A correlation between the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure in the Universe

Observations of distant supernovae and the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the expansion of the Universe may be accelerating under the action of a 'cosmological constant' or some other form of 'dark energy'. This dark energy now appears to dominate the Universe and not only alters its expansion rate, but also affects the evolution of fluctuations in the density of matter, slowing down the gravitational collapse of material (into, for example, clusters of galaxies) in recent times. Additional fluctuations in the temperature of CMB photons are induced as they pass through large-scale structures and these fluctuations are necessarily correlated with the distribution of relatively nearby matter. Here we report the detection of correlations between recent CMB data and two probes of large-scale structure: the X-ray background and the distribution of radio galaxies. These correlations are consistent with those predicted by dark energy, indicating that we are seeing the imprint of dark energy on the growth of structure in the Universe.     

A geometric measure of dark energy with pairs of galaxies

Observations indicate that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, which is attributed to a ‘dark energy’ component that opposes gravity. There is a purely geometric test of the expansion of the Universe (the Alcock–Paczynski test), which would provide an independent way of investigating the abundance (Ω(X)) and equation of state (W(X)) of dark energy. It is based on an analysis of the geometrical distortions expected from comparing the real-space and redshift-space shape of distant cosmic structures, but it has proved difficult to implement. Here we report an analysis of the symmetry properties of distant pairs of galaxies from archival data. This allows us to determine that the Universe is flat. By alternately fixing its spatial geometry at Ω(k)≡0 and the dark energy equation-of-state parameter at W(X)≡-1, and using the results of baryon acoustic oscillations, we can establish at the 68.3% confidence level that and -0.85>W(X)>-1.12 and 0.60<Ω(X)<0.80.     

A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation

The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73 K cosmic microwave background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the microwave background in the form of small anisotropies in its temperature. These anisotropies contain information about basic cosmological parameters, particularly the total energy density and curvature of the Universe. Here we report the first images of resolved structure in the microwave background anisotropies over a significant part of the sky. Maps at four frequencies clearly distinguish the microwave background from foreground emission. We compute the angular power spectrum of the microwave background, and find a peak at Legendre multipole Ipeak = (197 +/- 6), with an amplitude delta T200 = (69 +/- 8) microK. This is consistent with that expected for cold dark matter models in a flat (euclidean) Universe, as favoured by standard inflationary models.     

X-ray clusters of galaxies as tracers of structure in the Universe

Clusters of galaxies are visible tracers of the network of matter in the Universe, marking the high-density regions where filaments of dark matter join together. When observed at X-ray wavelengths these clusters shine like cosmic lighthouses, as a consequence of the hot gas trapped within their gravitational potential wells. The X-ray emission is linked directly to the total mass of a cluster, and so can be used to investigate the mass distribution for a sizeable fraction of the Universe. The picture that has emerged from recent studies is remarkably consistent with the predictions for a low-density Universe dominated by cold dark matter.     

The moment of truth for WIMP dark matter

We know that dark matter constitutes 85 per cent of all the matter in the Universe, but we do not know of what it is made. Amongst the many dark matter candidates proposed, WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) occupy a special place, because they arise naturally from new theories that seek to extend the standard model of particle physics. With the advent of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and a new generation of astroparticle experiments, the moment of truth has come for WIMPs: either we will discover them in the next five to ten years, or we will witness their inevitable decline.     

黏滞性流体与宇宙年龄问题

在宇宙的演化过程当中,经历了暴胀、辐射以及物质为主时期.如果宇宙现在仍处于物质为主时期,那么理论上所得到的宇宙年龄大概是在80～100亿年左右.另一方面,人们测得一些古老星团的年龄超过了110亿年,由此可见,理论预言与观测结果不相符合,这就是宇宙的年龄问题.当前的观测表明宇宙正处于加速膨胀时期,人们通常将加速的原因归结于宇宙中存在着一种被称为暗能量的物质组分.人们进一步发现由于这种组分可以使理论上预言的宇宙年龄变大,从而缓解了宇宙年龄问题.可是,最新的观测表明,仍有一些天体的年龄比预言的宇宙年龄要大,比如说类星体APM08279＋5255,它在红移等于3.91时的年龄大概是21亿年,超过了当时的宇宙年龄.事实上,通常人们在研究宇宙学中,仅仅考虑了理想流体这一简单模型,而该模型可能过于简单.因此,本文将考虑带有黏滞性的流体.通过引入黏滞性,宇宙的年龄问题被进一步缓解了.尽管,本文考虑一类被称为Ricci暗能量的模型,但是所得到的结论可以推广和应用到各种暗能量模型中.     

Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars

The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical picture for the formation of structure in the Universe. This model, together with the theory of cosmic inflation, makes a clear prediction for the initial conditions for structure formation and predicts that structures grow hierarchically through gravitational instability. Testing this model requires that the precise measurements delivered by galaxy surveys can be compared to robust and equally precise theoretical calculations. Here we present a simulation of the growth of dark matter structure using 2,160(3) particles, following them from redshift z = 127 to the present in a cube-shaped region 2.230 billion lightyears on a side. In postprocessing, we also follow the formation and evolution of the galaxies and quasars. We show that baryon-induced features in the initial conditions of the Universe are reflected in distorted form in the low-redshift galaxy distribution, an effect that can be used to constrain the nature of dark energy with future generations of observational surveys of galaxies.     

Earth-mass dark-matter haloes as the first structures in the early Universe

The Universe was nearly smooth and homogeneous before a redshift of z = 100, about 20 million years after the Big Bang. After this epoch, the tiny fluctuations imprinted upon the matter distribution during the initial expansion began to collapse because of gravity. The properties of these fluctuations depend on the unknown nature of dark matter, the determination of which is one of the biggest challenges in present-day science. Here we report supercomputer simulations of the concordance cosmological model, which assumes neutralino dark matter (at present the preferred candidate), and find that the first objects to form are numerous Earth-mass dark-matter haloes about as large as the Solar System. They are stable against gravitational disruption, even within the central regions of the Milky Way. We expect over 10(15) to survive within the Galactic halo, with one passing through the Solar System every few thousand years. The nearest structures should be among the brightest sources of gamma-rays (from particle-particle annihilation).     

暗能量的射电探测——天籁计划简介

宇宙中的中性氢原子产生波长为21cm的辐射,其强度在大尺度上正比于物质密度.通过射电观测这一辐射,可以获得宇宙中物质分布的大尺度结构.利用大尺度结构功率谱中的重子声波振荡信号作为标准尺,可以进行高精度的宇宙学测量,确定暗能量状态方程参数w,这提供了一种重要的暗能量观测手段.我国在射电天文及相关技术方面有一定基础,且国内即有电磁环境良好的站址,有很好的条件开展这方面的研究.如能及时着手,有可能在这一领域中取得领先,并在暗能量研究中取得突破.本文介绍了通过21cm巡天对暗能量进行观测的方法,并讨论了天籁计划具体实验设想.     

Detection of polarization in the cosmic microwave background using DASI. Degree Angular Scale Interferometer

The past several years have seen the emergence of a standard cosmological model, in which small temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation on angular scales of the order of a degree are understood to arise from acoustic oscillations in the hot plasma of the early Universe, arising from primordial density fluctuations. Within the context of this model, recent measurements of the temperature fluctuations have led to profound conclusions about the origin, evolution and composition of the Universe. Using the measured temperature fluctuations, the theoretical framework predicts the level of polarization of the CMB with essentially no free parameters. Therefore, a measurement of the polarization is a critical test of the theory and thus of the validity of the cosmological parameters derived from the CMB measurements. Here we report the detection of polarization of the CMB with the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI). The polarization is deteced with high confidence, and its level and spatial distribution are in excellent agreement with the predictions of the standard theory.     

A common mass scale for satellite galaxies of the Milky Way

The Milky Way has at least twenty-three known satellite galaxies that shine with luminosities ranging from about a thousand to a billion times that of the Sun. Half of these galaxies were discovered in the past few years in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and they are among the least luminous galaxies in the known Universe. A determination of the mass of these galaxies provides a test of galaxy formation at the smallest scales and probes the nature of the dark matter that dominates the mass density of the Universe. Here we use new measurements of the velocities of the stars in these galaxies to show that they are consistent with them having a common mass of about 10(7) within their central 300 parsecs. This result demonstrates that the faintest of the Milky Way satellites are the most dark-matter-dominated galaxies known, and could be a hint of a new scale in galaxy formation or a characteristic scale for the clustering of dark matter.     

