Probing Density Fluctuations Using the First Radio Survey

Abstract

for decades, the clustering of luminous objects has been used as an indirect probe of the density fluctuations in the universe. Although the relationship between luminous objects and mass in the universe is not fully understood, it has been hoped that the observed evolution of clustering of different luminous populations might constrain many cosmological unknowns — the geometry of the universe, the nature of any non-luminous matter, the nature of density fluctuations in the early universe and hence the physics of the early universe. Indeed, models for structure formation which are based on variants of the ‘cold dark matter’ (CDM) model have received much attention largely because they have been fairly successful at predicting the clustering of luminous objects.