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Maria Salatino

Publications and source records attributed to Maria Salatino.

15 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2023

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Map-Based Noise Simulations for DR6

The increasing statistical power of cosmic microwave background (CMB) datasets requires a commensurate effort in understanding their noise properties. The noise in maps from ground-based instruments is dominated by large-scale correlations, which poses a modeling challenge. This paper develops novel models of the complex noise covariance structure in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Data Release 6 (ACT DR6) maps. We first enumerate the noise properties that arise from the combination of the atmosphere and the ACT scan strategy. We then prescribe a class of Gaussian, map-based noise models, including a new wavelet-based approach that uses directional wavelet kernels for modeling correlated instrumental noise. The models are empirical, whose only inputs are a small number of independent realizations of the same region of sky. We evaluate the performance of these models against the ACT DR6 data by drawing ensembles of noise realizations. Applying these simulations to the ACT DR6 power spectrum pipeline reveals a ≥ 20% excess in the covariance matrix diagonal when compared to an analytic expression that assumes noise properties are uniquely described by their power spectrum. Along with our public code, mnms, this work establishes a necessary element in the science pipelines of both ACT DR6 and future ground-based CMB experiments such as the Simons Observatory (SO).

CMBR experiments↗
NASA NTRS2021

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A search for Planet 9

We use Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) observations at 98 GHz (2015–2019), 150 GHz (2013–2019), and 229 GHz (2017–2019) to perform a blind shift-and-stack search for Planet 9. The search explores distances from 300 au to 2000 au and velocities up to 6\farcm3 per year, depending on the distance (r). For a 5 Earth-mass Planet 9 the detection limit varies from 325 au to 625 au, depending on the sky location. For a 10 Earth-mass planet the corresponding range is 425 au to 775 au. The predicted aphelion and most likely location of the planet corresponds to the shallower end of these ranges. The search covers the whole 18,000 square degrees of the ACT survey. No significant detections are found, which is used to place limits on the millimeter-wave flux density of Planet 9 over much of its orbit. Overall we eliminate roughly 17% and 9% of the parameter space for a 5 and 10 Earth-mass Planet 9, respectively. These bounds approach those of a recent INPOP19a ephemeris-based analysis, but do not exceed it. We also provide a list of the 10 strongest candidates from the search for possible follow-up. More generally, we exclude (at 95% confidence) the presence of an unknown solar system object within our survey area brighter than 4–12 mJy (depending on position) at 150 GHz with current distance 300 au < r < 600 au and heliocentric angular velocity 1\farcm5 per yr < v x (500au/r) < 2\farcs3 per yr, corresponding to low-to-moderate eccentricities. These limits worsen gradually beyond 600 au, reaching 5–15 mJy by 1500 au.

Sigurd Naess↗
NASA NTRS2021

Probing Galaxy Evolution in Massive Clusters Using ACT and DES: Splashback as a Cosmic Clock

We measure the projected number density profiles of galaxies and the splashback feature in clusters selected by the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect from the Advanced Atacama Cosmology Telescope (AdvACT) survey using galaxies observed by the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The splashback radius is consistent with CDM-only simulations and is located at-+-h2.4 Mpc0.40.31. We split the galaxies on color and find significant differences in their profile shapes. Red and green-valley galaxies show a splashback-like minimum in their slope profile consistent with theory, while the bluest galaxies show a weak feature at a smaller radius. We develop a mapping of galaxies to subhalos in simulations and assign colors based on infall time onto their hosts. We find that the shift in location of the steepest slope and different profile shapes can be mapped to the average time of infall of galaxies of different colors. The steepest slope traces a discontinuity in the phase space of dark matter halos. By relating spatial profiles to infall time, we can use splashback as a clock to understand galaxy quenching. We find that red galaxies have on average been in clusters over 3.2 Gyr, green galaxies about 2.2 Gyr, while blue galaxies have been accreted most recently and have not reached apocenter. Using the full radial profiles, we fit a simple quenching model and find that the onset of galaxy quenching occurs after a delay of about a gigayear and that galaxies quench rapidly thereafter with an exponential timescale of 0.6 Gyr.

Galaxy clusters↗
NASA NTRS2021

Constraining Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Evolution With Sunyaev–Zel’Dovich Galaxy Clusters from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope

The Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect introduces a specific distortion of the blackbody spectrum of the cosmic microwave background(CMB) radiation when it scatters off hot gas in clusters of galaxies. The frequency dependence of the distortion is only independent of the cluster redshift when the evolution of the CMB radiation is adiabatic. Using 370 clusters within the redshift range 0.07z1.4 from the largest SZ-selected cluster sample to date from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, we provide new constraints on the deviation of CMB temperature evolution from the standard model a=-+0.0170.0320.029, where()()=+a-TzTz101. This result is consistent with no deviation from the standard adiabatic model. Combining it with previous, independent data sets we obtain a joint constraint ofα=−0.001±0.012. Attributing deviation from adiabaticity to the decay of dark energy, this result constrains its effective equation of state=--+w0.998eff0.0100.008.