Gravitational detection of a low-mass dark satellite galaxy at cosmological distance

The mass function of dwarf satellite galaxies that are observed around Local Group galaxies differs substantially from simulations based on cold dark matter: the simulations predict many more dwarf galaxies than are seen. The Local Group, however, may be anomalous in this regard. A massive dark satellite in an early-type lens galaxy at a redshift of 0.222 was recently found using a method based on gravitational lensing, suggesting that the mass fraction contained in substructure could be higher than is predicted from simulations. The lack of very low-mass detections, however, prohibited any constraint on their mass function. Here we report the presence of a (1.9?±?0.1)?×?10(8) M dark satellite galaxy in the Einstein ring system JVAS B1938+666 (ref. 11) at a redshift of 0.881, where M denotes the solar mass. This satellite galaxy has a mass similar to that of the Sagittarius galaxy, which is a satellite of the Milky Way. We determine the logarithmic slope of the mass function for substructure beyond the local Universe to be 1.1(+0.6)(-0.4), with an average mass fraction of 3.3(+3.6)(-1.8) per cent, by combining data on both of these recently discovered galaxies. Our results are consistent with the predictions from cold dark matter simulations at the 95 per cent confidence level, and therefore agree with the view that galaxies formed hierarchically in a Universe composed of cold dark matter.     

宇宙中物质的压力对宇宙年龄的影响

在标准宇宙学模型中,非相对论性物质(以下简称为物质)被视为无压的尘埃粒子[1],然而其合理性并未定量地证实过.Peebles[2]也曾提到过考虑宇宙中物质压力的必要性.目前的研究表明,在冷暗物质宇宙学模型基础上,宇宙中大尺度结构形成的高精度计算机数值模拟和理论分析都预言,在星系和星系团的中心应该有一个致密的核;然而这与目前的观测如星系团的引力透镜观测等相矛盾.最近Spergel等[3]假定冷暗物质之间存在着相互作用力,即存在着热压力,并对其做了深入研究,但也并未涉及其对宇宙年龄的影响.     

Prospects for detecting supersymmetric dark matter in the Galactic halo

Dark matter is the dominant form of matter in the Universe, but its nature is unknown. It is plausibly an elementary particle, perhaps the lightest supersymmetric partner of known particle species. In this case, annihilation of dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way should produce gamma-rays at a level that may soon be observable. Previous work has argued that the annihilation signal will be dominated by emission from very small clumps (perhaps smaller even than the Earth), which would be most easily detected where they cluster together in the dark matter haloes of dwarf satellite galaxies. Here we report that such small-scale structure will, in fact, have a negligible impact on dark matter detectability. Rather, the dominant and probably most easily detectable signal will be produced by diffuse dark matter in the main halo of the Milky Way. If the main halo is strongly detected, then small dark matter clumps should also be visible, but may well contain no stars, thereby confirming a key prediction of the cold dark matter model.     

Submillimetre galaxies reside in dark matter haloes with masses greater than 3 × 10(11) solar masses

The extragalactic background light at far-infrared wavelengths comes from optically faint, dusty, star-forming galaxies in the Universe with star formation rates of a few hundred solar masses per year. These faint, submillimetre galaxies are challenging to study individually because of the relatively poor spatial resolution of far-infrared telescopes. Instead, their average properties can be studied using statistics such as the angular power spectrum of the background intensity variations. A previous attempt at measuring this power spectrum resulted in the suggestion that the clustering amplitude is below the level computed with a simple ansatz based on a halo model. Here we report excess clustering over the linear prediction at arcminute angular scales in the power spectrum of brightness fluctuations at 250, 350 and 500?μm. From this excess, we find that submillimetre galaxies are located in dark matter haloes with a minimum mass, M(min), such that log(10)[M(min)/M(⊙)] = 11.5(+0.7)(-0.2) at 350?μm, where M(⊙) is the solar mass. This minimum dark matter halo mass corresponds to the most efficient mass scale for star formation in the Universe, and is lower than that predicted by semi-analytical models for galaxy formation.     

