Engineering topics

Moustakas, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Moustakas, J..

18 records

DOE OSTI2025

A measurement of $H_0$ from DESI DR1 using energy densities

We present a new measurement of the Hubble constant, independent of standard rulers and robust to pre-recombination modifications such as Early Dark Energy (EDE), obtained by calibrating the total energy density of the Universe. We start using the present-day photon density as an anchor, and use the baryon-to-photon ratio from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis based measurements and the baryon-to-matter ratio from the baryons' imprint on galaxy clustering to translate to a physical matter density at present day. We then compare this to measurements of the ratio of the matter density to the critical density ($Ω_{\mathrm{m}}$), calculated using the relative positions of the baryon acoustic oscillations, to measure the critical density of the universe and hence $H_0$. The important measurements of the evolution of the energy density all happen at low redshift, so we consider this a low-redshift measurement. We validate our method both on a suite of $N$-body mocks and on noiseless theory vectors generated across a wide range of Hubble parameters in both $Λ$CDM and EDE cosmologies. Using DESI DR1 data combined with the angular CMB acoustic scale and the latest BBN constraints, we find $H_0 = 69.0 \pm 2.5$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$, consistent with existing early and late-time determinations of the Hubble constant. We consider the impact of non-standard dark energy evolution on our measurement. Future data, including that from further iterations of DESI and from Euclid, will add to these results providing a powerful test of the Hubble tension.

Krolewski, Alex [U. Waterloo (main); Waterloo U., ↗

DOE OSTI2025

Missing components in ΛCDM from DESI Y1 baryonic acoustic oscillation measurements: Insights from redshift remapping

We explore transformations of the Friedman-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric and cosmological parameters that align with observational data while aiming to gain insights into potential extensions of standard cosmological models. We modified the FLRW metric by introducing a scaling factor, e 2Θ(a) –the cosmological scaling function (CSF), which alters the standard relationship between cosmological redshift and the cosmic scale factor without affecting angular measurements or cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Using data from DESI Year 1, Pantheon+ supernovae, and the Planck CMB temperature power spectrum, we constrained both the CSF and cosmological parameters through a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach. Our results indicate that the CSF model fits observational data with a lower Hubble constant (although it is compatible with the value given by Planck 2018 within 1σ) and is predominantly dark matter dominated. Additionally, the CSF model produces temperature and lensing power spectra similar to those predicted by the standard model, though with lower values in the CSF model at large scales. We also checked that when fitting a CSF model without dark energy to the data, we obtain a more negative conformal function. This suggests that the CSF model may offer hints about missing elements and opens up a new avenue for exploring physical interpretations of cosmic acceleration.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2025

The DESI-Lensing Mock Challenge: large-scale cosmological analysis of 3x2-pt statistics

The current generation of large galaxy surveys will test the cosmological model by combining multiple types of observational probes. Realising the statistical promise of these new datasets requires rigorous attention to all aspects of analysis including cosmological measurements, modelling, covariance and parameter likelihood. In this paper we present the results of an end-to-end simulation study designed to test the analysis pipeline for the combination of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Year 1 galaxy redshift dataset and separate weak gravitational lensing information from the Kilo-Degree Survey, Dark Energy Survey and Hyper-Suprime-Cam Survey. Our analysis employs the 3x2-pt correlation functions including cosmic shear and galaxy-galaxy lensing, together with the projected correlation function of the spectroscopic DESI lenses. We build realistic simulations of these datasets including galaxy halo occupation distributions, photometric redshift errors, weights, multiplicative shear calibration biases and magnification. We calculate the analytical covariance of these correlation functions including the Gaussian, noise and super-sample contributions, and show that our covariance determination agrees with estimates based on the ensemble of simulations. We use a Bayesian inference platform to demonstrate that we can recover the fiducial cosmological parameters of the simulation within the statistical error margin of the experiment, investigating the sensitivity to scale cuts. This study is the first in a sequence of papers in which we present and validate the large-scale 3x2-pt cosmological analysis of DESI-Y1.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Impact of systematic redshift errors on the cross-correlation of the Lyman-α forest with quasars at small scales using DESI Early Data