Yunyang Li↗
NASA NTRS2021

Atacama Cosmology Telescope measurements of a large sample of candidates from the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey: Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect confirmation of MaDCoWS candidates using ACT

Context. Galaxy clusters are an important tool for cosmology, and their detection and characterization are key goals for current and future surveys. Using data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS) located 2839 significant galaxy overdensities at redshifts 0.7 . z . 1.5, which included extensive follow-up imaging from the Spitzer Space Telescope to determine cluster richnesses. Concurrently, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) has produced large area millimeter-wave maps in three frequency bands along with a large catalog of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ)-selected clusters as part of its Data Release 5 (DR5). Aims. We aim to verify and characterize MaDCoWS clusters using measurements of, or limits on, their thermal SZ effect signatures. We also use these detections to establish the scaling relation between SZ mass and the MaDCoWS-defined richness. Methods. Using the maps and cluster catalog from DR5, we explore the scaling between SZ mass and cluster richness. We do this by comparing cataloged detections and extracting individual and stacked SZ signals from the MaDCoWS cluster locations. We use complementary radio survey data from the Very Large Array, submillimeter data from Herschel, and ACT 224 GHz data to assess the impact of contaminating sources on the SZ signals from both ACT and MaDCoWS clusters. We use a hierarchical Bayesian model to fit the mass-richness scaling relation, allowing for clusters to be drawn from two populations: one, a Gaussian centered on the mass-richness relation, and the other, a Gaussian centered on zero SZ signal. Results. We find that MaDCoWS clusters have submillimeter contamination that is consistent with a gray-body spectrum, while the ACT clusters are consistent with no submillimeter emission on average. Additionally, the intrinsic radio intensities of ACT clusters are lower than those of MaDCoWS clusters, even when the ACT clusters are restricted to the same redshift range as the MaDCoWS clusters. We find the best-fit ACT SZ mass versus MaDCoWS richness scaling relation has a slope of p1 = 1.84+0.15 −0.14, where the slope is defined as M ∝ λ p1 15 and λ15 is the richness. We also find that the ACT SZ signals for a significant fraction (∼57%) of the MaDCoWS sample can statistically be described as being drawn from a noise-like distribution, indicating that the candidates are possibly dominated by low-mass and unvirialized systems that are below the mass limit of the ACT sample. Further, we note that a large portion of the optically confirmed ACT clusters located in the same volume of the sky as MaDCoWS are not selected by MaDCoWS, indicating that the MaDCoWS sample is not complete with respect to SZ selection. Finally, we find that the radio loud fraction of MaDCoWS clusters increases with richness, while we find no evidence that the submillimeter emission of the MaDCoWS clusters evolves with richness. Conclusions. We conclude that the original MaDCoWS selection function is not well defined and, as such, reiterate the MaDCoWS collaboration’s recommendation that the sample is suited for probing cluster and galaxy evolution, but not cosmological analyses. We find a best-fit mass-richness relation slope that agrees with the published MaDCoWS preliminary results. Additionally, we find that while the approximate level of infill of the ACT and MaDCoWS cluster SZ signals (1–2%) is subdominant to other sources of uncertainty for current generation experiments, characterizing and removing this bias will be critical for next-generation experiments hoping to constrain cluster masses at the sub-percent level.

large↗
NASA NTRS2021

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Detection of Millimeter-Wave Transient Sources

We report on the serendipitous discovery of three transient millimeter-wave sources using data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The first, detected at R.A. = 273.8138, decl. = −49.4628 at ∼50σ total, brightened from less than 5 mJy to at least 1100 mJy at 150 GHz with an unknown rise time shorter than 13 days, during which the increase from 250 mJy to 1100 mJy took only 8 minutes. Maximum flux was observed on 2019 November 8. The source's spectral index in flux between 90–150 GHz was positive, α = 1.5 ± 0.2. The second, detected at R.A. = 105.1584, decl. = −11.2434 at ∼20σ total, brightened from less than 20 mJy to at least 300 mJy at 150 GHz with an unknown rise time shorter than 8 days. Maximum flux was observed on 2019 December 15. Its spectral index was also positive, α = 1.8 ± 0.2. The third, detected at R.A. = 301.9952, decl. = 16.1652 at ∼40σ total, brightened from less than 8 mJy to at least 300 mJy at 150 GHz over a day or less but decayed over a few days. Maximum flux was observed on 2018 September 11. Its spectrum was approximately flat, with a spectral index of α = −0.2 ± 0.1. None of the sources were polarized to the limits of these measurements. The two rising-spectrum sources are coincident in position with M and K stars, while the third is coincident with a G star.

