In this thesis we make progress toward establishing the observational method of 21 cm intensity mapping as a sensitive and efficient method for mapping the large-scale structure of the Universe. In Part I we undertake theoretical studies to better understand the potential of intensity mapping. This includes forecasting the ability of intensity mapping experiments to constrain alternative explanations to dark energy for the Universe's accelerated expansion. We also considered how 21 cm observations of the neutral gas in the early Universe (after recombination but before reionization) could be used to detect primordial gravity waves, thus providing a window into cosmological inflation. Finally we showed that scientifically interesting measurements could in principle be performed using intensity mapping in the near term, using existing telescopes in pilot surveys or prototypes for larger dedicated surveys. Part II describes observational efforts to perform some of the first measurements using 21 cm intensity mapping. We develop a general data analysis pipeline for analyzing intensity mapping data from single dish radio telescopes. We then apply the pipeline to observations using the Green Bank Telescope. By cross-correlating the intensity mapping survey with a traditional galaxy redshift survey we put a lower bound on the amplitude of the 21 cm signal. The auto-correlation provides an upper bound on the signal amplitude and we thus constrain the signal from both above and below. This pilot survey represents a pioneering effort in establishing 21 cm intensity mapping as a probe of the Universe.

In this thesis we make progress toward establishing the observational method of 21 cm intensity mapping as a sensitive and efficient method for mapping the large-scale structure of the Universe. In Part I we undertake theoretical studies to better understand the potential of intensity mapping. This includes forecasting the ability of intensity mapping experiments to constrain alternative explanations to dark energy for the Universe's accelerated expansion. We also considered how 21 cm observations of the neutral gas in the early Universe (after recombination but before reionization) could be used to detect primordial gravity waves, thus providing a window into cosmological inflation. Finally we showed that scientifically interesting measurements could in principle be performed using intensity mapping in the near term, using existing telescopes in pilot surveys or prototypes for larger dedicated surveys. Part II describes observational efforts to perform some of the first measurements using 21 cm intensity mapping. We develop a general data analysis pipeline for analyzing intensity mapping data from single dish radio telescopes. We then apply the pipeline to observations using the Green Bank Telescope. By cross-correlating the intensity mapping survey with a traditional galaxy redshift survey we put a lower bound on the amplitude of the 21 cm signal. The auto-correlation provides an upper bound on the signal amplitude and we thus constrain the signal from both above and below. This pilot survey represents a pioneering effort in establishing 21 cm intensity mapping as a probe of the Universe.

No description available.

Absorption profiles are found in the observed spectra from quasars, and the most prominent of these are the Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers (DLAs). They are caused by large collections of neutral hydrogen (HI) gas, which are thought to be housed in galaxies that lie along the line-of-sight to quasars. HI gas associated with DLAs contains most of the HI gas in the Universe during 2 < z < 5, and hence details about DLAs are important for understanding the history of star formation, as well as the formation and evolution of galaxies. Wyithe (2008) proposed a method of determining the characteristic mass of dark matter haloes that host DLAs. This involves generating an analytic power spectrum of the fluctuations in 21cm brightness temperature caused by the HI gas in the Universe. Calculating this analytic 21cm power spectrum requires a formalism for the HI mass weighted clustering bias of DLAs on both large and small scales. We include this DLA clustering bias by firstly generating an analytic galaxy power spectrum using the halo model of Peacock & Smith (2000), as well as including the occupation of haloes by galaxies -- using the Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) weighting of Peacock (2003). This weighting is then adapted to account for the occupation of haloes by HI gas. / We then fit the analytic 21cm power spectrum generated using this formalism to a simulated 21cm power spectrum, with the characteristic mass of DLA host haloes being used as a fitting parameter. The DLA host halo mass is in turn dependent upon two parameters in our model: the minimum mass of haloes M_{min} included in our formalism, and the HI weighting index alpha_{HI}. The neutral hydrogen fraction is another parameter, which we can choose to be the same as that from our simulation volume. If we also choose a value for alpha_{HI} that is motivated by analysis of the dark matter and HI gas content of the haloes in the simulation, then we are able to fit the 21cm power spectrum at both large and small scales, with an M_{min} that is the same or similar to the lowest mass in the simulation's halo catalogue. This in turn gives a similar value for the DLA host halo mass that is known to be the case in the simulation. This demonstrates the viability of the Wyithe (2008) method for determining the DLA host halo mass using observations of 21cm fluctuations. However, degeneracies in the free parameters of our analytic formalism would hinder an accurate determination of the DLA host halo mass from actual future observations. This is due to the fact that the real space, spherically averaged 21cm power spectrum is used throughout this thesis. However, extending our analytic formalism to the redshift space, angular-dependent 21cm power spectrum should be capable of breaking the degeneracy between DLA host halo mass and neutral hydrogen fraction.

