An Imprint of Super-Structures on the Microwave Background due to the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect

Benjamin R. Granett, Mark C. Neyrinck, István Szapudi (IfA, Hawaii)

We measure hot and cold spots on the microwave background associated with supercluster and supervoid structures identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Luminous Red Galaxy catalog. The structures give a compelling visual imprint, with a mean temperature deviation of 9.6 +/- 2.2 microK, i.e. above 4 sigma. We interpret this as a detection of the late-time Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect, in which cosmic acceleration from dark energy causes gravitational potentials to decay, heating or cooling photons passing through density crests or troughs. In a flat universe, the linear ISW effect is a direct signal of dark energy.



FIG. 1.— Stacked regions on the CMB corresponding to supervoid and supercluster structures identified in the SDSS LRG catalog. We averaged CMB cut-outs around 50 supervoids (left) and 50 superclusters (center), and the combined sample (right). The cut-outs are rotated, to align each structure’s major axis with the vertical direction. Our statistical analysis uses the raw images, but for this figure we smooth them with a Gaussian kernel with FWHM 1.4. Hot and cold spots appear in the cluster and void stacks, respectively, with a characteristic radius of 4, corresponding to spatial scales of 100 M pc/h inner circle (4 radius) and equal-area outer ring mark the extent of the compensated filter used in our analysis. Given the uncertainty in void and cluster orientations, small-scale features should be interpreted cautiously.

From the paper 'Red Nuggets at z ∼ 1.5: Compact passive galaxies and the
formation of the Kormendy Relation' by Damjanov et al (0807.1744) I chose these two plots.

We had discussions before about these tiny galaxies that Mariska and Pieter investigated. These authors do sort of the same job, but at slightly lower redshift (1.5-ish). The left plot shows the effective radius - stellar mass plane, with the dots and contours being local SDSS red galaxies. The bigger points with error bars are their (and some other) red galaxies at higher redshift, which appear to small. I show this plot, because the arrows indicate the approximate track of evolution due to three different processes: dry mergers, pure stellar mass growth without changing size and adiabatic expansion (stellar mass loss makes the systems less bound). All three processes seem incapable of transforming the galaxies towards the low - z counterparts.

The right plot shows the galaxies in the stellar mass density - effective radius plane (Kormendy relation). Here they are all on the same trend, with the high redshift galaxies smaller and denser than their local red SDSS partners. Color coding here is redshift, which appears to hint at some evolution: the higher the redshift of the galaxy, the smaller and denser it is. The main part of the evolution takes place at 1.1 < z < 1.5.

What's wrong with this picture?

(or, at least, highly suspicious--and why?):

from  Morioka et al., arXiv:0807.0101, PASJ in press.  Black dots are H-alpha emitting galaxy candidates (via a narrowband filter selection), grey regions are masked-out bright stars.  The authors use this sample to compute the clustering and luminosity function of star-forming galaxies at z=0.24, and note that the clustering in this field is stronger than in the COSMOS field.  First one to post the right answer in comments wins a beer at the next borrel.