Person:

Patej, Anna

This thesis addresses the distributions of baryonic matter on three scales: the outskirts of the gas and galaxy profiles in galaxy clusters, the clustering of galaxies of galaxies on large scales and its relation to the underlying matter distribution, and the extremes of the galaxy distribution: the connections between the most distant galaxies ever discovered and the closest galaxies to our own, the Local Group Dwarfs. We begin with investigations of the outskirts of galaxy clusters, where long-standing analytical models of structure formation as well as recent simulations predict the existence of steep density jumps in the gas (the 'virial shock') and dark matter profiles near the virial radius. We describe a new method for deriving models for the gas distribution in galaxy clusters, which relies on a few basic assumptions --- including the existence of the virial shock and a coincident density jump in the dark matter --- and show a resulting profile for the gas that is in good agreement both with X-ray observations of cluster interiors and simulations of the outskirts, and requires fewer parameters than the traditional three-parameter beta-model.

Recent simulations have strengthened the arguments in favor of the existence of a dark matter density jump, arising from the accumulation of particles at the apocenter of their first orbit. Since cluster member galaxies are expected to follow similar collisionless dynamics as the dark matter, the galaxy density profile should show a steep density jump as well. We present evidence for a feature consistent with a density jump in galaxy density profiles constructed from photometry from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hectospec (MMT) spectroscopy of cluster members and discuss avenues for probing the density jumps with future data sets.

Moving to larger scales where massive galaxies of different types are expected to trace the same large-scale structure, we present a test of this prediction by measuring the clustering of red and blue galaxies at z~0.6 using the CMASS sample of galaxies from the 12th Data Release of SDSS-III. The stochasticity between these two samples is quantified via the correlation coefficient r, which can be constructed from two different statistics. Both statistics indicate that on intermediate scales (20 < R < 100 Mpc/h) there is low stochasticity between the two samples of galaxies, providing a constraint on a key systematic in using large galaxy redshift surveys for cosmology.

In cosmology, dense redshift surveys permit the measurement of the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), which appear as a modest amplification at scales of about R = 105 Mpc/h in the two-point auto-correlation function of galaxies, provided that there is a sufficiently high density of galaxies with accurately measured three-dimensional positions. As a result, due to the expense of spectroscopic observations, to date most BAO analyses have been performed at fairly low redshifts where present surveys can attain the requisite densities without sacrificing efficiency. We present a new method of measuring the BAO using the cross-correlation of a sparse spectroscopic sample with a denser, photometric sample of galaxies that will allow us to extend BAO measurements to higher redshifts than are presently accessible with spectroscopy alone. We discuss applications of this new method to current and upcoming datasets.

Finally, we connect galaxies both near --- the Local Group dwarf galaxies --- and far --- the high-redshift galaxies discovered by space-based observatories like Hubble and Spitzer. We evolve the local dwarfs back in time using stellar population synthesis code and juxtapose the properties of their ancient selves against those of the galaxies already discovered at high redshift. We additionally compare the properties of the dwarfs' progenitors with the detection limits of the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), finding that JWST should be able to detect the progenitors of galaxies similar to a few of the brightest local galaxies.

We describe a method for measuring the integrated Comptonization (Y SZ) of clusters of galaxies from measurements of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect in multiple frequency bands and use this method to characterize a sample of galaxy clusters detected in the South Pole Telescope (SPT) data. We use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to fit a β-model source profile and integrate Y SZ within an angular aperture on the sky. In simulated observations of an SPT-like survey that include cosmic microwave background anisotropy, point sources, and atmospheric and instrumental noise at typical SPT-SZ survey levels, we show that we can accurately recover β-model parameters for inputted clusters. We measure Y SZ for simulated semi-analytic clusters and find that Y SZ is most accurately determined in an angular aperture comparable to the SPT beam size. We demonstrate the utility of this method to measure Y SZ and to constrain mass scaling relations using X-ray mass estimates for a sample of 18 galaxy clusters from the SPT-SZ survey. Measuring Y SZ within a 0farcm75 radius aperture, we find an intrinsic log-normal scatter of 21% ± 11% in Y SZ at a fixed mass. Measuring Y SZ within a 0.3 Mpc projected radius (equivalent to 0farcm75 at the survey median redshift z = 0.6), we find a scatter of 26% ± 9%. Prior to this study, the SPT observable found to have the lowest scatter with mass was cluster detection significance. We demonstrate, from both simulations and SPT observed clusters that Y SZ measured within an aperture comparable to the SPT beam size is equivalent, in terms of scatter with cluster mass, to SPT cluster detection significance.

The dwarf galaxies of the Local Group are believed to be similar to the most abundant galaxies during the epoch of reionization (z>6). As a result of their proximity, there is a wealth of information that can be obtained about these galaxies; however, due to their low surface brightnesses, detecting their progenitors at high redshifts is challenging. We compare the physical properties of these dwarf galaxies to those of galaxies detected at high redshifts using Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer observations and consider the promise of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope on the prospects for detecting high redshift analogues of these galaxies.

Recent simulations have indicated that the dark matter halos of galaxy clusters should feature steep density jumps near the virial radius. Since the member galaxies are expected to follow similar collisionless dynamics as the dark matter, the galaxy density profile should show such a feature as well. We examine the potential of current datasets to test this prediction by selecting cluster members for a sample of 56 low-redshift (0.1<z<0.3) galaxy clusters, constructing their projected number density profiles, and fitting them with two profiles, one with a steep density jump and one without. Additionally, we investigate the presence of a jump using a non-parametric spline approach. We find that some of these clusters show strong evidence for a model with a density jump. We discuss avenues for further analysis of the density jump with future datasets.