Dans cette thèse sur articles, nous nous intéressons aux grandes structures de l’Univers et à leur rôle fondamental pour la cosmologie et la formation des galaxies. Les galaxies naissent et grandissent au sein des filaments de la toile cosmique soulevant la question de l’impact de ces filaments sur les propriétés galactiques telles que la morphologie. Pour étudier cette question fondamentale, nous allons dans un premier temps montrer que dans les simulations numériques de l’Univers, le spin des galaxies est fortement lié à la direction de leur filament hôte avec un comportement qui dépend de leur masse. Ces corrélations spin-filament seront expliquées qualitativement dans le contexte de la formation hiérarchique des structures cosmologiques. Un modèle analytique tenant compte de l’anisotropie de la toile cosmique complètera ce tableau en reproduisant les corrélations observées. Ces idées sont importantes pour comprendre la morphologie des galaxies mais aussi les alignements intrinsèques qui peuvent certaines sondes cosmologiques basées sur la mesure de l’astigmatisme cosmique. Nous allons en particulier mesurer cette contamination dans une simulation hydrodynamique. Dans la seconde partie de ce manuscrit, nous nous poserons la question de comment extraire efficacement de l’information de la toile cosmique en mesurant sa topologie et sa géométrie et en utilisant la théorie perturbative dans un régime quasi-linéaire, la pierre angulaire de ce travail reposant sur l’étude analytique de l’impact de l’effondrement non-linéaire des structures et des distorsions en espace des redshifts sur la statistique du champ de densité cosmique. / This thesis by publication is devoted to the theoretical understanding of the large-scale structure of the Universe and its role in the context of cosmology and galaxy formation. The birth and evolution of galaxies occur within the large cosmic highways drawn by the cosmic web and the natural question which arises is whether galaxies retain a memory of the large-scale cosmic flows from which they emerge. To address this key question, we will first show that in cosmological simulations, the spin of galaxies and the direction of their host filament are correlated in a mass-dependent way. This signal will be shown to be qualitatively understood in the context of hierarchical structure formation. An analytic model which explicitly takes into account the anisotropy of the cosmic web will complement this qualitative understanding by reproducing the measured correlations. Those ideas are important to understand the evolution of galaxy morphology but also to understand the intrinsic alignments of galaxies that contaminate cosmological probes like cosmic shear experiments. We will in particular measure this contamination directly from a state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulation. In a second part, we will address the question of how to efficiently use large-scale structure data to probe the cosmological model describing our Universe by measuring its topology and geometry and using perturbation theory in the weakly and even mildly non-linear regime. The major contribution of this work is to analytically study the effect of redshift space distortions and non-linear collapse of structures on the topology, geometry and statistics of the cosmic density field.