The removal of cusps from galaxy centres by stellar feedback in the early Universe

The standard cosmological model, now strongly constrained by direct observations of the Universe at early epochs, is very successful in describing the evolution of structure on large and intermediate scales. Unfortunately, serious contradictions remain on smaller, galactic scales. Among the main small-scale problems is a significant and persistent discrepancy between observations of nearby galaxies, which imply that galactic dark matter haloes have a density profile with a flat core, and the cosmological model, which predicts that the haloes should have divergent density (a cusp) at the centre. Here we report numerical simulations that show that random bulk motions of gas in small primordial galaxies, of the magnitude expected in these systems, will result in a flattening of the central dark matter cusp on relatively short timescales (approximately 10(8) years). Gas bulk motions in early galaxies are driven by supernova explosions that result from ongoing star formation. Our mechanism is general, and would have operated in all star-forming galaxies at redshifts z > or = 10. Once removed, the cusp cannot be reintroduced during the subsequent mergers involved in the build-up of larger galaxies. As a consequence, in the present Universe both small and large galaxies would have flat dark matter core density profiles, in agreement with observations.     

Dark matter maps reveal cosmic scaffolding

Ordinary baryonic particles (such as protons and neutrons) account for only one-sixth of the total matter in the Universe. The remainder is a mysterious 'dark matter' component, which does not interact via electromagnetism and thus neither emits nor reflects light. As dark matter cannot be seen directly using traditional observations, very little is currently known about its properties. It does interact via gravity, and is most effectively probed through gravitational lensing: the deflection of light from distant galaxies by the gravitational attraction of foreground mass concentrations. This is a purely geometrical effect that is free of astrophysical assumptions and sensitive to all matter--whether baryonic or dark. Here we show high-fidelity maps of the large-scale distribution of dark matter, resolved in both angle and depth. We find a loose network of filaments, growing over time, which intersect in massive structures at the locations of clusters of galaxies. Our results are consistent with predictions of gravitationally induced structure formation, in which the initial, smooth distribution of dark matter collapses into filaments then into clusters, forming a gravitational scaffold into which gas can accumulate, and stars can be built.     

暗物质的天文学探测

 暗物质和暗能量是宇宙主要的组成部分,被认为是"笼罩在21世纪物理学上的两朵乌云",是基础物理与宇宙学研究最前沿的方向之一。对暗物质突破性的研究进展将极大促进人们对基本自然规律以及宇宙演化的理解。国际上对暗物质的研究极为重视,美国和欧洲都为之进行了详细周密的规划,开展了一系列的相关项目规划。中国也将暗物质的研究纳入了中长期规划,在过去的几年中国在暗物质探测方面实现了长足进步,在四川锦屏山地下实验室开展多项暗物质直接探测试验,暗物质粒子卫星作为中国空间科学先导专项的首发星,也是中国发射的第1颗天文卫星,2015年12月成功发射。通过观测暗物质粒子湮灭后的粒子产物,有可能在间接探测方向实现对暗物质研究的革命性突破。本文简介暗物质概念提出的历史与暗物质探测的天文学观测手段。     

核心坍缩超新星中心黑洞超吸积在星系尺度上的贡献

核心坍缩超新星(Core-Collapse Supernova,CCSN)是大质量恒星演化末期的爆发现象,产生了宇宙中大多数的中子星和恒星级黑洞等致密天体.爆发可能伴随着强磁场中子星或黑洞超吸积引发的剧烈长时标伽马射线暴.CCSN还被认为是宇宙重元素的主要来源之一.本综述介绍了我们近期对CCSN中心黑洞超吸积过程的系列研究成果,主要包括研究了大质量星系中心附近伽马射线暴余辉阶段,因大量暗物质粒子湮灭电子注入而引发的光变和能谱的形态变化,探讨了其作为暗物质探测手段的可能性;研究了坍缩星框架下,中微子主导吸积流外流对核合成的贡献,及对太阳临近空间、(活动)星系等化学组分和演化的影响;最后,从数值模拟角度讨论了CCSN起源的致密天体质量分布,给出了低质量间隙可能起源于CCSN爆发能量分布的结论.     

Spectral signature of cosmological infall of gas around the first quasars

Recent observations have shown that, only a billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was already lit up by bright quasars fuelled by the infall of gas onto supermassive black holes. The masses of these early black holes are inferred from their luminosities to be >10(9) solar masses (M(O)), which is a difficult theoretical challenge to explain. Like nearby quasars, the early objects could have formed in the central cores of massive host galaxies. The formation of these hosts could be explained if, like local large galaxies, they were assembled gravitationally inside massive (> 10(12) M(O)) haloes of dark matter. There has hitherto been no observational evidence for the presence of these massive hosts or their surrounding haloes. Here we show that the cosmic gas surrounding each halo must respond to its strong gravitational pull, where absorption by the infalling hydrogen produces a distinct spectral signature. That signature can be seen in recent data.