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Full-Text Articles in Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity

The Halo Occupation Distribution Of X-Ray-Bright Active Galactic Nuclei: A Comparison With Luminous Quasars, Jonathan Richardson, Suchetana Chatterjee, Zheng Zheng, Adam D. Myers, Ryan Hickox Dec 2013

The Halo Occupation Distribution Of X-Ray-Bright Active Galactic Nuclei: A Comparison With Luminous Quasars, Jonathan Richardson, Suchetana Chatterjee, Zheng Zheng, Adam D. Myers, Ryan Hickox

Dartmouth Scholarship

We perform halo occupation distribution (HOD) modeling of the projected two-point correlation function (2PCF) of high-redshift (z~1.2) X-ray-bright active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the XMM-COSMOS field measured by Allevato et al. The HOD parameterization is based on low-luminosity AGN in cosmological simulations. At the median redshift of z~1.2, we derive a median mass of (1.02+0.21/-0.23)x10^{13} Msun/h for halos hosting central AGN and an upper limit of ~10% on the AGN satellite fraction. Our modeling results indicate (at the 2.5-sigma level) that X-ray AGN reside in more massive halos compared to more bolometrically luminous, optically-selected quasars at similar redshift. The modeling …


Spectral Distortion In A Radially Inhomogeneous Cosmology, R. R. Caldwell, N. A. Maksimova Nov 2013

Spectral Distortion In A Radially Inhomogeneous Cosmology, R. R. Caldwell, N. A. Maksimova

Dartmouth Scholarship

The spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background blackbody spectrum in a radially inhomogeneous space-time, designed to exactly reproduce a ΛCDM expansion history along the past light cone, is shown to exceed the upper bound established by COBE-FIRAS by a factor of approximately 3700. This simple observational test helps uncover a slew of pathological features that lie hidden inside the past light cone, including a radially contracting phase at decoupling and, if followed to its logical extreme, a naked singularity at the radially inhomogeneous big bang.


Brief History Of Curvature, Robert R. Caldwell, Steven S. Gubser Mar 2013

Brief History Of Curvature, Robert R. Caldwell, Steven S. Gubser

Dartmouth Scholarship

The trace of the stress-energy tensor of the cosmological fluid, proportional to the Ricci scalar curvature in general relativity, is determined on cosmic scales for times ranging from the inflationary epoch to the present day in the expanding Universe. The post-inflationary epoch and the thermal history of the relativistic fluid, in particular the QCD transition from asymptotic freedom to confinement and the electroweak phase transition, leave significant imprints on the scalar curvature. These imprints can be of either sign and are orders of magnitude larger than the values that would be obtained by naively extrapolating the pressureless matter of the …


Effective Field Theory Approach To Gravitationally Induced Decoherence, M. P. Blencowe Jan 2013

Effective Field Theory Approach To Gravitationally Induced Decoherence, M. P. Blencowe

Dartmouth Scholarship

Adopting the viewpoint that the standard perturbative quantization of general relativity provides an effective description of quantum gravity that is valid at ordinary energies, we show that gravity as an environment induces the rapid decoherence of stationary matter superposition states when the energy differences in the superposition exceed the Planck energy scale.