emission from the nearby spiral galaxy M33 in order to investigate the dust physical properties such as the temperature and the luminosity density across the galaxy. Taking advantage of the unique wavelength coverage (100, 160, 250, 350 and 500 micron) of the Herschel Space Observatory and complementing our dataset with Spitzer-IRAC 5.8 and 8 micron and Spitzer-MIPS 24 and 70 micron data, we construct temperature and luminosity density maps by fitting two modified blackbodies of a fixed emissivity index of 1.5. We find that the 'cool' dust grains are heated at tempera…
Using far-infrared imaging from the "Herschel Lensing Survey", we derive dust properties of spectroscopically-confirmed cluster member galaxies within two massive systems at z~0.3: the merging Bullet Cluster and the more relaxed MS2137.3-2353. Most star-forming cluster sources (~90%) have characteristic dust temperatures similar to local field galaxies of comparable infrared (IR) luminosity (T_dust ~ 30K). Several sub-LIRG (L_IR < 10^11 L_sun) Bullet Cluster members are much warmer (T_dust > 37K) with far-infrared spectral energy distribution (SED) shapes resembling LIRG-type local templates. …
Dark matter constitutes the great majority of the matter content in the Universe, but its microscopic nature remains an intriguing mystery, with profound implications for particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Here we shed light on the longstanding issue of whether the dark matter is warm or cold by combining the measurements of the galaxy luminosity functions out to high redshifts z~10 from the Hubble Space Telescope with the recent cosmological data on the reionization history of the Universe from the Planck mission. We derive robust and tight bounds on the mass of warm dark matter pa…
(Abridged) We present a detailed analysis of a large sample of 31 low-redshift, mostly radio-quiet type 1 QSOs observed with integral field spectroscopy to study their extended emission-line regions (EELRs). We focus on the ionisation state of the gas, size and luminosity of extended narrow line regions (ENLRs), which corresponds to those parts of the EELR dominated by ionisation from the QSO, as well as the kinematics of the ionised gas. We detect EELRs around 19 of our 31 QSOs (61%) after deblending the unresolved QSO emission and the extended host galaxy light in the integral field data. We…
It has long been thought that there is a connection between ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), quasars, and major mergers. Indeed, simulations show that major mergers are capable of triggering massive starbursts and quasars. However, observations by the Herschel Space Observatory suggest that, at least at high redshift, there may not always be a simple causal connection between ULIRGs and mergers. Here, we combine an evolving merger-triggered AGN luminosity function with a merger-triggered starburst model to calculate the maximum contribution of major mergers to the ULIRG population. We…
We infer mechanisms of galaxy formation for a broad family of semi-analytic models (SAMs) constrained by the K-band luminosity function and HI mass function of local galaxies using tools of Bayesian analysis. Even with a broad search in parameter space the whole model family fails to match to constraining data. In the best fitting models, the star formation and feedback parameters in low-mass haloes are tightly constrained by the two data sets, and the analysis reveals several generic failures of models that similarly apply to other existing SAMs. First, based on the assumption that baryon acc…
In models with dark matter made of particles with keV masses, such as a sterile neutrino, small-scale density perturbations are suppressed, delaying the period at which the lowest mass galaxies are formed and therefore shifting the reionization processes to later epochs. In this study, focusing on Warm Dark Matter (WDM) with masses close to its present lower bound, i.e. around the $3$ keV region, we derive constraints from galaxy luminosy functions, the ionization history and the Gunn-Peterson effect. We show that even if star formation efficiency in the simulations is adjusted to match the ob…
Much of the cosmological utility thus far extracted from Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) relies on the assumption that SN~Ia peak luminosities do not evolve significantly with the age (local or global) of their stellar environments. Two recent studies have provided conflicting results in evaluating the validity of this assumption, with one finding no correlation between Hubble residuals (HR) and stellar environment age, while the other claims a significant correlation. In this Letter we perform an independent reanalysis that rectifies issues with the statistical methods employed by both of the afo…
