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At least 325 records · Page 18

The Moving Group Targets of the Seeds High-Contrast Imaging Survey of Exoplanets and Disks: Results and Observations from the First Three Years

We present results from the first three years of observations of moving group (MG) targets in the Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) high-contrast imaging survey of exoplanets and disks using the Subaru telescope. We achieve typical contrasts of (is) approximately10(exp 5) at 1" and (is) approximately 10(exp 6) beyond 2" around 63 proposed members of nearby kinematic MGs. We review each of the kinematic associations to which our targets belong, concluding that five, beta Pictoris ((is) approximately 20 Myr), AB Doradus ((is) approximately 100 Myr), Columba ((is) approximately 30 Myr), Tucana-Horogium ((is) approximately 30 Myr), and TW Hydrae ((is) approximately 10 Myr), are sufficiently well-defined to constrain the ages of individual targets. Somewhat less than half of our targets are high-probability members of one of these MGs. For all of our targets, we combine proposed MG membership with other age indicators where available, including Ca ii HK emission, X-ray activity, and rotation period, to produce a posterior probability distribution of age. SEEDS observations discovered a substellar companion to one of our targets, kappa And, a late B star. We do not detect any other substellar companions, but do find seven new close binary systems, of which one still needs to be confirmed. A detailed analysis of the statistics of this sample, and of the companion mass constraints given our age probability distributions and exoplanet cooling models, will be presented in a forthcoming paper.

SEEDS high-contrast imaging survey of exoplanets↗

Estimating posterior quantity of interest expectations in a multilevel scalable framework

Scalable approaches for uncertainty quantification are necessary for characterizing prediction confidence in large-scale subsurface flow simulations with uncertain permeability. To this end we explore a multilevel Monte Carlo approach for estimating posterior moments of a particular quantity of interest, where we employ an element-agglomerated algebraic multigrid (AMG) technique to generate the hierarchy of coarse spaces with guaranteed approximation properties for both the generation of spatially correlated random fields and the forward simulation of Darcy's law to model subsurface flow. In both these components (sampling and forward solves), we exploit solvers that rely on state-of-the-art scalable AMG. To illustrate the applicability of this approach, numerical tests are performed on two 3D examples-a unit cube and an egg-shaped domain with an irregular boundary-where the scalability of each simulation as well as the scalability of the overall algorithm are demonstrated.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Consistency of cosmic shear analyses in harmonic and real space

ABSTRACT Recent cosmic shear studies have reported discrepancies of up to 1σ on the parameter ${S_{8}=\sigma _{8}\sqrt{{\Omega _{\rm m}}/0.3}}$ between the analysis of shear power spectra and two-point correlation functions, derived from the same shear catalogues. It is not a priori clear whether the measured discrepancies are consistent with statistical fluctuations. In this paper, we investigate this issue in the context of the forthcoming analyses from the third year data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES Y3). We analyse DES Y3 mock catalogues from Gaussian simulations with a fast and accurate importance sampling pipeline. We show that the methodology for determining matching scale cuts in harmonic and real space is the key factor that contributes to the scatter between constraints derived from the two statistics. We compare the published scales cuts of the KiDS, Subaru-HSC, and DES surveys, and find that the correlation coefficients of posterior means range from over 80 per cent for our proposed cuts, down to 10 per cent for cuts used in the literature. We then study the interaction between scale cuts and systematic uncertainties arising from multiple sources: non-linear power spectrum, baryonic feedback, intrinsic alignments, uncertainties in the point spread function, and redshift distributions. We find that, given DES Y3 characteristics and proposed cuts, these uncertainties affect the two statistics similarly; the differential biases are below a third of the statistical uncertainty, with the largest biases arising from intrinsic alignment and baryonic feedback. While this work is aimed at DES Y3, the tools developed can be applied to Stage-IV surveys where statistical errors will be much smaller.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

