Fakultät für Physik - Digitale Hochschulschriften der LMU - Teil 05/05 Archiv

The outer halos of galaxies are known to store vital information about the formation history and merger-induced evolution of their central galaxies, since the relaxation timescales are much larger than in the innermost parts and thus the memory of the events is conserved over a long period. This information provides fundamental insights into the processes of mass growth and morphological changes, broadening our understanding of the different mechanisms of structure formation. Additionally, the radius regime where the stellar component starts to dominate over the dark matter component is the perfect place to study the interplay between dark matter and stars. This interaction between the collisionless components of a galaxy, although much slower than the gas-induced processes, significantly alters the appearance of a galaxy in the long term. A better understanding of those processes can help to shed light on the dark sides of the galaxies. In this work, we use the combined strength of idealized high-resolution simulations of individual galaxies and large cosmological simulations to unveil some of the information encoded in the outer halos of galaxies. The high resolution simulations allow us to disentangle the impact of selected physics on the formation and evolution of galaxies in particular, while the large cosmological simulations provide a statistically meaningful sample of galaxies covering a large range in masses and environments. The first part of this thesis focuses on the interplay between dark matter and stars, revealing that both parts actually do interact through their common potential by re-ordering into a stable state where the total halo is isothermal and its density distribution follows a $\rho \propto r^{-2}$ profile. The gas, which dissipates energy and sinks towards the center on much shorter timescales, disturbs this process, forcing the total halo into a more compact state with approximately $\rho \propto r^{-3}$. Therefore, as long as gas is present, the collisionless attractor state can not be reached, but every dry merger evolves the system towards it. This is also apparent by the fact that more evolved halos have higher central dark matter fractions and smaller amounts of stars formed in situ, and that the slopes are generally steeper at high redshifts. We conclude that the equilibrium attractor state of dry merging systems provides a new test case for $\Lambda$CDM and prove that, if $\Lambda$CDM is correct, the dark matter and the stars do communicate through their common gravitational potential. The second part of this thesis deals with the information provided by the stellar halo. We show that the radial density profiles of all stellar halos have a universal shape which can be described by a curved exponential, independent of the morphology of their central galaxy. The strength of the curvature appears to be an indication for the amount of merging a galaxy suffered, since the stellar halo mostly grows through merging as the cold gas density in the halo region is much too low to cause a significant amount of star formation at all redshifts. With such a universal shape at hand, it is possible to study the deviations from this shape to learn about the details of the stellar accretion history of a galaxy, since different types of events leave distinct signatures. We suggest that more emphasis on the understanding of those different signatures is needed in the future to fully exploit the rich information contained in the outer halos, to learn more about the accretion driven but also the secular evolution of galaxies.