Avec l’essor actuel de la sophistication et de l’efficacité des codes de cosmologie hydrodynamique,il est devenu possible d’inclure le transfert radiatif (RT) des photons ionisants dansles simulations cosmologiques, soit en post-traitement, soit en simulations couplées rayonnement+hydrodynamique (RHD). Malgré de nombreux obstacles, il y a eu cette derniéredécennie beaucoup de recherches menées sur les différentes stratégies et implémentations,dû au fait qu’un nombre de problèmes intéressants peuvent être désormais abordés par laRT et RHD, par exemple comment et quand l’Univers s’est réionisé, comment l’émissionradiative des étoiles et des noyaux actifs de galaxies se comportent pour réguler la formationdes structures à des échelles petites et grandes, et quelles prédictions et interprétationsnous pouvons faire des phénomènes observés, tels que la forêt Lyman-alpha et des sourcesdiffuses de rayonnement.Cela coïncide avec l’avènement du télescope spatial James Webb (JWST) et d’autresinstruments de pointe qui sont sur le point de nous donner un aperçu sans précédent sur lafin des âges sombres de l’Univers, quand le cosmos est passé d’un état froid et neutre à unétat chaud et ionisé, à la suite de l’apparition des sources radiatives.Notre préoccupation principale étant les rétroactions radiatives des premieres structures,nous avons mis en place une version RHD du code cosmologique Ramses, que nous appelonsRamsesRT, basée sur la méthode des moments. Ce code nous permet d’étudier les effets durayonnement ionisant dans les simulations cosmologiques RHD qui tirent pleinement profitdes stratégies de raffinement adaptif de grille et de parallélisation de Ramses. Pour rendreauto-cohérent le RHD nous avons également mis en oeuvre une thermochimie hors-équilibreincluant des espèces de l’Hydrogène et de l’Hélium qui interagissent avec le rayonnementtransporté.Je présente dans cette thèse une description détaillée de RamsesRT et de nombreux testscontribuant à sa validation.Jusqu’à présent nous avons utilisé RamsesRT pour étudier l’émission Lyman-alpha decourants d’accrétion, qui sont prédits à grand redshift par les simulations cosmologiques,mais n’ont jamais été clairement identifiés par les observations. Nous avons également étudiéle chauffage gravitationnel dans ces courants pour déterminer si ce dernier pouvait être lasource motrice principale des Lyman-alpha blobs, un phénomène observé qui a été beaucoupétudié et débattu au cours de la dernière décennie. Cet étudie nous permet de conclure queles Lyman-alpha blobs peuvent, en principe, être alimentés par le chauffage gravitationnel,et que d’autre part, les courants d’accrétion sont sur le point d’être directement détectablesavec des instruments à venir.Mes intentions futures sont d’utiliser RamsesRT dans les simulations cosmologiques àhaute résolution, de la formation des premiéres galaxies jusqu’à l’époque de la réionisation,et ainsi étudier comment la rétroaction radiative affecte la formation et l’évolution de cesgalaxies et de faire des prévisions d’observation qui peuvent être testées avec des instrumentssophistiqués tels que le JWST. / With the increasing sophistication and efficiency of cosmological hydrodynamics codes, ithas become viable to include ionizing radiative transfer (RT) in cosmological simulations,either in post-processing or in full-blown radiation-hydrodynamics (RHD) simulations. Inspite of the many hurdles involved, there has been much activity during the last decade or soon different strategies and implementations, because a number of interesting problems canbe addressed with RT and RHD, e.g. how and when the Universe became reionized, howradiation from stars and active galactic nuclei plays a part in regulating structure formationon small and large scales, and what predictions and interpretations we can make of observedphenomena such as the Lyman-alpha forest and diffuse sources of radiation.This coincides with the advent of the James Webb space telescope (JWST) and otherstate-of-the-art instruments which are about to give us an unprecedented glimpse into theend of the dark ages of the Universe, when the cosmos switched from a cold and neutralstate to a hot and ionized one, due to the turn-on of ionizing radiative sources.With a primary interest in the problem of radiative feedback in early structure formation,we have implemented an RHD version of the Ramses cosmological code we call RamsesRT,which is moment based and employs the local M1 Eddington tensor closure. This code allowsus to study the effects of ionizing radiation on-the-fly in cosmological RHD simulationsthat take full advantage of the adaptive mesh refinement and parallelization strategies ofRamses. For self-consistent RHD we have also implemented a non-equilibrium chemistry ofthe atomic hydrogen and helium species that interact with the transported radiation.I present in this thesis an extensive description of the RamsesRT implementation andnumerous tests to validate it.Thus far we have used the RHD implementation to study extended line emission fromaccretion streams, which are routinely predicted to exist at early redshift by cosmologicalsimulations but have never been unambiguously verified by observations, and to investigatewhether gravitational heating in those streams could be the dominant power source ofso-called Lyman-alpha blobs, an observed phenomenon which has been much studied anddebated during the last decade or two. Our conclusions from this investigation are thatLyman-alpha blobs can in principle be powered by gravitational heating, and furthermorethat accretion streams are on the verge of being directly detectable for the first time withupcoming instruments.My future intent is to use RamsesRT for high-resolution cosmological zoom simulations ofearly galaxy formation, up to the epoch of reionization, to study how radiative feedbackaffects the formation and evolution of those galaxies and to make observational predictionsthat can be tested with upcoming instruments such as the JWST.