A general reconstruction of the recent expansion history of the universe

Distance measurements are currently the most powerful tool to study the expansion history of the universe without specifying its matter content nor any theory of gravitation. Assuming only an isotropic, homogeneous and flat universe, in this work we introduce a model-independent method to reconstruct directly the deceleration function via a piecewise function. Including a penalty factor, we are able to vary continuously the complexity of the deceleration function from a linear case to an arbitrary (n+1)-knots spline interpolation. We carry out a Monte Carlo (MC) analysis to determine the best penalty factor, evaluating the bias-variance trade-off, given the uncertainties of the SDSS-II and SNLS supernova combined sample (JLA), compilations of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and H(z) data. The bias-variance analysis is done for three fiducial models with different features in the deceleration curve. We perform the MC analysis generating mock catalogs and computing their best-fit. For each fiducial model, we test different reconstructions using, in each case, more than 10{sup 4} catalogs in a total of about 5× 10{sup 5}. This investigation proved to be essential in determining the best reconstruction to study these data. We show that, evaluating a single fiducial model, the conclusions about the bias-variance ratio are misleading. We determine the reconstruction method in which the bias represents at most 10% of the total uncertainty. In all statistical analyses, we fit the coefficients of the deceleration function along with four nuisance parameters of the supernova astrophysical model. For the full sample, we also fit H{sub 0} and the sound horizon r{sub s}(z{sub d}) at the drag redshift. The bias-variance trade-off analysis shows that, apart from the deceleration function, all other estimators are unbiased. Finally, we apply the Ensemble Sampler Markov Chain Monte Carlo (ESMCMC) method to explore the posterior of the deceleration function up to redshift 1.3 (using only JLA) and 2.3 (JLA+BAO+H(z)). We obtain that the standard cosmological model agrees within 3σ level with the reconstructed results in the whole studied redshift intervals. Since our method is calibrated to minimize the bias, the error bars of the reconstructed functions are a good approximation for the total uncertainty.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Simulation based inference with domain adaptation for strong gravitational lensing

Simulation based inference leverages machine learning to carry out Bayesian inference in systems with intractable likelihoods. However, transitioning a network trained on simulated data to real data runs the risk of encountering domain shift, leading to performance losses. We attempt to implement domain adaptation into the sbi neural posterior estimation framework using the Maximum Mean Discrepancy as an additional network loss, using masked autoregressive fow (MAF) as our density estimator. We test the network on a set of 400,000 simulated strong gravitational lensing images generated using deeplenstronomy. The source domain is defined as low noise whereas the target domain has a noise profile sampled from experimentally derived DES survey conditions. We find that SBI appears robust against small changes in the data with similar performance on source and target. Moreover, while DA does lead to performance improvements, they are marginal at 6% less inference error.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Persistent Sampling: Enhancing the Efficiency of Sequential Monte Carlo

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) samplers are powerful tools for Bayesian inference but suffer from high computational costs due to their reliance on large particle ensembles for accurate estimates. We introduce persistent sampling (PS), an extension of SMC that systematically retains and reuses particles from all prior iterations to construct a growing, weighted ensemble. By leveraging multiple importance sampling and resampling from a mixture of historical distributions, PS mitigates the need for excessively large particle counts, directly addressing key limitations of SMC such as particle impoverishment and mode collapse. Crucially, PS achieves this without additional likelihood evaluations-weights for persistent particles are computed using cached likelihood values. This framework not only yields more accurate posterior approximations but also produces marginal likelihood estimates with significantly lower variance, enhancing reliability in model comparison. Furthermore, the persistent ensemble enables efficient adaptation of transition kernels by leveraging a larger, decorrelated particle pool. Experiments on high-dimensional Gaussian mixtures, hierarchical models, and non-convex targets demonstrate that PS consistently outperforms standard SMC and related variants, including recycled and waste-free SMC, achieving substantial reductions in mean squared error for posterior expectations and evidence estimates, all at reduced computational cost. PS thus establishes itself as a robust, scalable, and efficient alternative for complex Bayesian inference tasks.