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Entwicklung und dem Test optischer Frequenzkämme zur Kalibration astronomischer Spektrographen. Die Genauigkeit der besten Spektrographen war bisher durch ihre Kalibration begrenzt. Die Benutzung von Frequenzkämmen als hochgenaue optische Frequenzreferenz verspricht die Überwindung dieser Limitierung, und damit die Bestimmung von Linienpositionen in astronomischen Spektren mit nie dagewesener Genauigkeit. Dies eröffnet faszinierende neue Möglichkeiten in der Astronomie, wie die Entdeckung erdähnlicher extrasolarer Planeten über Radialgeschwindigkeitsmessungen, die direkte Messung der Beschleunigung der kosmischen Expansion, oder eine genauere kosmologische Suche nach Veränderlichkeit von Naturkonstanten. Auf Basis der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde eine kommerzielle Version des astronomischen Frequenzkamms entwickelt, die derzeit für die Installation und den Routinebetrieb an mehreren Observatorien vorbereitet wird. Um die Kammstruktur mit astronomischen Spektrographen ausreichend gut aufzulösen, werden Frequenzkämme mit extrem großen Modenabständen von typischerweise >10 GHz benötigt. Zur Erzeugung von Frequenzkämmen mit derart hohen Modenabständen verfolgt diese Arbeit einen Ytterbium-Faserlaser-basierten Ansatz, der auf der Unterdrückung ungewollter Moden eines Frequenzkamms mit ursprünglich geringerem Modenabstand beruht. Zur breitbandigen Kalibration von Spektrographen muss das erzeugte Kammspektrum über einen großen Teil des sichtbaren Spektralbereichs hinweg verbreitert werden. Bei Pulswiederholraten von >10 GHz erweist sich dies als sehr herausfordernd, und bringt bis dahin unbekannte Effekte hervor. Die vorliegende Arbeit entwickelt Strategien zur spektralen Verbreiterung astronomischer Frequenzkämme, und untersucht hiermit verbundene Fragen wie Farbzentren-Bildung im Kern photonischer Kristallfasern. Des Weiteren wird theoretisch und experimentell nachgewiesen, dass spektrale Verbreiterung mit einer drastischen Verstärkung unterdrückter Kammmoden einhergeht, und es wird gezeigt, wie hierdurch bedingte Kalibrations-Ungenauigkeiten begrenzt werden können. Da die Einhüllende des verbreiterten Spektrums stark strukturiert ist, ist es von Nutzen diese abzuflachen. Hierbei werden die Signalpegel aller Kalibrationslinien auf dem Spektrographen angeglichen, was deren Signal-zu-Rausch-Verhältnis maximiert und dadurch die Kalibrationsgenauigkeit erhöht. Mehrere Konzepte zur adaptiven spektralen Abflachung werden entwickelt, wobei über einen Bereich von >200 nm abgeflachte Spektren erzeugt werden. Der astronomische Frequenzkamm wird an HARPS getestet, dem bis heute führenden Spektrographen zur Exoplanetensuche, der sich am La Silla Observatorium in Chile befindet. Über kurze Zeitspannen wird hier eine Wiederholbarkeit der Kalibration von 2,5 cm/s erreicht – einen Faktor 4 besser als mit einer Thorium-Lampe, der bis dahin besten Kalibrationsquelle. Erstmals wird der Orbit eines extrasolaren Planeten mit Hilfe eines Frequenzkamms rekonstruiert, und ein Frequenzkamm-kalibrierter Atlas solarer Linien wird aus Beobachtungen von Mondlicht erstellt. Instrumentelle Effekte werden gründlich untersucht, insbesondere Kalibrationsverschiebungen, die von den Signalpegeln auf der Spektrographen-CCD abhängen. Hinsichtlich seiner Anwendungen in der Sonnenastronomie wird der Frequenzkamm am VTT Sonnenspektrographen auf Teneriffa getestet. Hier wird eine Technik eingesetzt, die den Spektrographen über eine monomode Glasfaser gleichzeitig mit Kalibrationslicht und Sonnenlicht versorgt. Dadurch wird Modenrauschen des Faserkanals als Ursache für Ungenauigkeiten ausgeschlossen, und die Kalibrationswiederholbarkeit verbessert sich um ca. 2 Größenordnungen gegenüber einer zeitlich getrennten Übertragung. Dieses Konzept wird zur Vermessung globaler Sonnenoszillationen und zur Bestimmung der Stabilität von Absorptionslinien aus der Erdatmosphäre angewandt.

