Streaming velocities as a dynamical estimator of Omega

The mean pairwise velocity of galaxies has traditionally been estimated from the redshift space galaxy correlation function. This method is notorious for being highly sensitive to the assumed model of the pairwise velocity dispersion. Here we propose an alternative method to estimate the streaming velocity directly from peculiar velocity samples, which contain redshift-independent distances as well as galaxy redshifts. This method can provide an estimate of $\Omega^{0.6}\sigm...

Using mean relative peculiar velocity measurements for pairs of galaxies, we estimate the cosmological density parameter $\Omega_m$ and the amplitude of density fluctuations $\sigma_8$. Our results suggest that our statistic is a robust and reproducible measure of the mean pairwise velocity and thereby the $\Omega_m$ parameter. We get $\Omega_m = 0.30^{+0.17}_{-0.07}$ and $\sigma_8 = 1.13^{+0.22}_{-0.23}$. These estimates do not depend on prior assumptions on the adiabaticity...

In this paper, we develop a full statistical method for the pairwise velocity estimator previously proposed, and apply Cosmicflows-2 catalogue to this method to constrain cosmology. We first calculate the covariance matrix for line-of-sight velocities for a given catalogue, and then simulate the mock full-sky surveys from it, and then calculate the variance for the pairwise velocity field. By applying the $8315$ independent galaxy samples and compressed $5224$ group samples f...

Analyses of peculiar velocity surveys face several challenges, including low signal--to--noise in individual velocity measurements and the presence of small--scale, nonlinear flows. I will present three new analyses that attempt to address these inherent problems. The first is geared towards the better understanding of the estimated errors in the surveys, specifically sampling errors, and the resolution of the seeming disagreements between the surveys. Another develops a new ...

A simple model of how objects of different masses stream towards each other as they cluster gravitationally is described. The model shows how the mean streaming velocity of dark matter particles is related to the motions of the parent dark matter haloes. It also provides a reasonably accurate description of how the pairwise velocity dispersion of dark matter particles differs from that of the parent haloes. The analysis is then extended to describe the streaming motions of ga...

Peculiar velocities are the motions of galaxies due to the gravitational influence of large-scale structure, and thus are an important cosmological probe of the underlying matter density field. In recent years the number of surveys designed to measure peculiar velocities has increased, to the point that it is plausible that we will have completely mapped out the peculiar velocity field in the local universe within the next decade. Such an abundance of data will enable us to p...

Measurements of the peculiar velocities of large samples of galaxies enable new tests of the standard cosmological model, including determination of the growth rate of cosmic structure that encodes gravitational physics. With the size of such samples now approaching hundreds of thousands of galaxies, complex statistical analysis techniques and models are required to extract cosmological information. In this paper we summarise how correlation functions between galaxy velocitie...

The relation between the galaxy correlation function in real and redshift-space is derived in the linear regime by an appropriate averaging of the joint probability distribution of density and velocity. The derivation recovers the familiar linear theory result on large scales but has the advantage of clearly revealing the dependence of the redshift distortions on the underlying peculiar velocity field; streaming motions give rise to distortions of ${\cal O}(\Omega^{0.6}/b)$ w...

I review the recent developments in the analysis of cosmic flow data, in particular, latest results of bulk flow measurements, comparison between redshift and peculiar velocity catalogs with emphasis on the measured value of the $\beta (=\Omega_m^{0.6}/b)$ parameter, and matter power spectrum estimates from galaxy peculiar velocity catalogs. Based on these developments, one can argue that most of the previous discrepancies in the interpretation of cosmic flow data, {\it maybe...

We show that a regression of unsmoothed peculiar velocity measurements against peculiar velocities predicted from a smoothed galaxy density field leads to a biased estimate of the cosmological density parameter Omega, even when galaxies trace the underlying mass distribution and galaxy positions and velocities are known perfectly. The bias arises because the errors in the predicted velocities are correlated with the predicted velocities themselves. We investigate this bias us...