Particle Physics in the Sky and Astrophysics Underground: Connecting the Universe's Largest and Smallest Scales

Abstract

Particles have tremendous potential as astronomical messengers, and conversely, studying the universe as a whole also teaches us about particle physics. This thesis encompasses both of these research directions. Many models predict a diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos from active galactic nuclei and other astrophysical sources. The "Astrophysics Underground" portion of this thesis describes a search for this neutrino flux performed by looking for very high energy upward-going muons using the Super-K detector. In addition to using particles to do astronomy, we can also use the universe itself as a particle physics lab. The "Particle Physics in the Sky" portion of this thesis focuses on extracting cosmological information from galaxy surveys. To overcome technical challenges faced by the latest galaxy surveys, we produced a comprehensive upgrade to mangle, a software package that processes the angular masks defining the survey area on the sky. We added dramatically faster algorithms and new useful features that are necessary for managing complex masks of current and next-generation galaxy surveys. With this software in hand, we utilized SDSS data to investigate the relation between galaxies and dark matter by studying relative bias, i.e., the relation between different types of galaxies. Separating galaxies by their luminosities and colors reveals a complicated picture: red galaxies are clustered more strongly than blue galaxies, with both the brightest and the faintest red galaxies showing the strongest clustering. Furthermore, red and blue galaxies tend to occupy different regions of space. In order to make precise measurements from the next generation of galaxy surveys, it will be essential to account for this complexity.

PhD thesis, MIT 2008. 169 pages, 44 figures

References in corpus (129)

• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• HEALPix -- a Framework for High Resolution Discretization, and Fast Analysis of Data Distributed on the Sphere
• Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
• Evidence for oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos
• Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP
• Cosmological parameters from CMB and other data: a Monte-Carlo approach
• Large scale bias and the peak background split
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Spectra and redshifts
• Profiles of dark haloes: evolution, scatter, and environment
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Power-spectrum analysis of the final dataset and cosmological implications
• Stable clustering, the halo model and nonlinear cosmological power spectra
• Halo Models of Large Scale Structure
• Ellipsoidal collapse and an improved model for the number and spatial distribution of dark matter haloes
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric Camera
• An analytic model for the spatial clustering of dark matter haloes
• Cosmological Constraints from the SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
• NYU-VAGC: a galaxy catalog based on new public surveys
• The Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Halo occupation numbers and galaxy bias
• The Dark Side of the Halo Occupation Distribution
• Theoretical Models of the Halo Occupation Distribution: Separating Central and Satellite Galaxies
• Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment
• High Energy Neutrinos from Astrophysical Sources: An Upper Bound
• The Luminosity and Color Dependence of the Galaxy Correlation Function
• A Measurement of Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillation Parameters by Super-Kamiokande I
• Measuring the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation scale using the SDSS and 2dFGRS
• Correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic objects
• Reconstructing the linear power spectrum of cosmological mass fluctuations
• A photometricity and extinction monitor at the Apache Point Observatory
• The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The bimodal galaxy color distribution: dependence on luminosity and environment
• Constraining Galaxy Formation and Cosmology with the Conditional Luminosity Function of Galaxies
• Relationship between environment and the broad-band optical properties of galaxies in the SDSS
• An Efficient Algorithm for Positioning Tiles in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Ultrahigh-Energy Neutrino Interactions
• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Parameter Estimation Methodology
• Estimating Fixed Frame Galaxy Magnitudes in the SDSS
• Particle Physics with High Energy Neutrinos
• The Las Campanas Redshift Survey
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The dependence of galaxy clustering on luminosity and spectral type
• SDSS Data Management and Photometric Quality Assessment
• Nonlinear Evolution of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Luminosity dependence of galaxy clustering
• The dependence on environment of the color-magnitude relation of galaxies
• The Halo Occupation Distribution and the Physics of Galaxy Formation
• On the Mass-to-Light Ratio of Large Scale Structure
• The Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Monitor Telescope Pipeline
• On the cosmic ray bound for models of extragalactic neutrino production
• GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey; IV. Methods for the Image reduction of multi-chip Cameras
• Search for Dark Matter WIMPs using Upward Through-going Muons in Super-Kamiokande
• The Cosmological Baryon Density from the Deuterium Abundance at a redshift z = 3.57
• The dependence of clustering on galaxy properties
• The shape of the SDSS DR5 galaxy power spectrum
• Including Systematic Uncertainties in Confidence Interval Construction for Poisson Statistics
• Groups of Galaxies in the Two Micron All-Sky Redshift Survey
• CMB Observables and Their Cosmological Implications
• The Scale Dependence of Halo and Galaxy Bias: Effects in Real Space
• Muon Track Reconstruction and Data Selection Techniques in AMANDA
• A New calculation of the atmospheric neutrino flux in a 3-dimensional scheme
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: galaxy clustering per spectral type
• Large scale bias and stochasticity of halos and dark matter
• Clustering of dark matter tracers: renormalizing the bias parameters
• The power spectrum of galaxies in the 2dF 100k redshift survey
• Constraints on Cosmic Neutrino Fluxes from the ANITA Experiment
• SDSS galaxy bias from halo mass-bias relation and its cosmological implications
• The bias field of dark matter haloes
• Non-linear Stochastic Galaxy Biasing in Cosmological Simulations
• The Pseudo-$C_l$ method: Cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectrum statistics for high precision cosmology
• A high redshift detection of the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
• Cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectrum statistics for high precision cosmology
• Cosmological baryonic and matter densities from 600,000 SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies with photometric redshifts
• Peculiar velocities of galaxies and clusters
• Search for Supernova Neutrino Bursts at Super-Kamiokande
• Why is the CMB fluctuation level 10^{-5}?
• `Eppur Si Muove': On The Motion of the Acoustic Peak in the Correlation Function
• Galaxy Occupation Statistics of Dark Matter Haloes: Observational Results
• Reconstructing Nonlinear Stochastic Bias from Velocity Space Distortions
• Correlating the CMB with Luminous Red Galaxies : The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Final Data Release
• MegaZ-LRG: A photometric redshift catalogue of one million SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
• Multi-year search for a diffuse flux of muon neutrinos with AMANDA-II
• Redshift space bias and beta from the halo model
• Stochasticity of Bias and Nonlocality of Galaxy Formation: Linear Scales
• Cross-correlation of 2MASS and WMAP3: Implications for the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
• The scale-dependence of relative galaxy bias: encouragement for the halo model description
• Observational Evidence for an Age Dependence of Halo Bias
• Galaxy Bias and Halo-Occupation Numbers from Large-Scale Clustering
• Lepton Fluxes from Atmospheric Charm
• The distribution of red and blue galaxies in groups: an empirical test of the halo model
• Discreteness Effects in Lambda Cold Dark Matter Simulations: A Wavelet-Statistical View
• The environmental dependence of galaxy clustering in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• On the Luminosity Dependence of the Galaxy Pairwise Velocity Dispersion
• The cross-correlation between galaxies of different luminosities and Colors
• Evidence for an Extended SZ Effect in WMAP Data
• Constraints on Fundamental Cosmological Parameters with Upcoming Redshifted 21 cm Observations
• The Lyman-alpha Forest as a Cosmological Tool
• Anthropic predictions for neutrino masses
• Constraining Dark Energy Evolution with Gravitational Lensing by Large Scale Structures
• Prompt atmospheric neutrinos and muons: dependence on the gluon distribution function
• Cosmic Voids and Galaxy Bias in the Halo Occupation Framework
• Search for diffuse neutrino flux from astrophysical sources with MACRO
• Yet Another Paper on Sn1987a: Large Angle Oscillations, and the Electron Neutrino Mass
• Prompt atmospheric neutrinos and muons: NLO vs LO QCD predictions
• Using the cluster mass function from weak lensing to constrain neutrino masses
• Dark Energy Probes in Light of the CMB
• High energy neutrino astronomy using upward-going muons in Super-Kamiokande-I
• The nature of the relative bias between galaxies of different spectral type in 2dFGRS
• Searching for modified gravity with baryon oscillations: from SDSS to wide field multiobject spectroscopy (WFMOS)
• Measuring the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux with down-going muons in neutrino telescopes
• Supersymmetry in Elementary Particle Physics
• Simulation of UHE muons propagation for GEANT3
• Time evolution of the stochastic linear bias of interacting galaxies on linear scales
• Marked correlations in galaxy formation models
• KM3NeT: A Next Generation Neutrino Telescope in the Mediterranean Sea
• Introduction to Non-Baryonic Dark Matter
• An improved Markov-chain Monte Carlo sampler for the estimation of cosmological parameters from CMB data
• Topological Analysis of High-Resolution CMB Maps
• An X-ray Galaxy Cluster Survey for Investigations of Dark Energy
• An analytic approximation of MDM power spectra in four dimensional parameter space
• Modeling Galaxy Clustering with Cosmological Simulations
• Likelihood Analysis of Galaxy Surveys
• Status and Results from AMANDA/IceCube