Turbulence is one of the most widespread phenomena in nature occurring in fluids and plasmas at all scales - from the blood flow in the human body, via the Earth's atmosphere to the remnants of supernovas at astrophysical scales. Despite its frequent occurrence, constructing a theory of turbulent motion, which provides reliable quantitative predictions, represents one of the unsolved problems of classical physics. Most of the research efforts in the past have been focused on studying the Navier-Stokes model of simple fluids and trying to understand the Fourier spectrum of velocity fluctuations. Due to this common restriction to the Navier-Stokes equations, turbulence is usually associated with power-law spectra of universal form which arise only at scales where both driving and dissipation mechanisms are inactive. However, recent studies reveal that many active systems which do not possess a true inertial range can, nevertheless, exhibit power-law spectra. Furthermore, those spectra are not of universal form which contradicts the classical theory of turbulence. One of the turbulent models we shall consider in this work derives from the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. It describes a simple one-dimensional active system where energy is injected at large scales and dissipated at small scales. Based on observations from plasma physics we modify the linear part of the equation such that the large scales remain practically intact but the damping rate at high wave numbers approaches a constant. We construct a semi-analytical approximation for the modified equation which predicts a power-law form for the energy spectrum in the range where the ratio between the characteristic linear and nonlinear frequencies is scale-independent. Furthermore, we conclude that the steepness of this power law is not universal but depends on the frequency ratio. These results are confirmed by numerical simulations. Our analysis could also be relevant for kinetic Alfven-wave turbulence in the solar wind where similar conditions might occur. Further in this work we present the first systematic study of another active system which provides a continuum model aimed at the coarse-grained description of the dynamics observed in dense bacterial suspensions. The model extends the framework of the familiar Navier-Stokes equations by including additional linear and nonlinear terms in order to emulate energy injection and dissipation as well as the flocking tendency of bacteria. The resulting dynamics has been described as 'low-Reynolds-number turbulence' and the corresponding energy spectrum exhibits nonuniversal power laws at large scales. With the aid of extensive numerical simulations we study the scale-to-scale energy flow in spectral space. The physical insight gained this way helped us to develop an approximation for the spectral energy balance equation. Its solution provides an energy spectrum of a power-law form at small wave numbers. Furthermore, we derive a functional dependence of the steepness of this power law on the system parameters. A comparison with data from numerical simulations verifies our results.

Turbulence is a ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical plasmas. Most of these systems exhibit a property called cross helicity, a non-zero correlation between velocity fluctuations and magnetic-field fluctuations. In the presence of a magnetic mean-field, such as in the solar wind or in the interstellar medium, cross helicity is equivalent to an imbalance between Alfven waves co- and counter-propagating with respect to the mean-field direction. Although this imbalance can have a dramatic influence on the heating and scattering rate of charged particles which propagate through the plasma, it is often neglected in computational studies of turbulent particle transport. In an effort to remedy this situation, we present numerical simulations of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in which we can control the energy and the cross helicity of the system, without injecting kinetic or magnetic helicity as an unwanted side effect. Varying the strength of a magnetic guide-field allows us to determine the degree of anisotropy that the system assumes as a steady-state configuration. Detailed analysis proves that these simulations conform to theoretical models of realistic turbulence. The diffusion of cosmic-ray particles in turbulent plasmas is often calculated using quasilinear theory and a simplified description of the electromagnetic-field spectra. By computing the trajectories of test-particles in dynamically evolving turbulence simulations with non-zero cross helicity, we study whether such quasilinear predictions of the heating rate of charged particles are valid under realistic conditions. Theory and numerical results agree well for particles propagating at the Alfven velocity, unless resistive effects play a dominant role. Furthermore, strongly anisotropic field configurations are used to compare quasilinear pitch-angle diffusion coefficients with measurements of test-particle scattering after one gyroperiod. In particular, we focus on the scaling of the scattering rate with cross helicity. We observe excellent agreement in simulations of both balanced and imbalanced turbulence and explain the role of the magnetic moment, an approximate invariant of charged-particle motion, for pitch-angle scattering on timescales of several gyroperiods.

Up to now, short-wavelength free-electron lasers (FEL) have been systems on the scale of hundreds of meters up to multiple kilometers. Due to the advancements in laser-plasma acceleration in the recent years, these accelerators have become a promising candidate for driving a fifth-generation synchrotron light source – a lab-scale free-electron laser. So far, demonstration experiments have been hindered by the broad energy spread typical for this type of accelerator. This thesis addresses the most important challenges of the conceptual design for a first lab-scale FEL demonstration experiment using analytical considerations as well as simulations. The broad energy spread reduces the FEL performance directly by weakening the microbunching and indirectly via chromatic emittance growth, caused by the focusing system. Both issues can be mitigated by decompressing the electron bunch in a magnetic chicane, resulting in a sorting by energies. This reduces the local energy spread as well as the local chromatic emittance growth and also lowers performance degradations caused by the short bunch length. Moreover, the energy dependent focus position leads to a focus motion within the bunch, which can be synchronized with the radiation pulse, maximizing the current density in the interaction region. This concept is termed chromatic focus matching. A comparison shows the advantages of the longitudinal decompression concept compared to the alternative approach of transverse dispersion. When using typical laser-plasma based electron bunches, coherent synchrotron radiation and space-charge contribute in equal measure to the emittance growth during decompression. It is shown that a chicane for this purpose must not be as weak and long as affordable to reduce coherent synchrotron radiation, but that an intermediate length is required. Furthermore, the interplay of the individual concepts and components is assessed in a start-to-end simulation, confirming the feasibility of the envisioned experiment. Moreover, the setup tolerances for a first demonstration experiment are determined, confirming the general practicability. The revealed challenges, besides the energy spread, especially concern the source stability and the precision of the beam optics setup.

