Search NASA⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Samuroff, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Samuroff, S..

42 records · Page 3

Dark energy survey internal consistency tests of the joint cosmological probes analysis with posterior predictive distributions

Beyond ΛCDM, physics or systematic errors may cause subsets of a cosmological data set to appear inconsistent when analysed assuming ΛCDM. Here, we present an application of internal consistency tests to measurements from the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 (DES Y1) joint probes analysis. Our analysis relies on computing the posterior predictive distribution (PPD) for these data under the assumption of ΛCDM. We find that the DES Y1 data have an acceptable goodness of fit to ΛCDM, with a probability of finding a worse fit by random chance of p = 0.046. Using numerical PPD tests, supplemented by graphical checks, we show that most of the data vector appears completely consistent with expectations, although we observe a small tension between large- and small-scale measurements. A small part (roughly 1.5 per cent) of the data vector shows an unusually large departure from expectations; excluding this part of the data has negligible impact on cosmological constraints, but does significantly improve the p-value to 0.10. The methodology developed here will be applied to test the consistency of DES Year 3 joint probes data sets.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Cosmological constraints from DES Y1 cluster abundances and SPT multiwavelength data

We perform a joint analysis of the counts of redMaPPer clusters selected from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) year 1 data and multiwavelength follow-up data collected within the 2500 deg2 South Pole Telescope (SPT) Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) survey. The SPT follow-up data, calibrating the richness-mass relation of the optically selected redMaPPer catalog, enable the cosmological exploitation of the DES cluster abundance data. To explore possible systematics related to the modeling of projection effects, we consider two calibrations of the observational scatter on richness estimates: a simple Gaussian model which account only for the background contamination (BKG), and a model which further includes contamination and incompleteness due to projection effects (PRJ). Assuming either a ΛCDM+∑mν or wCDM+∑mν cosmology, and for both scatter models, we derive cosmological constraints consistent with multiple cosmological probes of the low and high redshift Universe, and in particular with the SPT cluster abundance data. This result demonstrates that the DES Y1 and SPT cluster counts provide consistent cosmological constraints, if the same mass calibration data set is adopted. It thus supports the conclusion of the DES Y1 cluster cosmology analysis which interprets the tension observed with other cosmological probes in terms of systematics affecting the stacked weak lensing analysis of optically selected low–richness clusters. Finally, we analyze the first combined optically SZ selected cluster catalog obtained by including the SPT sample above the maximum redshift probed by the DES Y1 redMaPPer sample (z=0.65). Besides providing a mild improvement of the cosmological constraints, this data combination serves as a stricter test of our scatter models: the PRJ model, providing scaling relations consistent between the two abundance and multiwavelength follow-up data, is favored over the BKG model.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Optimizing the lens sample in a combined galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing analysis

We investigate potential gains in cosmological constraints from the combination of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing by optimizing the lens galaxy sample selection using information from Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data and assuming the DES Year 1 metacalibration sample for the sources. We explore easily reproducible selections based on magnitude cuts in i-band as a function of (photometric) redshift, zphot, and benchmark the potential gains against those using the well-established redMaGiC [E. Rozo et al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 461, 1431 (2016)MNRAA40035-871110.1093/mnras/stw1281] sample. We focus on the balance between density and photometric redshift accuracy, while marginalizing over a realistic set of cosmological and systematic parameters. Our optimal selection, the MagLim sample, satisfies i<4zphot+18 and has ∼30% wider redshift distributions but ∼3.5 times more galaxies than redMaGiC. Assuming a wCDM model (i.e. with a free parameter for the dark energy equation of state) and equivalent scale cuts to mitigate nonlinear effects, this leads to 40% increase in the figure of merit for the pair combinations of Ωm, w, and σ8, and gains of 16% in σ8, 10% in Ωm, and 12% in w. Similarly, in ΛCDM, we find an improvement of 19% and 27% on σ8 and Ωm, respectively. We also explore flux-limited samples with a flat magnitude cut finding that the optimal selection, i<22.2, has ∼7 times more galaxies and ∼20% wider redshift distributions compared to MagLim, but slightly worse constraints. We show that our results are robust with respect to the assumed galaxy bias and photometric redshift uncertainties with only moderate further gains from increased number of tomographic bins or the inclusion of bin cross-correlations, except in the case of the flux-limited sample, for which these gains are more significant.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DES Y1 results: Splitting growth and geometry to test $\Lambda$CDM

We analyze Dark Energy Survey (DES) data to constrain a cosmological model where a subset of parameters—focusing on Ωm—are split into versions associated with structure growth (e.g., Ωmgrow) and expansion history (e.g., Ωmgeo). Once the parameters have been specified for the ΛCDM cosmological model, which includes general relativity as a theory of gravity, it uniquely predicts the evolution of both geometry (distances) and the growth of structure over cosmic time. Any inconsistency between measurements of geometry and growth could therefore indicate a breakdown of that model. Our growth-geometry split approach therefore serves both as a (largely) model-independent test for beyond-ΛCDM physics, and as a means to characterize how DES observables provide cosmological information. We analyze the same multiprobe DES data as [Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 171301 (2019)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.122.171301] : DES Year 1 (Y1) galaxy clustering and weak lensing, which are sensitive to both growth and geometry, as well as Y1 BAO and Y3 supernovae, which probe geometry. We additionally include external geometric information from BOSS DR12 BAO and a compressed Planck 2015 likelihood, and external growth information from BOSS DR12 RSD. We find no significant disagreement with Ωmgrow=Ωmgeo. When DES and external data are analyzed separately, degeneracies with neutrino mass and intrinsic alignments limit our ability to measure Ωmgrow, but combining DES with external data allows us to constrain both growth and geometric quantities. We also consider a parametrization where we split both Ωm and w, but find that even our most constraining data combination is unable to separately constrain Ωmgrow and wgrow. Relative to ΛCDM, splitting growth and geometry weakens bounds on σ8 but does not alter constraints on h.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Wide-field mass maps via forward fitting in harmonic space

Herein we present new wide-field weak lensing mass maps for the Year 1 Dark Energy Survey (DES) data, generated via a forward fitting approach. This method of producing maps does not impose any prior constraints on the mass distribution to be reconstructed. The technique is found to improve the map reconstruction on the edges of the field compared to the conventional Kaiser–Squires method, which applies a direct inversion on the data; our approach is in good agreement with the previous direct approach in the central regions of the footprint. The mapping technique is assessed and verified with tests on simulations; together with the Kaiser–Squires method, the technique is then applied to data from the DES Year 1 data and the differences between the two methods are compared. We also produce the first DES measurements of the convergence Minkowski functionals and compare them to those measured in simulations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