Time domain astronomy↗
NASA NTRS2021

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Combined kinematic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich measurements from BOSS CMASS and LOWZ halos

The scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off the free-electron gas in galaxies and clusters leaves detectable imprints on high resolution CMB maps: the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effects (tSZ and kSZ respectively). We use combined microwave maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope DR5 and Planck in combination with the CMASS (mean redshifthzi¼0.55and host halo masshMviri¼3×1013M⊙) and LOWZ (hzi¼0.31,hMviri¼5×1013M⊙) galaxy catalogs from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS DR10 and DR12), to study the gas associated with these galaxy groups. Using individual reconstructed velocities, we perform a stacking analysis and reject the no-kSZ hypothes is at 6.5σ, the highest significance to date. This directly translates into a measurement of the electron number density profile, and thus of the gas density profile. Despite the limited signal to noise, the measurement shows at high significance that the gas density profile is more extended than the dark matter density profile, for any reasonable baryon abundance (formally>90σfor the cosmic baryon abundance). We simultaneously measure the tSZ signal, i.e., the electron thermal pressure profile of the same CMASS objects, and reject theno-tSZ hypothesis at10σ. We combine tSZ and kSZ measurements to estimate the electron temperature to20% precision in several aperture bins, and find it comparable to the virial temperature. In a companion paper, we analyze these measurements to constrain the gas thermodynamics and the properties of feedback inside galaxy groups. We present the corresponding LOWZ measurements in this paper, ruling out a null kSZ (tSZ)signal at 2.9ð13.9Þσ, and leave their interpretation to future work. This paper and the companion paper demonstrate that current CMB experiments can detect and resolve gas profiles in low mass halos and at high redshifts, which are the most sensitive to feedback in galaxy formation and the most difficult to measure any other way. They will be a crucial input to cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, thus improving our understanding of galaxy formation. These precise gas profiles are already sufficient to reduce the main limiting theoretical systematic in galaxy-galaxy lensing: baryonic uncertainties. Future such measurements will thus unleash the statistical power of weak lensing from the Rubin, Euclid and Roman observatories. Our stacking software Thumb Stack is publicly available and directly applicable to future Simons Observatory andCMB-S4 data.

Emmanuel Schaan↗
NASA NTRS2021

In Situ Performance of the Low Frequency Array for Advanced ACTPol

The Advanced Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (AdvACT) is an upgrade for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope using Transition Edge Sensor (TES) detector arrays to measure cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies in multiple frequencies. The low frequency (LF) array was deployed early 2020. It consists of 292 TES bolometers observing in two bands centered at 27 GHz and 39 GHz. At these frequencies, it is sensitive to synchrotron radiation from our galaxy as well as to the CMB, and complements the AdvACT arrays operating at 90, 150 and 230 GHz. We present the initial LF array on-site characterization, including the time constant, optical efficiency and array sensitivity.

Superconducting detectors↗
NASA NTRS2020

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: arcminute-resolution maps of 18,000 square degrees of the microwave sky from ACT 2008-2018 data combined with Planck

This paper presents a maximum-likelihood algorithm for combining sky maps with disparate sky coverage, angular resolution and spatially varying anisotropic noise into a single map of the sky. We use this to merge hundreds of individual maps covering the 2008–2018 ACT observing seasons, resulting in by far the deepest ACT maps released so far. We also combine the maps with the full Planck maps, resulting in maps that have the best features of both Planck and ACT: Planck’s nearly white noise on intermediate and large angular scales and ACT’s high-resolution and sensitivity on small angular scales. The maps cover over 18 000 square degrees, nearly half the full sky, at 100, 150 and 220 GHz. They reveal 4 000 optically-confirmed clusters through the Sunyaev Zel’dovich effect (SZ) and 18 500 point source candidates at > 5σ, the largest single collection of SZ clusters and millimeter wave sources to date. The multi-frequency maps provide millimeter images of nearby galaxies and individual Milky Way nebulae, and even clear detections of several nearby stars. Other anticipated uses of these maps include, for example, thermal SZ and kinematic SZ cluster stacking, CMB cluster lensing and galactic dust science. The method itself has negligible bias. However, due to the preliminary nature of some of the component data sets, we caution that these maps should not be used for precision cosmological analysis. The maps are part of ACT DR5, and will be made available on LAMBDA no later than three months after the journal publication of this article, along with an interactive sky atlas.