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will measure millions of quasar spectra by the end of its 5 year survey. Quasar redshift errors impact the shape of the Lyman-α forest correlation functions, which can affect cosmological analyses and therefore cosmological interpretations. Here, using data from the DESI Early Data Release and the first two months of the main survey, we measure the systematic redshift error from an offset in the cross-correlation of the Lyman-α forest with quasars. We find evidence for a redshift dependent bias causing redshifts to be underestimated with increasing redshift, stemming from improper modeling of the Lyman-α optical depth in the templates used for redshift estimation. New templates were derived for the DESI Year 1 quasar sample at z > 1.6 and we found the redshift dependent bias, Δr ∥ , increased from -1.94 ± 0.15 h -1 Mpc to -0.08 ± 0.04 h -1 Mpc (-205 ± 15 km s -1 to -9.0 ± 4.0 km s -1 ). These new templates will be used to provide redshifts for the DESI Year 1 quasar sample.

Lyman alpha forest↗

DOE OSTI2025

$H_0$ Without the Sound Horizon (or Supernovae): A 2% Measurement in DESI DR1

The sound horizon scale $r_s$ is a key source of information for early-time $H_0$ measurements, and is therefore a common target of new physics proposed to solve the Hubble tension. We present a sub-2% measurement of the Hubble constant that is independent of this scale, using data from the first data release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI DR1). Building on previous work, we remove dependency on the sound horizon size using a heuristic rescaling procedure at the power spectrum level. A key innovation is the inclusion of \emph{uncalibrated} (agnostic to $r_s$) post-reconstruction BAO measurements from DESI DR1, as well as using the CMB acoustic scale $θ_*$ as a high-redshift anchor. Uncalibrated type-Ia supernovae are often included as an independent source of $Ω_m$ information; here we demonstrate the robustness of our results by additionally considering two supernova-independent alternative datasets. We find somewhat higher values of $H_0$ relative to our previous work: $69.2^{+1.3}_{-1.4}$, $70.3^{+1.4}_{-1.2}$, and $69.6^{+1.3}_{-1.8}\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ respectively when including measurements from i) Planck/ACT CMB lensing $\times$ unWISE galaxies, ii) the DES Year 3 6$\times$2pt analysis, and iii) Planck/ACT CMB lensing + the DES Year 5 supernova analysis. These remarkably consistent constraints achieve better than 2% precision; they are among the most stringent sound horizon-independent measurements from LSS to date, and provide a powerful avenue for probing the origin of the Hubble tension.

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.C↗

DOE OSTI2024

The rate of extreme coronal line emitting galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and their relation to tidal disruption events

High-ionization iron coronal lines (CLs) are a rare phenomenon observed in galaxy and quasi-stellar object spectra that are thought to be created by high-energy emission from active galactic nuclei and certain types of transients. In cases known as extreme coronal line emitting galaxies (ECLEs), these CLs are strong and fade away on a time-scale of years. The most likely progenitors of these variable CLs are tidal disruption events (TDEs), which produce sufficient high-energy emission to create and sustain the CLs over these time-scales. To test the possible connection between ECLEs and TDEs, we present the most complete variable ECLE rate calculation to date and compare the results to TDE rates from the literature. To achieve this, we search for ECLEs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We detect sufficiently strong CLs in 16 galaxies, more than doubling the number previously found in SDSS. Using follow-up spectra from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph, Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mid-infrared observations, and Liverpool Telescope optical photometry, we find that none of the nine new ECLEs evolve in a manner consistent with that of the five previously discovered variable ECLEs. Using this sample of five variable ECLEs, we calculate the galaxy-normalized rate of variable ECLEs in SDSS to be $R_\mathrm{G}=3.6~^{+2.6}_{-1.8}~(\mathrm{statistical})~^{+5.1}_{-0.0}~(\mathrm{systematic})\times 10^{-6}~\mathrm{galaxy}^{-1}~\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. The mass-normalized rate is $R_\mathrm{M}=3.1~^{+2.3}_{-1.5}~(\mathrm{statistical})~^{+4.4}_{-0.0}~(\mathrm{systematic})\times 10^{-17}~\mathrm{M_\odot ^{-1}}~\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$ and the volumetric rate is $R_\mathrm{V}=7~^{+20}_{-5}~(\mathrm{statistical})~^{+10}_{-0.0}~(\mathrm{systematic})\times 10^{-9}~\mathrm{Mpc}^{-3}~\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. Our rates are one to two orders of magnitude lower than TDE rates from the literature, which suggests that only 10–40 per cent of all TDEs produce variable ECLEs. Additional uncertainties in the rates arising from the structure of the interstellar medium have yet to be included.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Probing the Impact of Radio-mode Feedback on the Properties of the Cool Circumgalactic Medium

