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Sato, Masanori

Publications and source records attributed to Sato, Masanori.

REVISING THE HALOFIT MODEL FOR THE NONLINEAR MATTER POWER SPECTRUM

Based on a suite of state-of-the-art high-resolution N-body simulations, we revisit the so-called halofit model as an accurate fitting formula for the nonlinear matter power spectrum. While the halofit model has frequently been used as a standard cosmological tool to predict the nonlinear matter power spectrum in a universe dominated by cold dark matter, its precision has been limited by the low resolution of N-body simulations used to determine the fitting parameters, suggesting the necessity of an improved fitting formula at small scales for future cosmological studies. We run high-resolution N-body simulations for 16 cosmological models around the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe best-fit cosmological parameters (one-, three-, five-, and seven-year results), including dark energy models with a constant equation of state. The simulation results are used to re-calibrate the fitting parameters of the halofit model so as to reproduce small-scale power spectra of the N-body simulations, while keeping the precision at large scales. The revised fitting formula provides an accurate prediction of the nonlinear matter power spectrum in a wide range of wavenumbers (k {<=} 30 h Mpc{sup -1}) at redshifts 0 {<=} z {<=} 10, with 5% precision for k {<=} 1 h Mpc{sup -1} at 0 {<=} z {<=} 10 and 10% for 1 {<=} k {<=} 10 h Mpc{sup -1} at 0 {<=} z {<=} 3. We discuss the impact of the improved halofit model on weak-lensing power spectra and correlation functions, and show that the improved model better reproduces ray-tracing simulation results.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DARK ENERGY FROM THE LOG-TRANSFORMED CONVERGENCE FIELD

A logarithmic transform of the convergence field improves 'the information content', i.e., the overall precision associated with the measurement of the amplitude of the convergence power spectrum, by improving the covariance matrix properties. The translation of this improvement in the information content to that in cosmological parameters, such as those associated with dark energy, requires knowing the sensitivity of the log-transformed field to those cosmological parameters. In this paper, we use N-body simulations with ray tracing to generate convergence fields at multiple source redshifts as a function of cosmology. The gain in information associated with the log-transformed field does lead to tighter constraints on dark energy parameters, but only if shape noise is neglected. The presence of shape noise quickly diminishes the advantage of the log-mapping, more quickly than we would expect based on the information content. With or without shape noise, using a larger pixel size allows for a more efficient log-transformation.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS OF COSMOLOGICAL LENSING: CONVERGENCE, SHEAR, AND MAGNIFICATION

We perform high-resolution ray-tracing simulations to investigate probability distribution functions (PDFs) of lensing convergence, shear, and magnification on distant sources up to the redshift of z{sub s} = 20. We pay particular attention to the shot noise effect in N-body simulations by explicitly showing how it affects the variance of the convergence. We show that the convergence and magnification PDFs are closely related to each other via the approximate relation {mu} = (1 - {kappa}){sup -2}, which can reproduce the behavior of PDFs surprisingly well up to the high magnification tail. The mean convergence measured in the source plane is found to be systematically negative, rather than zero as often assumed, and is correlated with the convergence variance. We provide simple analytical formulae for the PDFs, which reproduce simulated PDFs reasonably well for a wide range of redshifts and smoothing sizes. As explicit applications of our ray-tracing simulations, we examine the strong-lensing probability and the magnification effects on the luminosity functions of distant galaxies and quasars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

SIMULATIONS OF WIDE-FIELD WEAK-LENSING SURVEYS. II. COVARIANCE MATRIX OF REAL-SPACE CORRELATION FUNCTIONS

Using 1000 ray-tracing simulations for a {Lambda}-dominated cold dark model in Sato et al., we study the covariance matrix of cosmic shear correlation functions, which is the standard statistics used in previous measurements. The shear correlation function of a particular separation angle is affected by Fourier modes over a wide range of multipoles, even beyond a survey area, which complicates the analysis of the covariance matrix. To overcome such obstacles we first construct Gaussian shear simulations from the 1000 realizations and then use the Gaussian simulations to disentangle the Gaussian covariance contribution to the covariance matrix we measured from the original simulations. We found that an analytical formula of Gaussian covariance overestimates the covariance amplitudes due to an effect of the finite survey area. Furthermore, the clean separation of the Gaussian covariance allows us to examine the non-Gaussian covariance contributions as a function of separation angles and source redshifts. For upcoming surveys with typical source redshifts of z{sub s} = 0.6 and 1.0, the non-Gaussian contribution to the diagonal covariance components at 1 arcmin scales is greater than the Gaussian contribution by a factor of 20 and 10, respectively. Predictions based on the halo model qualitatively well reproduce the simulation results, however show a sizable disagreement in the covariance amplitudes. By combining these simulation results we develop a fitting formula to the covariance matrix for a survey with arbitrary area coverage, taking into account effects of the finiteness of survey area on the Gaussian covariance.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

RE-CAPTURING COSMIC INFORMATION

Gravitational lensing of distant galaxies can be exploited to infer the convergence field as a function of angular position on the sky. The statistics of this field, much like that of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), can be studied to extract information about fundamental parameters in cosmology, most notably the dark energy in the universe. Unlike the CMB, the distribution of matter in the universe which determines the convergence field is highly non-Gaussian, reflecting the nonlinear processes that accompanied structure formation. Much of the cosmic information contained in the initial field is therefore unavailable to the standard power spectrum measurements. Here we propose a method for re-capturing cosmic information by using the power spectrum of a simple function of the observed (nonlinear) convergence field. We adapt the approach of Neyrinck et al. to lensing by using a modified logarithmic transform of the convergence field. The Fourier transform of the log-transformed field has modes that are nearly uncorrelated, which allows for additional cosmological information to be extracted from small-scale modes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