Overview

This thesis is a tour of topics in cosmology, unified by their diversity and pursuits in better understanding of our Universe. The first chapter measures the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect as a function of redshift utilizing a large range of large scale structure observations and the cosmic microwave background. We combine the ISW likelihood function with weak lensing of CMB (which is described in Chapter 2) and CMB powerspectrum to constrain the equation of state of dark energy and the curvature of the Universe. The second chapter investigates the correlation of gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with several tracers of large-scale structure, and we find evidence for a positive cross-correlation at the 2.5sigma level. The third chapter explores the statistical properties of Luminous Red Galaxies in a sample of X-ray selected galaxy clusters, including the halo occupation distribution, how Poisson is the satellite distribution of LRGs and the radial profile of LRGs within clusters. The fourth chapter explores the idea of using multiplicity of galaxies to understand their merging timescales. We find that (by using the multiplicity function of LRGs in Chapter 3) Massive halos (∼ 1014 M⊙ ) at low redshift have, for example, been bombarded by several ∼ 1013 M⊙ halos throughout their history and these accreted LRGs merge on relatively short timescales (∼ 2 Gyr). The fifth chapter presents a new method for generating a template for the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect that can be used to detect the missing baryons. We assessed the feasibility of the method by investigating combinations of different galaxy surveys and CMB observations and find that we can detect the gas-momentum kSZ correlation, and thus the ionized gas, at significant signal-to-noise level.

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