Over the past few decades, the generation of high energetic ion beams by relativistic intense laser pulses has attracted great attentions. Starting from the pioneering endeavors around 2000, several groups have demonstrated muliti-MeV (up to 58 MeV for proton by then) ion beams along with low transverse emittance and ps-scale pulse duration emitted from solid targets. Owing to those superior characteristics, laser driven ion beam is ideally suitable for many applications. However, the laser driven ion beam typically exhibits a large angular spread as well as a broad energy spectrum which for many applications is disadvantageous. The utilization of nano-targets as ion source provides a number of advantages over micrometer thick foils. The presented PhD work was intended to investigate laser driven ion acceleration from carbon nano-targets and demonstrate the potential feasibility for biological studies. Two novel nano-targets are employed: nm thin diamond-like-carbon (DLC) foil and carbon nanotubes foam (CNF). Both are self-produced in the technological laboratory at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Well-collimated proton beams with extremely small divergence (half angle) of 2 degrees are observed from DLC foils, one order of magnitude lower as compared to micrometer thick targets. Two-dimensional particle-in-cellsimulations indicate a strong influence from the electron density distribution on the divergence of protons. This interpretation is supported by an analytical model. In the same studies, the highest maximum proton energy was observed with a moderate laser intensity as low as 5*10^18W/cm^2. Parallel measurements of laser transmission and reflection are used to determine laser absorption in the nano-plasma, showing a strong correlation to the maximum proton energy. This observation indicates significance of absorbed laser energy rather than incident laser intensity and is supported by an analytical model. The ion energy also depends on pulse duration, a reduced optimum pulse duration is found as compared to micrometer thick targets. This behavior is attributed to a reduction of transverse electron spread due to the reduction of thickness from micrometer to nanometer. These remarkable proton bunch characteristics enabled irradiating living cells with a single shot dose of up to 7 Gray in one nanosecond, utilizing the Advanced Titanium: sapphire LASer (ATLAS)system at Max-Planck-Institut of Quantum Optics (MPQ). The experiments represent the first feasibility demonstration of a very compact laser driven nanosecond proton source for radiobiological studies by using a table-top laser system and advanced nano-targets. For the purpose of providing better ion sources for practical application, particularly in terms of energy increase, subsequent experiments were performed with the Astra Gemini laser system in the UK. The experiments demonstrate for the first time that ion acceleration can be enhanced by exploiting relativistic nonlinearities enabled by micrometer-thick CNF targets. When the CNF is attached to a nm-thick DLC foil, a significant increase of maximum carbon energy (up to threefold) is observed with circularly polarized laser pulses. A preferable enhancement of the carbon energy is observed with non-exponential spectral shape, indicating a strong contribution of the radiation pressure to the overall acceleration. In contrast, the linear polarization give rise to a more prominent proton acceleration. Proton energies could be increased by a factor of 2.4, inline with a stronger accelerating potential due to higher electron temperatures. Three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations reveal that the improved performance of the double-layer targets (CNF+DLC) can be attributed to relativistic self-focusing in near-critical density plasma. Interestingly, the nature of relativistic non-linearities, that plays a major role in laserwakefield-acceleration of electrons, can also apply to the benefit of laser driven ion acceleration.