Je présente dans cette thèse de nouvelles contraintes sur la formation et l’évolution des galaxies, en étudiant leur croissance en masse et leur évolution au sein de la toile cosmique depuis l’époque de leur formation jusqu’à maintenant. Pour cela, j’ai créé un catalogue photométrique sur le champ COSMOS. Ce catalogue permet de sonder avec précision l’Univers à haut redshift. J’analyse ce relevé observé à l’aide de relevés virtuels, produits à partir de simulations hydrodynamiques. Ces simulations implémentent nos connaissances sur la formation et l’évolution des galaxies.Dans un premier temps, je montre que l’évolution en redshift des propriétés des galaxies est relativement bien comprise en invoquant des processus qui dépendent essentiellement de la masse, tels que le feedback des étoiles et des AGN. Je souligne également comment nos méthodes observationnelles génèrent des biais dans les propriétés physiques des galaxies calculées à partir de la photométrie.Dans un deuxième temps, je montre comment la dynamique des flots de matière à grande échelle gouverne l’acquisition du moment angulaire des galaxies et halos de matière noire, ce qui implique que certaines propriétés des galaxies sont supposées dépendre de leur environnement anisotrope. J’ai extrait la structure filamentaire du catalogue photométrique que j’ai créé sur le champ COSMOS et j’ai mesuré cette dépendance. Je trouve des gradients de masse et de couleurs dans la direction du filament. Il apparaît que la masse et le moment angulaire des galaxies sont deux quantités interdépendantes et tous deux impactés par leur environnement anisotrope. / I present in this thesis new constraints on galaxy formation and evolution while studying the galaxy mass growth and the co-evolution of the cosmic web and the embedded galaxies, from the epoch of cosmic dawn to today.To do so, I first created a new photometric catalog on the COSMOS field with precise photometric redshifts allowing to probe accurately the high-redshift Universe. I analyze this survey while relying heavily on comparisons with virtual galaxy surveys produced from state-of-the- art cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, which capture all our current knowledge of galaxy formation and evolution.From this comparative analysis, in the first part of my thesis I show that the redshift evolution of galaxy properties is reasonably well understood when invoking mass-dependent processes (AGN and stellar feed- back). I highlight also the effect of simplifying assumptions inherent to our observational methods, which bias the physical properties computed from galaxy photometry.Galaxies and haloes are embedded in the cosmic web, an intricate large-scale structure of walls, filaments and nodes. In the second part of my thesis, I show how galaxies and dark haloes gain their angular momentum from the large-scale flow, implying that some of their properties depend on their anisotropic filamentary environment. I then extract the filamentary structure from the observed photometric catalog and measure the dependence of galaxy properties to the anisotropic environment. I find mass and colour gradients towards the filaments. In turn it emerges that galaxy masses and angular momenta are two dependent quantities impacted by their anisotropic environment.

One of the primary targets of current and especially future cosmological observations are light thermal relics of the hot big bang. Within the Standard Model of particle physics, an important thermal relic are cosmic neutrinos, while many interesting extensions of the Standard Model predict new light particles which are even more weakly coupled to ordinary matter and therefore hard to detect in terrestrial experiments. On the other hand, these elusive particles may be produced efficiently in the early universe and their gravitational influence could be detectable in cosmological observables. In this thesis, we describe how measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale structure (LSS) of the universe can shed new light on the properties of neutrinos and on the possible existence of other light relics. These cosmological observations are remarkably sensitive to the amount of radiation in the early universe, partly because free-streaming species such as neutrinos imprint a small phase shift in the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) which we study in detail in the CMB and LSS power spectra. Building on this analytic understanding, we provide further evidence for the cosmic neutrino background by independently confirming its free-streaming nature in different, currently available datasets. In particular, we propose and establish a new analysis of the BAO spectrum beyond its use as a standard ruler, resulting in the first measurement of this imprint of neutrinos in the clustering of galaxies. Future cosmological surveys, such as the next generation of CMB experiments (CMB-S4), have the potential to measure the energy density of relativistic species at the sub-percent level and will therefore be capable of probing physics beyond the Standard Model. We demonstrate how this improvement in sensitivity can indeed be achieved and present an observational target which would allow the detection of any extra light particle that has ever been in thermal equilibrium. Interestingly, even the absence of a detection would result in new insights by providing constraints on the couplings to the Standard Model. As an example, we show that existing bounds on additional scalar particles, such as axions, may be surpassed by orders of magnitude.

This work presents several works related to the impact of neutrinos in cosmology. We study the impact on the Cosmic Microwave Background of several neutrino-related parameters (mass, abundance, neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry, non-thermal distorsions, non-standard couplings with other species, mass and abundance of additional sterile neutrinos). We present new numerical methods for computing these effects efficiently. We use current data to derive several new bounds on these parameters, and finally, we study the sensitivity of future cosmological experiments to these quantities.

<p>This dissertation is concerned with two of the largest questions that we can ask about the nature of physical reality: first, whether physical reality begin to exist and, second, what criteria would physical reality have to fulfill in order to have had a beginning? Philosophers of religion and theologians have previously addressed whether physical reality began to exist in the context of defending the Kal{\'a}m Cosmological Argument (KCA) for theism, that is, (P1) everything that begins to exist has a cause for its beginning to exist, (P2) physical reality began to exist, and, therefore, (C) physical reality has a cause for its beginning to exist. While the KCA has traditionally been used to argue for God's existence, the KCA does not mention God, has been rejected by historically significant Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, and raises perennial philosophical questions -- about the nature and history of physical reality, the nature of time, the nature of causation, and so on -- that should be of interest to all philosophers and, perhaps, all humans. While I am not a religious person, I am interested in the questions raised by the KCA. In this dissertation, I articulate three necessary conditions that physical reality would need to fulfill in order to have had a beginning and argue that, given the current state of philosophical and scientific inquiry, we cannot determine whether physical reality began to exist.</p>