We explore the influence of radio-mode feedback on the properties of the cool circumgalactic medium (CGM). To this end, we assemble a statistical sample of approximately 30,000 radio galaxies with background quasars by combining optical spectroscopic measurements of luminous red galaxies and quasars from the year 1 data set of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and radio sources from the LOw-Frequency ARray Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) DR2 catalog and the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) quick-look catalog. Galaxies with similar optical properties but with no radio counterparts in LoTSS and VLASS are selected as the control group. We measure the cool CGM properties of radio galaxies and their control samples traced by Mg ii absorption lines, including covering fraction, rest equivalent width, and gas kinematics. Our results show no significant difference in the properties of gas around radio galaxies and their control sample, indicating that the operating radio-mode feedback of massive galaxies does not produce detectable effects on the properties of the cool CGM. Finally, we show that the CGM of radio galaxies contains a nonnegligible amount of cool gas with approximately 10 10 M ⊙ . This abundance can place a stringent constraint on the radio-mode feedback models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

New Strong Gravitational Lenses from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 9

We have conducted a search for strong gravitational lensing systems in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 9. This is the third paper in a series. These surveys together cover ~19,000 deg 2 visible from the Northern Hemisphere, reaching a z-band AB magnitude of ~22.5. We use a deep residual neural network, trained on a compilation of known lensing systems and high-grade candidates as well as nonlenses in the same footprint. After applying our trained neural network to the survey data, we visually inspect and rank images with probabilities above a threshold which has been chosen to balance precision and recall. We have found 1895 lens candidates, of which 1512 are identified for the first time. Combining the discoveries from this work with those from Papers I (335) and II (1210), we have discovered a total of 3057 new candidates in the Legacy Surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Systematic Effects in Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing with DESI

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey will measure spectroscopic redshifts for millions of galaxies across roughly $14,000 \, \mathrm{deg}^2$ of the sky. Cross-correlating targets in the DESI survey with complementary imaging surveys allows us to measure and analyze shear distortions caused by gravitational lensing in unprecedented detail. In this work, we analyze a series of mock catalogs with ray-traced gravitational lensing and increasing sophistication to estimate systematic effects on galaxy-galaxy lensing estimators such as the tangential shear $\gamma_{\mathrm{t}}$ and the excess surface density $\Delta\Sigma$ . We employ mock catalogs tailored to the specific imaging surveys overlapping with the DESI survey: the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey, and the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS). Among others, we find that fiber incompleteness can have significant effects on galaxy-galaxy lensing estimators but can be corrected effectively by up-weighting DESI targets with fibers by the inverse of the fiber assignment probability. Similarly, we show that intrinsic alignment and lens magnification are expected to be statistically significant given the precision forecasted for the DESI year-1 data set. Our study informs several analysis choices for upcoming cross-correlation studies of DESI with DES, HSC, and KiDS.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Broad absorption line quasars in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Early Data Release

Broad absorption line (BAL) quasars are characterized by gas clouds that absorb flux at the wavelength of common quasar spectral features, although blueshifted by velocities that can exceed $0.1c$. BAL features are interesting as signatures of significant feedback, yet they can also compromise cosmological studies with quasars by distorting the shape of the most prominent quasar emission lines, impacting redshift accuracy and measurements of the matter density distribution traced by the Lyman $\alpha$ forest. We present a catalogue of BAL quasars discovered in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey Early Data Release, which were observed as part of DESI Survey Validation, as well as the first two months of the main survey. We describe our method to automatically identify BAL quasars in DESI data, the quantities we measure for each BAL, and investigate the completeness and purity of this method with mock DESI observations. We mask the wavelengths of the BAL features and re-evaluate each BAL quasar redshift, finding new redshifts which are $243\, {\rm km}\, {\rm s}^{-1}$ smaller on average for the BAL quasar sample. These new, more accurate redshifts are important to obtain the best measurements of quasar clustering, especially at small scales. Finally, we present some spectra of rarer classes of BALs that illustrate the potential of DESI data to identify such populations for further study.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Generating mock galaxy catalogues for flux-limited samples like the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey

