Day 78

Friday (already?).  Must read Reina's paper and comment--also check out the apartment that I want to rent in Poppelsdorf.  And Nordstadt!


Bonn Astronomisches Kolloquium
The high time resolution universe survey and its jewels
Matthew Bailes (Swinburne University of Technology)


High Time Resolution Universe Survey: for pulsars and fast transients; a ambitious survey of the Southern sky with new digital spectrometers with fast read-out time; collaboration from Australia, Germany (MPIfR), Italy and the UK.  Sister survey on the Northern sky at Effelsberg 100m.  Complete survey 1PB of data, and possibly 600+ pulsars including millisecond pulsars, sources of single pulses of emission and systems useful for testing theories of relativistic gravity.
Describe hardware based on CASPER, data processing, new interference excision techniques, and the "Diamond Planet" pulse.  GPU-based computers can search these data for accelerated pulsars in the near future, and maybe the first pulsar-black hole binary.


1109.0998
Testing general relativity on horizon scales and the primordial non-Gaussianity
Yoo, Hamaus, Seljak, Zaldarriaga


Test general relativity on horizon scales with proper GR description of the observed galaxy power spectrum (different from std Newtonian description).  The GR effects classified as two new terms that represent the velocity and the gravitational potential, coupling time evolution of galaxy number density and Hubble parameter.  Cf. density and velocity redshift-space distortion terms: former scales as H/k  and correlates real and imaginary parts of Fourier modes; latter scales as (H/k)^2 where k is the comoving wave number and H is the conformal Hubble parameter.  Use recently developed methods to reduce sampling variance and shot noise to show that in all sky galaxy redshift survey at low z the velocity term can be measured at 10-sigma if one can utilize halos of mass M>1e10 Msun, while the gravitational potential term itself can only be marginally detected.  Demonstrate tha the GR effect is not degenerate with primordial non-Gaussian signature in galaxy bias--the ability to detect the primordial non-G is little compromised.


* neat!  what is the detection significance if one can only use M>1e12 Msun galaxies?


1109.1033
Modeling techniques for measuring galaxy properties in multi-epoch surveys
Bosch


Thesis: advocate Bayesian approach to survey data reduction as a whole; focus specifically on the problem of modeling individual galaxies and stars.  Present Monte Carlo algorithm that can efficiently sample from posterior probability for a flexible class of galaxy models; propose a method for constructing and convolving these models using Gauss-Hermite ("shapelet") functions.  Designed to be efficient in multi-epoch modeling ("multifit").  Discuss how these methods are important for specific higher-level analysis, particularly WL, as well as their interaction with the many other aspects of a survey reduction pipeline.


* must read this, see if they test multifit...


1109.1121
Cosmology with Gravitational lensing
Heavens