The work presented in this thesis studies the role that accretion events play in the evolution of galaxies in dense environments, such as galaxy clusters. Cosmological simulations allow us to study in detail the evolution of galaxies' halos in cluster environments and have shown that the formation of extended halos around central cluster galaxies and intracluster light (ICL) is closely correlated to the morphological transformation of galaxies in clusters. However, the extremely low surface brightness of these components makes it difficult to gather observational constraints. This thesis studies the light and stellar motion in the halo of the giant elliptical galaxy M87 and its surrounding IC component at the centre of the Virgo cluster. Virgo is the nearest ($\sim 15$~Mpc away) large scale structure, a young cluster characterised by both spatial and kinematic substructures. M87 has one of the oldest stellar populations in the local Universe and a stellar halo that contains $\sim$ 70\% of the galaxy light down to $\rm{\mu_{V}=27\, mag\, arcsec^{-2}}$. Moreover, deep images of the Virgo cluster core have revealed an extended network of tidal features suggesting that accretion events characterise its mass assembly. Thus, M87 and its host environment are prime targets to shed light on the hierarchical assembly of structure in the Universe. This work uses new Suprime-Cam@Subaru photometry and FLAMES@VLT spectroscopy to study a $\sim 0.5\, \rm{deg^2}$ area around M87, in the transition region between galaxy halo and ICL. We use planetary nebulas (PNs) as tracers, whose strong [OIII] $\lambda$5007 \AA\ emission line makes them excellent photometric and kinematic probes, also at large distances from the galaxy's centre. The photometric analysis of the PN sample shows the superposition of two stellar populations, both halo and ICL. This is confirmed by spectroscopically detected PNs, whose velocity phase-space also reveals that halo and ICL split into two different kinematic components. They have very different spatial distributions and parent stars, as indicated by the properties of the PN populations they are associated with, such as the $\alpha$-parameter and the slope of the planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF). In this thesis I give the observational proof that in Virgo the central galaxy and the ICL both evolve through the ongoing accretion of smaller systems. However, stellar halo and ICL are dynamically distinct components with different velocity and density distributions, and parent stellar populations. Whether or not these conclusions are true for different galaxies in different Virgo subclusters is still an open question and the topic of one of my planned future studies.

Time-resolved electron diffraction is a powerful tool to observe ultrafast structural dynamics in materials and molecules with atomic spatial as well as temporal resolution. Due to Coulomb repulsion, however, the use of only single-electrons or few-electrons per pulse is inevitable to reach the shortest pulse durations. Electrons have rather high scattering cross sections and thus experiments in transmission require ultrathin samples in the nanometer-range, making sample preparation very challenging. Up to now, ultrafast single-electron diffraction was only demonstrated at an electron energy of 30 keV; these measurements were performed in our group at the “UED1-beamline”. This work introduces our second-generation beamline, “UED2”, where the electron acceleration voltage is upgraded from 30 to 100 kV, which allows the investigation of significantly thicker samples. This is decisively widening the range of complex materials that can be studied. In the experiment, electron pulses are generated by a two-photon photoemission process and the long-term stability of the source is shown. The samples can be placed in transmission as well as grazing-incidence geometry. To achieve phase-matching between the optical and electron pulses, tilted optical pulses can be applied. We figured out that to avoid temporal distortions in tilted pulses, a geometry must be chosen in which the propagation direction of the tilted pulses is perpendicular to the grating’s surface. Furthermore, temporal distortions for ultrashort electron pulses caused by misaligned magnetic lenses are examined. It is found that a displacement or tilt of the lens causes significant temporal aberrations on a femtosecond time scale and pulse-lengthening is only minimized if the beam travels precisely on the symmetry axis. An experimental procedure detailed here for aligning lens-position and -tilt reduces the aberrations to less than one femtosecond. For the “UED2-beamline”, a new laboratory was established and a first time-resolved electron diffraction experiment at this beamline performed. Anisotropic ultrafast atomic motion in carbon-nanotubes was observed, revealing the nature of the system’s chemical bonds, which vary from relatively weak van der Waals to strong covalent interactions. In summary, it is thus shown that ultrafast electron diffraction at 100 keV with single/few electrons per pulse is an excellent method to study ultrafast atomic-scale dynamics even in complex solid samples with the highest possible resolution in space and time.