ABSTRACT Accurate mock galaxy catalogues are crucial to validate analysis pipelines used to constrain dark energy models. We present a fast HOD-fitting method which we apply to the AbacusSummit simulations to create a set of mock catalogues for the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey, which contain r-band magnitudes and $(g-r)$ colours. The halo tabulation method fits HODs for different absolute magnitude threshold samples simultaneously, preventing unphysical HOD crossing between samples. We validate the HOD fitting procedure by fitting to real-space clustering measurements and galaxy number densities from the MXXL BGS mock, which was tuned to the SDSS and GAMA surveys. The best-fitting clustering measurements and number densities are mostly within the assumed errors, but the clustering for the faint samples is low on large scales. The best-fitting HOD parameters are robust when fitting to simulations with different realizations of the initial conditions. When varying the cosmology, trends are seen as a function of each cosmological parameter. We use the best-fitting HOD parameters to create cubic box and cut sky mocks from the AbacusSummit simulations, in a range of cosmologies. As an illustration, we compare the ${}^{0.1}M_r\lt -20$ sample of galaxies in the mock with BGS measurements from the DESI one-percent survey. We find good agreement in the number densities, and the projected correlation function is reasonable, with differences that can be improved in the future by fitting directly to BGS clustering measurements. The cubic box and cut-sky mocks in different cosmologies are made publicly available.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

DESI complete calibration of the colour–redshift relation (DC3R2): results from early DESI data

We present initial results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) complete calibration of the colour–redshift relation (DC3R2) secondary target survey. Our analysis uses 230 k galaxies that overlap with KiDS-VIKING ugriZYJHK s photometry to calibrate the colour–redshift relation and to inform photometric redshift (photo-z) inference methods of future weak lensing surveys. Together with emission line galaxies (ELGs), luminous red galaxies (LRGs), and the Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) that provide samples of complementary colour, the DC3R2 targets help DESI to span 56 percent of the colour space visible to Euclid and LSST with high confidence spectroscopic redshifts. The effects of spectroscopic completeness and quality are explored, as well as systematic uncertainties introduced with the use of common Self-Organizing Maps trained on different photometry than the analysis sample. We further examine the dependence of redshift on magnitude at fixed colour, important for the use of bright galaxy spectra to calibrate redshifts in a fainter photometric galaxy sample. We find that noise in the KiDS-VIKING photometry introduces a dominant, apparent magnitude dependence of redshift at fixed colour, which indicates a need for carefully chosen deep drilling fields, and survey simulation to model this effect for future weak lensing surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Optimal 1D Ly α forest power spectrum estimation – III. DESI early data

ABSTRACT The 1D power spectrum P1D of the Ly α forest provides important information about cosmological and astrophysical parameters, including constraints on warm dark matter models, the sum of the masses of the three neutrino species, and the thermal state of the intergalactic medium. We present the first measurement of P1D with the quadratic maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey early data sample. This early sample of 54 600 quasars is already comparable in size to the largest previous studies, and we conduct a thorough investigation of numerous instrumental and analysis systematic errors to evaluate their impact on DESI data with QMLE. We demonstrate the excellent performance of the spectroscopic pipeline noise estimation and the impressive accuracy of the spectrograph resolution matrix with 2D image simulations of raw DESI images that we processed with the DESI spectroscopic pipeline. We also study metal line contamination and noise calibration systematics with quasar spectra on the red side of the Ly α emission line. In a companion paper, we present a similar analysis based on the Fast Fourier Transform estimate of the power spectrum. We conclude with a comparison of these two approaches and discuss the key sources of systematic error that we need to address with the upcoming DESI Year 1 analysis.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

The Lyman-α forest catalogue from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Early Data Release

