Engineering topics

McDonald, P.

Publications and source records attributed to McDonald, P..

6 records

DOE OSTI2019

Testing Gravity Using Type Ia Supernovae Discovered by Next-Generation Wide-Field Imaging Surveys

In the upcoming decade cadenced wide-field imaging surveys will increase the number of identified $z<0.3$ Type~Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. The increase in the number density and solid-angle coverage of SNe~Ia, in parallel with improvements in the standardization of their absolute magnitudes, now make them competitive probes of the growth of structure and hence of gravity. The peculiar velocity power spectrum is sensitive to the growth index $\gamma$, which captures the effect of gravity on the linear growth of structure through the relation $f=\Omega_M^\gamma$. We present the first projections for the precision in $\gamma$ for a range of realistic SN peculiar-velocity survey scenarios. In the next decade the peculiar velocities of SNe Ia in the local $z<0.3$ Universe will provide a measure of $\gamma$ to $\pm 0.01$ precision that can definitively distinguish between General Relativity and leading models of alternative gravity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2019

Testing Gravity Using Type Ia Supernovae Discovered by Next-Generation Wide-Field Imaging Surveys

In the upcoming decade cadenced wide-field imaging surveys will increase the number of identified $z<0.3$ Type~Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. The increase in the number density and solid-angle coverage of SNe~Ia, in parallel with improvements in the standardization of their absolute magnitudes, now make them competitive probes of the growth of structure and hence of gravity. The peculiar velocity power spectrum is sensitive to the growth index γ, which captures the effect of gravity on the linear growth of structure through the relation f=ΩγM. We present the first projections for the precision in γ for a range of realistic SN peculiar-velocity survey scenarios. In the next decade the peculiar velocities of SNe Ia in the local $z<0.3$ Universe will provide a measure of γ to ±0.01 precision that can definitively distinguish between General Relativity and leading models of alternative gravity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2019

Testing Gravity Using Type Ia Supernovae Discovered by Next-Generation Wide-Field Imaging Surveys

In the next decade cadenced wide-field imaging surveys will increase the number of identified $z<0.3$ Type~Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. The increase in the number density and solid-angle coverage of SNe~Ia, in parallel with improvements in the standardization of their absolute magnitudes, now make them competitive probes of the growth of structure and hence of gravity. The peculiar velocity power spectrum is sensitive to the growth index γ, which captures the effect of gravity on the linear growth of structure through the relation f=ΩγM. We present the first projections for the precision in γ for a range of realistic SN peculiar-velocity survey scenarios. In the upcoming years the peculiar velocities of SNe Ia in the local $z<0.3$ Universe will provide a measure of γ to ±0.01 precision that can definitively distinguish between General Relativity and leading models of alternative gravity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

A guide to designing future ground-based cosmic microwave background experiments

In this follow-up work to the high energy physics Community Summer Study 2013 (aka SNOWMASS), we explore the scientific capabilities of a future Stage IV cosmic microwave background polarization experiment under various assumptions on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage. We use the Fisher matrix technique to calculate the expected uncertainties of cosmological parameters in νΛCDM that are especially relevant to the physics of fundamental interactions, including neutrino masses, effective number of relativistic species, dark energy equation of state, dark matter annihilation, and inflationary parameters. To further chart the landscape of future cosmology probes, we include forecasted results from the baryon acoustic oscillation signal as measured by Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to constrain parameters that would benefit from low redshift information. We find the following best 1σ constraints: σ(M {sub ν}) = 15 meV, σ(N {sub eff}) = 0.0156, dark energy figure of merit = 303, σ(p {sub ann}) = 0.00588 × 3 × 10{sup –26} cm{sup 3} s{sup –1} GeV{sup –1}, σ(Ω {sub K}) = 0.00074, σ(n{sub s} ) = 0.00110, σ(α {sub s}) = 0.00145, and σ(r) = 0.00009. We also detail the dependencies of the parameter constraints on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

DESI and other Dark Energy experiments in the era of neutrino mass measurements

Here we present Fisher matrix projections for future cosmological parameter measurements, including neutrino masses, Dark Energy, curvature, modified gravity, the inflationary perturbation spectrum, non-Gaussianity, and dark radiation. We focus on DESI and generally redshift surveys (BOSS, HETDEX, eBOSS, Euclid, and WFIRST), but also include CMB (Planck) and weak gravitational lensing (DES and LSST) constraints. The goal is to present a consistent set of projections, for concrete experiments, which are otherwise scattered throughout many papers and proposals. We include neutrino mass as a free parameter in most projections, as it will inevitably be relevant $-$ DESI and other experiments can measure the sum of neutrino masses to ~ 0.02 eV or better, while the minimum possible sum is 0.06 eV. We note that constraints on Dark Energy are significantly degraded by the presence of neutrino mass uncertainty, especially when using galaxy clustering only as a probe of the BAO distance scale (because this introduces additional uncertainty in the background evolution after the CMB epoch). Using broadband galaxy power becomes relatively more powerful, and bigger gains are achieved by combining lensing survey constraints with redshift survey constraints. Finally, we do not try to be especially innovative, e.g., with complex treatments of potential systematic errors $-$ these projections are intended as a straightforward baseline for comparison to more detailed analyses.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

A Guide to Designing Future Ground-based CMB Experiments

In this follow-up work to the High Energy Physics Community Summer Study 2013 (HEP CSS 2013, a.k.a. Snowmass), we explore the scientific capabilities of a future Stage-IV Cosmic Microwave Background polarization experiment (CMB-S4) under various assumptions on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage. We use the Fisher matrix technique to calculate the expected uncertainties in cosmological parameters in vΛCDM that are especially relevant to the physics of fundamental interactions, including neutrino masses, effective number of relativistic species, dark-energy equation of state, dark-matter annihilation, and inflationary parameters. To further chart the landscape of future cosmology probes, we include forecasted results from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) signal as measured by DESI to constrain parameters that would benefit from low redshift information. We find the following best 1-σ constraints: σ(M v ) = 15 meV, σ(N eff ) = 0.0156, Dark energy Figure of Merit = 303, σ(p ann ) = 0.00588 x 3 x 10 -26 cm 3 /s/GeV, σ( Ω K ) = 0.00074, σ(n s ) = 0.00110, σ( α s ) = 0.00145, and σ(r) = 0.00009. We also detail the dependences of the parameter constraints on detector count, resolution, and sky coverage.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