Raman scattering can be applied to biological imaging to identify molecules in a sample without the need for adding labels. Raman microscopy can be used to visualize functional areas at the cellular level by means of a molecular contrast and is thus a highly desired imaging tool to identify diseases in biomedical imaging. The underlying Raman scattering effect is an optical inelastic scattering effect, where energy is transferred to molecular excitations. Molecules can be identified by monitoring this energy loss of the pump light, which corresponds to a vibrational or rotational energy of the scattering molecule. With Raman scattering, the molecules can be identified by their specific vibrational energies and even quantified due to the signal height. This technique has been known for almost a century and finds vast applications from biology to medicine and from chemistry to homeland security. A problem is the weak effect, where usually only one in a billion photons are scattered. Non-linear enhancement techniques can improve the signal by many orders of magnitude. This can be especially important for fast biomedical imaging of highly scattering media and for high resolution spectroscopy, surpassing the resolution of usual spectrometers. In this thesis a new system for stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SRS) and hyperspectral Raman microscopy with a rapidly wavelength swept laser is presented. A time-encoded (TICO) technique was developed that enables direct encoding of the Raman transition energy in time and direct detection of the intensity change on the Stokes laser by employing fast analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) cards (1.8 Gigasamples/s). Therefore, a homebuilt pump laser was developed based on a fiber-based master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) at 1064 nm and extended by a Raman shifter that can shift the output wavelength to 1122 nm or 1186 nm. This is achieved by seeding the Raman amplification in the fiber with a narrowband 1122 nm laser diode. Surprisingly, this also leads to narrowband (0.4 cm-1) cascaded Raman shifts at 1186 nm and 1257 nm, which is in contrast to the usually broadband spontaneous Raman transition in fused silica. The underlying effect was examined and therefore concluded that it is most probably due to a combined four-wave-mixing and cascaded Raman scattering mechanism. Experimentally, the narrowband cascaded Raman line was used to record a high-resolution TICO-Raman spectrum of benzene. As Raman Stokes laser, a rapidly wavelength swept Fourier domain mode-locked (FDML) laser was employed which provides many advantages for SRS. The most important advantages of this fiber based laser are that it enables coverage of the whole range of relevant Raman energies from 250 cm-1 up to 3150 cm-1, while being a continuous wave (CW) laser, which at the same time allows high resolution (0.5 cm-1) spectroscopy. Further, it enables a new dual stage balanced detection which permits shot noise limited SRS measurements and, due to the well-defined wavelength sweep, the TICO-Raman technique directly provides high-quality Raman spectra with accurate Raman transition energy calibration. This setup was used for different applications, including Raman spectroscopy and non-linear microscopy. As results, broadband Raman spectra are presented and compared to a state-of-the-art spontaneous Raman spectrum. Furthermore, several spectroscopic features are explored. For first imaging results, samples were raster scanned with a translational stage and at each pixel a TICO-Raman spectrum acquired. This led to a hyperspectral Raman image which was transformed into a color-coded image with molecular contrast. Biological imaging of a plant stem is presented. The setup further allowed performing multi-photon absorption imaging by two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF). In summary, this thesis presents the design, development and preliminary testing of a new and promising platform for spectroscopy and non-linear imaging. This setup holds the capability of biological multi-modal imaging, including modalities like optical coherence tomography (OCT), absorption spectroscopy, SRS, TPEF, second harmonic generation (SHG), third-harmonic generation (THG) and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). Amongst the most promising characteristics of this setup is the fiber-based design, paving the way for an endoscopic imaging setup. Already now, this makes it a robust, alignment-free, reliable and easy-to-use system.