Karamanis, Minas↗

Probabilistic neural networks for fluid flow surrogate modeling and data recovery

We consider the use of probabilistic neural networks for fluid flow surrogate modeling and data recovery. This framework is constructed by assuming that the target variables are sampled from a Gaussian distribution conditioned on the inputs. Consequently, the overall formulation sets up a procedure to predict the hyperparameters of this distribution which are then used to compute an objective function given training data. We demonstrate that this framework has the ability to provide for prediction confidence intervals based on the assumption of a probabilistic posterior, given an appropriate model architecture and adequate training data. The applicability of the present framework to cases with noisy measurements and limited observations is also assessed. To demonstrate the capabilities of this framework, we consider canonical regression problems of fluid dynamics from the viewpoint of reduced-order modeling and spatial data recovery for four canonical data sets. The examples considered in this study arise from (i) the shallow-water equations, (ii) a two-dimensional cylinder flow, (iii) the wake of a NACA0012 airfoil with a Gurney flap, and (iv) the NOAA sea surface temperature data set. Furthermore, the present results indicate that the probabilistic neural network not only produces a machine-learning-based fluid flow surrogate model but also systematically quantifies the uncertainty therein to assist with model interpretability.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Photo-z outlier self-calibration in weak lensing surveys

Calibrating photometric redshift errors in weak lensing surveys with external data is extremely challenging. In this work, we show that both Gaussian and outlier photo-z parameters can be self-calibrated from the data alone. This comes at no cost for the neutrino masses, curvature and dark energy equation of state w0, but with a 65% degradation when both w0 and wa are varied. We perform a realistic forecast for the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) 3× 2 analysis, combining cosmic shear, projected galaxy clustering and galaxy - galaxy lensing. We confirm the importance of marginalizing over photo-z outliers. We examine a subset of internal cross-correlations, dubbed "null correlations", which are usually ignored in 3× 2 analyses. Despite contributing only ~ 10% of the total signal-to-noise, these null correlations improve the constraints on photo-z parameters by up to an order of magnitude. Using the same galaxy sample as sources and lenses dramatically improves the photo-z uncertainties too. Together, these methods add robustness to any claim of detected new Physics, and reduce the statistical errors on cosmology by 15% and 10% respectively. Finally, including CMB lensing from an experiment like Simons Observatory or CMB-S4 improves the cosmological and photo-z posterior constraints by about 10%, and further improves the robustness to systematics. To give intuition on the Fisher forecasts, we examine in detail several toy models that explain the origin of the photo-z self-calibration. Our Fisher code LaSSI (Large-Scale Structure Information), which includes the effect of Gaussian and outlier photo-z, shear multiplicative bias, linear galaxy bias, and extensions to LCDM, is publicly available at \href{https://github.com/EmmanuelSchaan/LaSSI}{https://github.com/EmmanuelSchaan/LaSSI}.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Development of an open-source regional data assimilation system in PEcAn v. 1.7.2: application to carbon cycle reanalysis across the contiguous US using SIPNET

