Willem Schaap

The Delaunay Tessellation Field Estimator: a New Tool for Analyzing Discrete Data Willem Schaap

This books describes a new tool foranalyzing discrete data sets. This tool, the DelaunayTessellation Field Estimator (DTFE), can be used toreconstruct density or intensity fields from discretepoint samplings at an optimal resolution. Itautomatically adapts to both the local density andgeometry of the discrete point set. In the first halfof this book the DTFE is extensively described andtested. In the second half several astronomicalapplications are described, such as the analysis ofnumerical simulations of cosmic structure formation,the mapping of the large scale galaxy distribution inthe universe and improving numerical simulationalgorithms of cosmic structure formation. The DTFEforms a major step forwards for studies of the largescale galaxy distribution, one of the most exciting research topics in present-day cosmology.