Galaxienhaufen sind die größten und massivstem gravitativ gebundenen Objekte im Universum, die Zeit hatten, zu kollabieren und virialisieren. Das Intracluster-Medium (ICM) innerhalb Galaxienhaufen ist ein Plasma, das durch Röntgenstrahlung sichtbar ist. Galaxien in Galaxienhaufen sind durch optische Strahlung zu sehen, sie sind hauptsächlich rot und haben eine niedrige Sternbildungsrate. Neu akkretierte Galaxien können blauere Farben und eine höhere Sternbildungsrate aufweisen und werden durch Interaktion mit dem ICM röter. Wachstum von Galaxienhaufen findet durch sporadisches Verschmelzen mit anderen Galaxienhaufen und Gruppen statt, oder durch gleichmäßige Akkretion von Galaxien aus dem Milieu. Um die Hauptfrage »ergänzen sich Röntgen- und optische Messungen von Galaxienhaufen, oder zeigen sie dasselbe?« zu beantworten, haben wir eine Studie durchgeführt, bei der die Verteilung von Galaxien und ICM in Galaxienhaufen verglichen wurden. Im Besonderen, haben wir untersucht, ob optische Daten zusätzliche Information wegen der dynamische Befindlichkeit von einzelnen Galaxienhaufen liefern, die nicht aus Röntgendaten allein hervorgehen können. Surveys in Röntgen und optischer Strahlung sind in den nächsten Jahrzehnten zu erwarten, die Daten von viel weiteren Gebieten des Universums liefern werden. Diese Daten können, mit den Methoden, die wir hier vorlegen, untersucht werden. Wir benutzten Weitwinkelbeobachtungen des MPG/ESO 2.2 m Telescopes und Röntgenbeobachtungen von XMM-Newton, um die Distribution von Galaxien innerhalb Galaxienhaufen mit der Distribution des ICM zu vergleichen. Wir haben gefunden, dass die 1D Radialdistribution der roten Galaxien zu der des ICM zusammenpasst, aber die blauen Galaxien folgen einem flacheren Profil. Mit 2D Abbildungen der Galaxienhaufen, haben wir gefunden dass die roten Galaxien sehr ähnlich verteilt sind, wie das ICM, aber fast jeder Galaxienhaufen hat unvirialisierte rote Subklumpen. Blaue Galaxien anderseits haben zu wenig Zeit zum virialisiern bevor sie rot werden, weil sie ihre sternbildendes Gas innerhalb einer Übergangszeit durch ICM-Staudruckstripping verliern. Röntgenbeobachtungen sind besser für die Bestimmung des Verschmelzungsverlaufes von Galaxienhaufen, weil sie die Kennzeichen von Verschmelzung für eine kürzere Zeit zeigen. Wir haben mehrere Subklumpen von roten Galaxien entdeckt, die scheinen auf einfallenden Trajektorien in Galaxienhaufen zu sein und noch merkliche Mengen von Röntgenemittierendem Gas zu haben.

Attosecond pulses are ultrashort radiation bursts produced via high harmonic generation (HHG) during a highly nonlinear excitation process driven by a near infrared (NIR) laser pulse. Attosecond pulses can be used to probe the electron dynamics in ultrafast processes via the attosecond streaking technique, with a resolution on the attosecond time scale. In this thesis it is shown that both the generation of attosecond (AS) pulses and the probing of ultrafast processes by means of AS pulses, can be extended to cases in which the respective driving and streaking fields are produced by surface plasmons excited on nanostructures at NIR wavelengths. Surface plasmons are optical modes generated by collective oscillations of the surface electrons in resonance with an external source. In the first part of this thesis, the idea of high harmonic generation (HHG) in the enhanced field of a surface plasmon is analyzed in detail by means of numerical simulations. A NIR pulse is coupled into a surface plasmon propagating in a hollow core tapered waveguide filled with noble gas. The plasmon field intensity increases for decreasing waveguide radius, such that at the apex the field enhancement is sufficient for producing high harmonic radiation. It is shown that with this setup it is possible to generate isolated AS pulses with outstanding spatial and temporal structure, but with an intensity of orders of magnitude smaller than in standard gas harmonic arrangements. In the second part, an experimental technique for the imaging of surface plasmonic excitations on nanostructured surfaces is proposed, where AS pulses are used to probe the surface field by means of photoionization. The concept constitutes an extension of the attosecond streak camera to ``Attosecond Photoscopy'', which allows space- and time-resolved imaging of the plasmon dynamics during the excitation process. It is numerically demonstrated that the relevant parameters of the plasmonic resonance buildup phase can be determined with subfemtosecond precision. Finally, the method used for the numerical solution of the Maxwell's equations is discussed, with particular attention to the problem of absorbing boundary conditions. New insights into the mathematical formulation of the absorbing boundary conditions for Maxwell's equations are provided.