Abstract. The ability to monitor, understand, and predict the dynamics of the terrestrial carbon cycle requires the capacity to robustly and coherently synthesize multiple streams of information that each provide partial information about different pools and fluxes. In this study, we introduce a new terrestrial carbon cycle data assimilation system, built on the PEcAn model–data eco-informatics system, and its application for the development of a proof-of-concept carbon “reanalysis” product that harmonizes carbon pools (leaf, wood, soil) and fluxes (GPP, Ra, Rh, NEE) across the contiguous United States from 1986–2019. We first calibrated this system against plant trait and flux tower net ecosystem exchange (NEE) using a novel emulated hierarchical Bayesian approach. Next, we extended the Tobit–Wishart ensemble filter (TWEnF) state data assimilation (SDA) framework, a generalization of the common ensemble Kalman filter which accounts for censored data and provides a fully Bayesian estimate of model process error, to a regional-scale system with a calibrated localization. Combined with additional workflows for propagating parameter, initial condition, and driver uncertainty, this represents the most complete and robust uncertainty accounting available for terrestrial carbon models. Our initial reanalysis was run on an irregular grid of ∼ 500 points selected using a stratified sampling method to efficiently capture environmental heterogeneity. Remotely sensed observations of aboveground biomass (Landsat LandTrendr) and leaf area index (LAI) (MODIS MOD15) were sequentially assimilated into the SIPNET model. Reanalysis soil carbon, which was indirectly constrained based on modeled covariances, showed general agreement with SoilGrids, an independent soil carbon data product. Reanalysis NEE, which was constrained based on posterior ensemble weights, also showed good agreement with eddy flux tower NEE and reduced root mean square error (RMSE) compared to the calibrated forecast. Ultimately, PEcAn's new open-source regional data assimilation framework provides a scalable workflow for harmonizing multiple data constraints and providing a uniform synthetic platform for carbon monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) as well as accelerating terrestrial carbon cycle research.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Analysis of Lung Tumor Motion in a Large Sample: Patterns and Factors Influencing Precise Delineation of Internal Target Volume

Purpose/Objective: To evaluate lung tumor motion during respiration and to describe factors affecting the range and variability of motion in patients treated with stereotactic ablative radiation therapy. Methods and Materials: Log file analysis from online respiratory tumor tracking was performed in 145 patients. Geometric tumor location in the lungs, tumor volume and origin (primary or metastatic), sex, and tumor motion amplitudes in the superior-inferior (SI), latero-lateral (LL), and anterior-posterior (AP) directions were recorded. Tumor motion variability during treatment was described using intrafraction/interfraction amplitude variability and tumor motion baseline changes. Tumor movement dependent on the tumor volume, position and origin, and sex were evaluated using statistical regression and correlation analysis. Results: After analysis of >500 hours of data, the highest rates of motion amplitudes, intrafraction/interfraction variation, and tumor baseline changes were in the SI direction (6.0 ± 2.2 mm, 2.2 ± 1.8 mm, 1.1 ± 0.9 mm, and −0.1 ± 2.6 mm). The mean motion amplitudes in the lower/upper geometric halves of the lungs were significantly different (P<.001). Motion amplitudes >15 mm were observed only in the lower geometric quarter of the lungs. Higher tumor motion amplitudes generated higher intrafraction variations (R=.86, P<.001). Interfraction variations and baseline changes >3 mm indicated tumors contacting mediastinal structures or parietal pleura. On univariate analysis, neither sex nor tumor origin (primary vs metastatic) was an independent predictive factor of different movement patterns. Metastatic lesions in women, but not men, showed significantly higher mean amplitudes (P=.03) and variability (primary, 2.7 mm; metastatic, 4.9 mm; P=.002) than primary tumors. Conclusion: Online tracking showed significant irregularities in lung tumor movement during respiration. Motion amplitude was significantly lower in upper lobe tumors; higher interfraction amplitude variability indicated tumors in contact with mediastinal structures, although adhesion to parietal pleura did not necessarily reduce tumor motion amplitudes. The most variable lung tumors were metastatic lesions in women.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Simulation Based Inference with Domain Adaptation for Strong Gravitational Lensing

Simulation based inference leverages machine learning to carry out Bayesian inference for systems with intractable likelihoods. However, transitioning a network trained on simulated data to real data runs the risk of encountering domain shift, leading to performance losses. We attempt to implement domain adaptation into the sbi neural posterior estimation framework using the Maximum Mean Discrepancy as an additional network loss. We test two network architectures and use masked autoregressive flow for density estimation. We test the network on a set of 400,000 simulated strong gravitational lensing images generated using deeplenstronomy. The source domain is defined as low noise whereas the target domain has a noise profile sampled from experimentally derived DES survey conditions. We find that, while DA does lead to performance improvements, they are marginal at ~6% less inference error. We also find a similar marginal improvement in uncertainty calibration at around 8%.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Forecasting Dark Matter Subhalo Constraints from Stellar Streams using Implicit Likelihood Inference