We present and validate the catalogue of Lyman-α forest fluctuations for 3D analyses using the Early Data Release (EDR) from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. We used 88 511 quasars collected from DESI Survey Validation (SV) data and the first two months of the main survey (M2). We present several improvements to the method used to extract the Lyman-α absorption fluctuations performed in previous analyses from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). In particular, we modify the weighting scheme and show that it can improve the precision of the correlation function measurement by more than 20 percent. This catalogue can be downloaded from https://data.desi.lbl.gov/public/edr/vac/edr/lya/fuji/v0.3, and it will be used in the near future for the first DESI measurements of the 3D correlations in the Lyman-α forest.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

A striking relationship between dust extinction and radio detection in DESI QSOs: evidence for a dusty blow-out phase in red QSOs

ABSTRACT We present the first eight months of data from our secondary target programme within the ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. Our programme uses a mid-infrared and optical colour selection to preferentially target dust-reddened quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) that would have otherwise been missed by the nominal DESI QSO selection. So far, we have obtained optical spectra for 3038 candidates, of which ∼70 per cent of the high-quality objects (those with robust redshifts) are visually confirmed to be Type 1 QSOs, consistent with the expected fraction from the main DESI QSO survey. By fitting a dust-reddened blue QSO composite to the QSO spectra, we find they are well-fitted by a normal QSO with up to AV ∼ 4 mag of line-of-sight dust extinction. Utilizing radio data from the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) DR2, we identify a striking positive relationship between the amount of line-of-sight dust extinction towards a QSO and the radio detection fraction, that is not driven by radio-loud systems, redshift and/or luminosity effects. This demonstrates an intrinsic connection between dust reddening and the production of radio emission in QSOs, whereby the radio emission is most likely due to low-powered jets or winds/outflows causing shocks in a dusty environment. On the basis of this evidence, we suggest that red QSOs may represent a transitional ‘blow-out’ phase in the evolution of QSOs, where winds and outflows evacuate the dust and gas to reveal an unobscured blue QSO.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

XMM-Newton and SRG/eROSITA observations of the isolated neutron star candidate 4XMM J 022141.5-735632

We report the results of follow-up investigations of a possible new thermally emitting isolated neutron star (INS), 4XMM J022141.5-735632, using observations from XMM-Newton and Spectrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) eROSITA. The analysis is complemented by Legacy Survey imaging in the optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The X-ray source, the first to be targeted by XMM-Newton in an effort to identify new INS candidates from the fourth generation of the XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue Data Release 9 (4XMM-DR9), shows a remarkably soft energy distribution and a lack of catalogued counterparts; the very high X-ray-to-optical flux ratio virtually excludes any other identification than an INS. Within current observational limits, no significant flux variation or change of spectral state is registered over nearly ten years. Future dedicated observations, particularly to search for pulsations, are crucial to shed further light on the nature of the X-ray source and relations to other Galactic neutron stars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Discovering New Strong Gravitational Lenses in the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys

We have conducted a search for new strong gravitational lensing systems in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Legacy Imaging Surveys' Data Release 8. We use deep residual neural networks, building on previous work presented by Huang et al. These surveys together cover approximately one-third of the sky visible from the Northern Hemisphere, reaching a z-band AB magnitude of ~22.5. We compile a training sample that consists of known lensing systems as well as non-lenses in the Legacy Surveys and the Dark Energy Survey. After applying our trained neural networks to the survey data, we visually inspect and rank images with probabilities above a threshold. In this work, we present 1210 new strong lens candidates.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Finding Strong Gravitational Lenses in the DESI DECam Legacy Survey

We perform a semi-automated search for strong gravitational lensing systems in the 9000 deg 2 Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), part of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Legacy Imaging Surveys. The combination of the depth and breadth of these surveys are unparalleled at this time, making them particularly suitable for discovering new strong gravitational lensing systems. We adopt the deep residual neural network architecture developed by Lanusse et al. for the purpose of finding strong lenses in photometric surveys. We compile a training sample that consists of known lensing systems in the Legacy Surveys and the Dark Energy Survey as well as non-lenses in the footprint of DECaLS. In this paper we show the results of applying our trained neural network to the cutout images centered on galaxies typed as ellipticals in DECaLS. The images that receive the highest scores (probabilities) are visually inspected and ranked. Here we present 335 candidate strong lensing systems, identified for the first time.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