We compute the mass function of galactic dark matter halos for different values of the Warm Dark Matter (WDM) particle mass m_X and compare it with the abundance of ultra-faint galaxies derived from the deepest UV luminosity function available so far at redshift z~2. The magnitude limit M_UV=-13 reached by such observations allows us to probe the WDM mass functions down to scales close to or smaller than the half-mass mode mass scale ~10^9 M_sun. This allowed for an efficient discrimination among predictions for different m_X which turn out to be independent of the star formation efficiency ad…
The cosmic distance duality relation (CDDR), $D_{\rm L}(1+z)^{-2}/D_{\rm A}=η=1$, with $D_{\rm L}$ and $D_{\rm A}$, being the luminosity and angular diameter distances, respectively, is a crucial premise in cosmological scenarios. Many investigations try to test CDDR through observational approaches, even some of these ones also consider a deformed CDDR, i.e., $η=η(z)$. In this paper, we use type Ia supernovae luminosity distances and galaxy cluster measurements (their angular diameter distances and gas mass fractions) in order to perform a Bayesian model comparison between $ η(z) $ functions.…
Recent measurements of the abundance of AGN with low-luminosities (L_X< 10^44 erg/s in the 2-10 keV energy band) at high redshifts z>4 provide a serious challenge for Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models based on interaction-driven fueling of AGN. Using a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation we investigate how such observations fit in a Warm Dark Matter (WDM) scenario of galaxy formation, and compare the results with those obtained in the standard CDM scenario with different efficiencies for the stellar feedback. Taking on our previous exploration of galaxy formation in WDM cosmology, we assume as…
By means of a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, we show how the local observed relation between age and galactic stellar mass is affected by assuming a DM power spectrum with a small-scale cutoff. We compare results obtained by means of both a Lambda-cold dark matter (LambdaCDM) and a Lambda-warm dark matter (LambdaWDM) power spectrum - suppressed with respect to the LambdaCDM at scales below ~ 1 Mpc. We show that, within a LWDM cosmology with a thermal relic particle mass of 0.75 keV, both the mass-weighted and the luminosity-weighted age-mass relations are steeper than those obtained …
We conduct Bayesian model inferences from the observed K-band luminosity function of galaxies in the local Universe, using the semi-analytic model (SAM) of galaxy formation introduced in Lu et al (2011). The prior distributions for the 14 free parameters include a large range of possible models. We find that some of the free parameters, e.g. the characteristic scales for quenching star formation in both high-mass and low-mass halos, are already tightly constrained by the single data set. The posterior distribution includes the model parameters adopted in other SAMs. By marginalising over the p…
In this paper we investigate how the Reionization process is affected by early galaxy formation in different cosmological scenarios. We use a semi-analytic model with suppressed initial power spectra to obtain the UV Luminosity Function in thermal Warm Dark Matter and sterile neutrino cosmologies. We retrace the ionization history of intergalactic medium with hot stellar emission only, exploiting fixed and variable photons escape fraction models ($f_{esc}$). For each cosmology, we find an upper limit to fixed $f_{esc}$, which guarantees the completion of the process at $z<6.7$. The analysis is…
We test the luminosity function of Milky Way satellites as a constraint for the nature of Dark Matter particles. We perform dissipationless high-resolution N-body simulations of the evolution of Galaxy-sized halo in the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model and in four Warm Dark Matter (WDM) scenarios, with a different choice for the WDM particle mass (m_w). We then combine the results of the numerical simulations with semi-analytic models for galaxy formation, to infer the properties of the satellite population. Quite surprisingly we find that even WDM models with relatively low m_w values (2…
Measurements of the equation of state of dark energy from surveys of thousands of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) will be limited by spectroscopic follow-up and must therefore rely on photometric identification, increasing the chance that the sample is contaminated by Core Collapse Supernovae (CC SNe). Bayesian methods for supernova cosmology can remove contamination bias while maintaining high statistical precision but are sensitive to the choice of parameterization of the contaminating distance distribution. We use simulations to investigate the form of the contaminating distribution and its dep…