The evidence for dark matter (DM) remains compelling, although attempts to understand its particle nature remain inconclusive. One promising method to study DM is detecting DM subhalos through their gravitational interactions with stellar streams. In this study, we apply Neural Posterior Estimation (NPE) to constrain subhalo interaction parameters, including mass, scale radius, velocity, and encounter geometry, from stellar stream kinematics. We generate particle spray simulations based on the Lagrange Cloud stripping technique, focusing on the ATLAS-Aliqa Uma stream as a test case. We train multiple NPE models across multiple observational scenarios, quantifying how kinematic completeness affects inference and forecasting constraints from upcoming surveys including LSST, 4MOST, and 10-year Gaia data. Our results demonstrate that NPE can produce accurate and well-calibrated posteriors. In the idealized case with full 6D coordinates, we achieve subhalo mass uncertainties of 15-20% for a $10^7 \, \mathrm{M_\odot}$ subhalo, with 5D coordinates (excluding radial velocities) achieving similar performance. Under realistic observational conditions, mass uncertainties range from 50% (present-day) to 20-40% (future scenarios), with comparable performance between the photometric-only LSST sample and a smaller sample that includes Gaia proper motions and 4MOST radial velocities. Most notably, we find that velocity bimodality emerges when phase space is poorly sampled, whether due to missing kinematic information or limited stellar tracers. Combining large photometric samples with targeted spectroscopic follow-up can effectively resolves this degeneracy. These results demonstrate the power of implicit likelihood inference for optimizing stellar stream observational strategies and forecasting DM subhalo constraints from upcoming surveys.

Nguyen, Tri [Northwestern U. (main); SkAI, Chicago↗

Fusion of Laboratory and Textual Data for Investigative Bioforensics

Chemical and biological forensic programs focus on the identification of a threat and acquisition of laboratory measurements to determine how a threat agent may have been produced. However, to generate investigative leads, it might also be useful to identify institutions where the same agent has been produced by the same or a very similar process, since the producer of the agent may have learned methods at a university or similar institution. We have developed a Bayesian network framework that fuses hard and soft data sources to assign probability to production practices. It combines the results of laboratory measurements with an automatic text reader to scan scientific literature and rank institutions that had published papers on the agent of interest in order of the probability that the institution has the capability to generate the sample of interest based on laboratory data. We demonstrate the Bayesian network on an example case from microbial forensics, predicting the methods used to produce Bacillus anthracis spores based on mass spectrometric measurements and identifying institutions that have a history of growing Bacillus spores using the same or highly similar methods. We illustrate that the network model can assign a higher posterior probability than expected by random chance to appropriate institutions when trained using only a small set of manually analyzed documents. This is the first example of an automated methodology to integrate experimental and textual data for the purpose of investigative forensics.

Webb-Robertson, Bobbie-Jo M.↗

A Dark Siren Measurement of the Hubble Constant with the LIGO/Virgo Gravitational Wave Event GW190412 and DESI Galaxies

Abstract We present a measurement of the Hubble Constant H 0 using the gravitational wave event GW190412, an asymmetric binary black hole merger detected by LIGO/Virgo, as a dark standard siren. This event does not have an electromagnetic counterpart, so we use the statistical standard siren method and marginalize over potential host galaxies from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. GW190412 is well-localized to 12 deg 2 (90% credible interval), so it is promising for a dark siren analysis. The dark siren value for H 0 = 85.4 − 33.9 + 29.1 km s −1 Mpc −1 , with a posterior shape that is consistent with redshift overdensities. When combined with the bright standard siren measurement from GW170817 we recover H 0 = 77.96 − 5.03 + 23.0 km s −1 Mpc −1 , consistent with both early and late-time Universe measurements of H 0 . This work represents the first standard siren analysis performed with DESI data, and includes the most complete spectroscopic sample used in a dark siren analysis to date.