Das kosmologische Prinzip der Homogenität und statistischen Isotropie des Raumes ist eine fundamentale Annahme der modernen Kosmologie. Auf dieser Basis wird die Existenz einer inflationären Phase im jungen Universum postuliert, welche wiederum primordiale Gaußverteilte Fluktuationen vorhersagt, welche sich im kosmischen Mikrowellenhintergrund als Temperatur- und Polarisationsanisotropien manifestieren. Die Grundidee meiner Arbeit war die Weiterentwicklung einer modellunabhängigen Untersuchungsmethode, welche die Gauß’sche Hypothese für die Dichtefluktuationen testet, wobei die Gaußianität eines Ensembles mit der Zufallsverteilung der Fourier Phasen im Phasenraum definiert wird. Die Methode basiert auf einer nichtlinearen Datenanalyse mit Hilfe von Surrogatkarten, welche die linearen Eigenschaften eines Datensatzes imitieren. Im Rahmen der Surrogatmethode habe ich unter Verwendung zweier verschiedener Bildanalyseverfahren, nämlich den Minkowski Funktionalen und den Skalierungsindizes, beide sensitiv auf Korrelationen höherer Ordnung, Karten der kosmischen Mikrowellenhintergrundstrahlung des WMAP und des Planck Experimentes auf skalenabhängige Phasenkorrelationen untersucht. Ein Schwerpunkt lag hierbei auf Studien zu hemisphärischen Asymmetrien und zum Einfluss der galaktischen Ebene auf die Resultate. Aus der Analyse der Phasenkorrelationen im Phasenraum entwickelte ich neue Methoden zur Untersuchung von Korrelationen zwischen Statistiken höherer Ordnung im Ortsraum und den Informationen des Phasenraumes. Beide Bildanalyseverfahren detektierten Phasenkorrelationen auf den größten Skalen des kosmischen Mikrowellenhintergrundes in vergleichbarer Ausprägung. Der Einfluss der galaktischen Ebene auf diese Resultate zeigte sich in Cutsky Analysen und beim Vergleichen verschiedener Vordergrundsubtraktionsverfahren innerhalb der zwei Experimente als vernachlässigbar gering. Hemisphärische Anomalien auf den größten Skalen der Hintergrundstrahlung wurden wiederholt bestätigt. Die Parametrisierung von Nicht-Gaußianität durch den fNL-Parameter zeigte sich beim Vergleich von fNL-Simulationen mit experimentellen Daten als unzureichend. In Analysen der Daten mit Hilfe von Bianchi-Modellen zeigten sich Hinweise auf eine nicht-triviale Topologie des Universums. Die Resultate meiner Arbeit deuten auf eine Verletzung des standardmäßigen Single Field Slow-Roll Modells für Inflation hin, und widersprechen den Vorhersagen von isotropen Kosmologien. Meine Studien eröffnen im Allgemeinen neue Wege zu einem besseren Verständnis von Nicht-Gauß'schen Signaturen in komplexen räumlichen Strukturen, insbesondere durch die Analyse von Korrelationen der Fourier-Phasen und deren Einfluss auf Statistiken höherer Ordnung im Ortsraum. In naher Zukunft können die Polarisationsdaten des Planck Experimentes weiteren Aufschluss über die Anomalien der kosmischen Mikrowellenhintergrundstrahlung bringen. Die Beschreibung des polarisierten Mikrowellenhintergrundes innerhalb einer Phasenanalyse wäre eine wichtige Ergänzung zu klassischen Studien.