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Upadhye, Amol

Publications and source records attributed to Upadhye, Amol.

The Mira–Titan Universe – IV. High-precision power spectrum emulation

Modern cosmological surveys are delivering data sets characterized by unprecedented quality and statistical completeness; this trend is expected to continue in the future as new ground- and space-based surveys come online. In order to maximally extract cosmological information from these observations, matching theoretical predictions are needed. At low redshifts, the surveys probe the non-linear regime of structure formation where cosmological simulations are the primary means of obtaining the required information. The computational cost of sufficiently resolved large-volume simulations makes it prohibitive to run very large ensembles. Nevertheless, precision emulators built on a tractable number of high-quality simulations can be used to build very fast prediction schemes to enable a variety of cosmological inference studies. We have recently introduced the Mira–Titan Universe simulation suite designed to construct emulators for a range of cosmological probes. This gravity-only set of simulations covers the standard six cosmological parameters {ω m , ω b , σ 8 , $h, n_s, w_0$} and, in addition, includes massive neutrinos and a dynamical dark energy equation of state {ω ν , $w_a$}. In this paper, we present the final emulator for the matter power spectrum based on 111 cosmological simulations, each covering a (2.1 Gpc) 3 volume and evolving 3200 3 particles. In this work, an additional set of 1776 lower resolution simulations and TimeRG perturbation theory results for the power spectrum are used to cover scales straddling the linear to mildly non-linear regimes (maximum wavenumber $\textit{k}$ = 5 Mpc –1 ). The emulator provides predictions at the 2–3 percent level of accuracy over a wide range of cosmological parameters and is publicly released as part of this paper.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Neutrino mass and dark energy constraints from redshift-space distortions

Cosmology in the near future promises a measurement of the sum of neutrino masses Σ m ν , a fundamental Standard Model parameter, as well as substantially-improved constraints on the dark energy. We use the shape of the BOSS redshift-space galaxy power spectrum, in combination with CMB and supernova data, to constrain the neutrino masses and the dark energy. Essential to this calculation are several recent advances in non-linear cosmological perturbation theory, including fast Fourier transform methods, redshift space distortions, and scale-dependent growth. Our 95% confidence upper bound Σ m ν < 180 meV degrades substantially to Σ m ν < 540 meV when the dark energy equation of state and its first derivative are also allowed to vary, representing a significant challenge to current constraints. We also study the impact of additional galaxy bias parameters, finding that a greater allowed range of scale-dependent bias only slightly shifts the preferred Σ m ν , weakens its upper bound by ≈ 20%, and has a negligible effect on the other cosmological parameters.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Mira-Titan Universe. II. Matter Power Spectrum Emulation

We introduce a new cosmic emulator for the matter power spectrum covering eight cosmological parameters. Targeted at optical surveys, the emulator provides accurate predictions out to a wavenumber k ~ 5Mpc -1 and redshift z ≤ 2. Besides covering the standard set of CDM parameters, massive neutrinos and a dynamical dark energy of state are included. The emulator is built on a sample set of 36 cosmological models, carefully chosen to provide accurate predictions over the wide and large parameter space. For each model, we have performed a high-resolution simulation, augmented with sixteen medium-resolution simulations and TimeRG perturbation theory results to provide accurate coverage of a wide k-range; the dataset generated as part of this project is more than 1.2Pbyte. With the current set of simulated models, we achieve an accuracy of approximately 4%. Because the sampling approach used here has established convergence and error-control properties, follow-on results with more than a hundred cosmological models will soon achieve ~1% accuracy. We compare our approach with other prediction schemes that are based on halo model ideas and remapping approaches. The new emulator code is publicly available.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Large-scale structure formation with massive neutrinos and dynamical dark energy

Over the next decade, cosmological measurements of the large-scale structure of the Universe will be sensitive to the combined effects of dynamical dark energy and massive neutrinos. The matter power spectrum is a key repository of this information. We extend higher-order perturbative methods for computing the power spectrum to investigate these effects over quasilinear scales. Through comparison with N-body simulations, we establish the regime of validity of a time-renormalization group perturbative treatment that includes dynamical dark energy and massive neutrinos. We also quantify the accuracy of standard, renormalized and Lagrangian resummation (LPT) perturbation theories without massive neutrinos. We find that an approximation that neglects neutrino clustering as a source for nonlinear matter clustering predicts the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak position to 0.25% accuracy for redshifts 1 ≤ z ≤ 3, justifying the use of LPT for BAO reconstruction in upcoming surveys. Here, we release a modified version of the public Copter code which includes the additional physics discussed in the paper.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Chameleon fragmentation

A scalar field dark energy candidate could couple to ordinary matter and photons, enabling its detection in laboratory experiments. Here we study the quantum properties of the chameleon field, one such dark energy candidate, in an ''afterglow'' experiment designed to produce, trap, and detect chameleon particles. In particular, we investigate the possible fragmentation of a beam of chameleon particles into multiple particle states due to the highly non-linear interaction terms in the chameleon Lagrangian. Fragmentation could weaken the constraints of an afterglow experiment by reducing the energy of the regenerated photons, but this energy reduction also provides a unique signature which could be detected by a properly-designed experiment. We show that constraints from the CHASE experiment are essentially unaffected by fragmentation for φ{sup 4} and 1/φ potentials, but are weakened for steeper potentials, and we discuss possible future afterglow experiments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