Sigurd Naess↗
NASA NTRS2020

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Weighing Distant Clusters with the Most Ancient Light

We use gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to measure the mass of the most distant blindly selected sample of galaxy clusters on which a lensing measurement has been performed to date. In CMB data from the the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Planck satellite, we detect the stacked lensing effect from 677 near-infrared-selected galaxy clusters from the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS), which have a mean redshift of (z)=1.08. There are currently no representative optical weak lensing measurements of clusters that match the distance and average mass of this sample. We detect the lensing signal with a significance of . We model the signal with a halo model framework to find the mean mass of the population from which these clusters are drawn. Assuming that the clusters follow Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) density profiles, we infer a mean mass of (M(500c))=(1.7 ± 0.4) x 10^14M(ʘ). We consider systematic uncertainties from cluster redshift errors, centering errors, and the shape of the NFW profile. These are all smaller than 30% of our reported uncertainty. This work highlights the potential of CMB lensing to enable cosmological constraints from the abundance of distant clusters populating ever larger volumes of the observable universe, beyond the capabilities of optical weak lensing measurements.

Mathew S. Madhavacheril↗
NASA NTRS2020

The Cross Correlation of the ABS and ACT Maps

One of the most important checks for systematic errors in CMB studies is the cross correlation of maps made by independent experiments. In this paper, we report on the cross correlation between maps from the Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) and Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) experiments in both temperature and polarization. These completely different measurements have a clear correlation with each other and with the Planck satellite in both the EE and TE spectra at l < 400 over the roughly 1100 deg(exp 2) common to all three. The TB, EB, and BB cross spectra are consistent with noise. Exploiting such cross-correlations will be important for future experiments operating in Chile that aim to probe the 30 < l < 8,000 range.

CMBR experiments↗
NASA NTRS2020

Small Aperture Telescopes for the Simons Observatory

The Simons Observatory (SO) is an upcoming cosmic microwave background(CMB) experiment located on Cerro Toco, Chile, that will map the microwave sky in temperature and polarization in six frequency bands spanning 27 to 285 GHz. SO will consist of one 6-meter Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) fielding∼30,000 detectors and an array of three 0.42-meter Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) fielding an additional 30,000 detectors. This synergy will allow for the extremely sensitive characterization of the CMB over an-gular scales ranging from an arcmin to tens of degrees, enabling a wide range of scientific output. Here we focus on the SATs targeting degree angular scales with successive dichroic instruments observing at Mid-Frequency (MF: 93/145 GHz), Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF:225/285 GHz), and Low-Frequency (LF: 27/39 GHz). The three SATs will be able to map∼10% of the sky to a noise level of∼2 μK-arcmin when combining 93 and 145 GHz. The multiple frequency bands will allow the CMB to be separated from galactic foregrounds (primarily synchrotron and dust), with the primary science goal of characterizing the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level ofσ(r)≈0.003.

Small aperature telescope↗
NASA NTRS2020

Assembly and Integration Process of the High-Density Detector Array Readout Modules for the Simons Observatory

The Simons Observatory will measure the cosmic microwave background tempera-ture and polarization using a suite of new telescopes in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The Simons Observatory will use dichroic transition edge sensor (TES) bolometer arrays spanning six frequency bands from 27 to 280 GHz. The Simons Observa-tory will pioneer the use of a densely packed multiplexing architecture based on the microwave SQUID multiplexer ( 𝜇mux), housing ∼2000 microwave resonators, each coupled to a TES. The Simons Observatory aims to multiplex each array of ∼2000 detectors with a single pair of coaxial cables and requires a multiplexing factor of ∼1000 . The Simons Observatory cryogenic readout system is called the universal microwave multiplexing module (UMM). The UMM couples to both horn and lenslet-coupled detector arrays and is integrated into the universal focal-plane module (UFM) after being independently characterized. We present processes we have developed for highly repeatable and automated integration methods of UMMs, which will be needed for the production of the 49 UFMs required for the first stage of the Simons Observatory.

CMB↗
NASA NTRS2019

Machine Learning, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and Optimal Algorithms to Characterize the AdvACT Kilopixel Transition-Edge Sensor Arrays

Next-generation focal planes comprising dozens of kilopixel transition-edge sensor (TES) arrays require new methods to rapidly screen candidate arrays, evaluate array non-idealities in the field, identify outlier devices for removal, and optimize the array performance in the field. We demonstrate robust methods to estimate TES parameters (critical temperatures and thermal conductivity parameters) and their uncertainties using a custom Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. We also constrain systematic effects in estimating the TES parameters from non-isothermal current-voltage curves (IVs) at approximately a ~3% level. Additionally, for the first time, we have applied Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to tune detector arrays and optimize their performance.

Maria Salatino↗