Using the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope, we observed the Antennae galaxies obtaining spectral maps of the entire central region and high signal-to-noise 5-38 um spectra of the two galactic nuclei and six infrared-luminous regions. The total infrared luminosity of our six IR peaks plus the two nuclei is L_IR = 3.8x10^10 L_o, with their derived star formation rates ranging between 0.2 and 2 M_o/yr, with a total of 6.6 M_o/yr. The hardest and most luminous radiation originates from two compact clusters in the southern part of the overlap region, which also have the highest …
We present a Bayesian hierarchical inference formalism (Basilisk) to constrain the galaxy-halo connection using satellite kinematics. Unlike traditional methods, Basilisk does not resort to stacking the kinematics of satellite galaxies in bins of central luminosity, and does not make use of summary statistics, such as satellite velocity dispersion. Rather, Basilisk leaves the data in its raw form and computes the corresponding likelihood. In addition, Basilisk can be applied to flux-limited, rather than volume-limited samples, greatly enhancing the quantity and dynamic range of the data. And f…
We consider how the radiation pressure of an accreting supermassive hole (SMBH) affects the interstellar medium around it. Much of the gas originally surrounding the hole is swept into a shell with a characteristic radius somewhat larger than the black hole's radius of influence ($\sim$ 1-100 pc). The shell has a mass directly comparable to the ($M - σ$) mass the hole will eventually reach, and may have a complex topology. We suggest that outflows from the central supermassive black holes are halted by collisions with the shell, and that this is the origin of the warm absorber components frequ…
Galaxy formation during the first billion years of our Universe remains a challenging problem at the forefront of astrophysical cosmology. Although these $z \geq 6$ galaxies are likely responsible for the last major phase change of our Universe, the epoch of reionization (EoR), detailed studies are possible only for relatively rare, bright objects. Characterizing the fainter galaxies which are more representative of the population as a whole is currently done mainly through their non-ionizing UV luminosity function (LF). Observing the faint end of the UV LFs is nevertheless challenging, and cu…
A statistical analysis of the observed perturbations in the density of stellar streams can in principle set stringent contraints on the mass function of dark matter subhaloes, which in turn can be used to constrain the mass of the dark matter particle. However, the likelihood of a stellar density with respect to the stream and subhaloes parameters involves solving an intractable inverse problem which rests on the integration of all possible forward realisations implicitly defined by the simulation model. In order to infer the subhalo abundance, previous analyses have relied on Approximate Baye…
The total infrared (TIR) luminosity from galaxies can be used to examine both star formation and dust physics. We provide here new relations to estimate the TIR luminosity from various Spitzer bands, in particular from the 8 micron and 24 micron bands. To do so, we use 45" subregions within a subsample of nearby face-on spiral galaxies from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS) that have known oxygen abundances as well as integrated galaxy data from the SINGS, the Local Volume Legacy Survey (LVL) and Engelbracht et al. (2008) samples. Taking into account the oxygen abundances of …
We present a new efficient technique for measuring evolution of the galaxy luminosity function. The method reconstructs the evolution over the luminosity-redshift plane using any combination of three input dataset types: 1) number counts, 2) galaxy redshifts, 3) integrated background flux measurements. The evolution is reconstructed in adaptively sized regions of the plane according to the input data as determined by a Bayesian formalism. We demonstrate the performance of the method using a range of different synthetic input datasets. We also make predictions of the accuracy with which forthco…
We present results from an analysis of the broad-band, 0.3-195 keV, X-ray spectra of 48 Seyfert 1-1.5 sources detected in the very hard X-rays with the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). This sample is selected in an all-sky survey conducted in the 14-195 keV band. Therefore, our sources are largely unbiased towards both obscuration and host galaxy properties. Our detailed and uniform model fits to Suzaku/BAT and XMM-Newton/BAT spectra include the neutral absorption, direct power-law, reflected emission, soft excess, warm absorption, and narrow Fe K-alpha emission properties for the entire sam…
We use $N$-body simulations to show that high-redshift galaxy counts provide an interesting constraint on the nature of dark matter, specifically Warm Dark Matter (WDM), owing to the lack of early structure formation these models. Our simulations include three WDM models with thermal-production masses of 0.8 keV, 1.3 keV, and 2.6 keV, as well as CDM. Assuming a relationship between dark halo mass and galaxy luminosity that is set by the observed luminosity function at bright magnitudes, we find that 0.8 keV WDM is disfavored by direct galaxy counts in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field at $>\!\!10σ$.…
We derive and implement a full Bayesian large scale structure inference method aiming at precision recovery of the cosmological power spectrum from galaxy redshift surveys. Our approach improves over previous Bayesian methods by performing a joint inference of the three dimensional density field, the cosmological power spectrum, luminosity dependent galaxy biases and corresponding normalizations. We account for all joint and correlated uncertainties between all inferred quantities. Classes of galaxies with different biases are treated as separate sub samples. The method therefore also allows t…
In this paper, we investigate the cosmological viability of a double scalar field model motivated by warm inflation. To this end, we first set up the theoretical framework in which dark energy, dark matter and inflation are accounted for in a triple unification scheme. We then compute the overall dynamics of the model, analyzing the physical role of coupling parameters. Focussing on the late-time evolution, we test the model against current data. Specifically, using the low-redshift Pantheon Supernovae Ia and Hubble cosmic chronometers measurements, we perform a Bayesian analysis through the M…
The Milky Way's (MW) satellite population is a powerful probe of warm dark matter (WDM) models as the abundance of small substructures is very sensitive to the properties of the WDM particle. However, only a partial census of the MW's complement of satellite galaxies exists because surveys of the MW's close environs are incomplete both in depth and in sky coverage. We present a new Bayesian analysis that combines the sample of satellites recently discovered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) with those found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to estimate the total satellite galaxy luminosity …
The Radius-Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei with Hierarchical Bayesian Reverberation Mapping
University of Queensland（昆士兰大学）；Macquarie University（麦考瑞大学）；Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre, Macquarie University（麦考瑞大学天体物理与空间技术中心）；The Ohio State University（俄亥俄州立大学）；Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University（斯坦福大学卡弗里粒子天体物理学与宇宙学研究所）；Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）；Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, A28, University of Sydney（悉尼大学A28物理学院悉尼天文研究所）
We explore a cosmological model composed by a dark matter fluid interacting with a dark energy fluid. The interaction term has the non-linear lambda*(rho_m)^alpha * (rho_e)^beta form, where rho_m and rho_e are the energy densities of the dark matter and dark energy, respectively. The parameters alpha and beta are in principle not constrained to take any particular values, and were estimated from observations. We perform an analytical study of the evolution equations, finding the fixed points and their stability properties in order to characterize suitable physical regions in the phase space of…
A hierarchical Bayesian framework for cosmology using Type 1 AGN variability
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天文学研究所）；Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学卡弗里宇宙学研究所）；Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学应用数学与理论物理系）
We show that the recently measured UV luminosity functions of ultra-faint lensed galaxies at z= 6 in the Hubble Frontier Fields provide an unprecedented probe for the mass m_X of the Warm Dark Matter candidates independent of baryonic physics. Comparing the measured abundance of the faintest galaxies with the maximum number density of dark matter halos in WDM cosmologies sets a robust limit m_X> 2.9 keV for the mass of thermal relic WDM particles at a 1-sigma confidence level, m_X> 2.4 keV at 2-sigma, and m_X> 2.1 keV at 3-sigma. These constitute the tightest constraints on WDM particle mass d…
The location of warm dust producing the Mid-infrared (MIR) emission in Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) is complex and not yet fully known. We explore this problem by studying how the MIR covering factor (CF_{MIR} =L_{MIR}/L_{bol}) correlates with the fundamental parameters of AGN accretion process (such as L_{bol}, black hole mass MBH, and Eddington ratio L/LEdd) and the properties of narrow emission lines (as represented by [O III] 5007), using large data sets derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Spectroscopic Survey (SDSS) and the Wide Infrared Sky Survey (WISE). Firstly we find that the …