Ballard, W.↗

Probing cosmology and gravity with redshift-space distortions around voids

Cosmic voids in the large-scale structure of the Universe affect the peculiar motions of objects in their vicinity. Although these motions are difficult to observe directly, the clustering pattern of their surrounding tracers in redshift space is influenced in a unique way. This allows to investigate the interplay between densities and velocities around voids, which is solely dictated by the laws of gravity. With the help of N-body simulations and derived mock-galaxy catalogs we calculate the average density fluctuations around voids identified with a watershed algorithm in redshift space and compare the results with the expectation from general relativity and the ΛCDM model. We find linear theory to work remarkably well in describing the dynamics of voids. Adopting a Bayesian inference framework, we explore the full posterior of our model parameters and forecast the achievable accuracy on measurements of the growth rate of structure and the geometric distortion through the Alcock-Paczyński effect. Systematic errors in the latter are reduced from ∼15% to ∼5% when peculiar velocities are taken into account. The relative parameter uncertainties in galaxy surveys with number densities comparable to the SDSS MAIN (CMASS) sample probing a volume of 1h{sup −3}Gpc{sup 3} yield σ{sub f/b}/(f/b).∼2% (20%) and σ{sub D{sub A{sub H}}}/D{sub AH∼0}.2% (2%), respectively. At this level of precision the linear-theory model becomes systematics dominated, with parameter biases that fall beyond these values. Nevertheless, the presented method is highly model independent; its viability lies in the underlying assumption of statistical isotropy of the Universe.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

TU-CD-304-02: Planning and Delivery of Fully Dynamic Trajectory Modulated Arc Therapy On Pituitary Adenoma: Dosimetric Advantages Over Conventional Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy

Purpose: To assess the potential benefit of trajectory modulated arc therapy (TMAT) for treatments of small benign intracranial tumor, pituitary adenoma. Methods: A TMAT planning platform that incorporates complex source motion trajectory involving synchronized gantry rotation with translational and rotational couch movement was used for the study. The platform couples an interactive trajectory generation tool with a VMAT algorithm that performs multi-resolution, progressive sampling MLC optimization on a user-designed trajectory. A continuous couch rotation of 160° angular span with ±20° mini gantry arcs was used to emulate a non-coplanar horizontal arc-like trajectory. Compared to conventional non-coplanar gantry arcs (60°-100° gantry rotation with couch kicks), TMAT limited the unnecessary low to medium dose spread in the anterior and posterior directions, where primary OARs (e.g., brainstem, optic chiasm, optic nerves, and lens) are in close proximity to the targeted pituitary tumor volume. For 5 standard fractionation pituitary adenoma cases (50.4Gy/28fractions), TMAT and non-coplanar VMAT plans were generated and compared under equivalent objectives/constraints. TMAT delivery was implemented and demonstrated on Varian TrueBeam via XML scripts. Results: Both techniques showed good target coverage while OARs were able to meet the constraints on QUANTEC guidelines. Notably, TMAT decreased the dose deposition in the anterior-to-posterior direction surrounding PTV. TMAT significantly reduced the mean doses on brainstem, optic nerves, eyes and lens by 47.29%±13.17%, 28.51%±8.68%, 80.82%±8.71% and 65.38%±19.99% compared with VMAT, all p≤0.01. Percentage reductions of maximum point dose in eyes and lens were 75.68%±10.30% and 70.72%±18.62% respectively for TMAT versus VMAT, all p≤0.01. A representative isocentric TMAT pituitary plan was delivered via an XML script with 200 control points and 282 MUs. Conclusion: Deliverable TMAT plans were achieved in developer mode in TrueBeam. TMAT was shown to be superior for pituitary adenoma irradiation in terms of OARs sparing.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Galaxy cluster matter profiles - I. Self-similarity, mass calibration, and observable-mass relation validation employing cluster mass posteriors

We present a study of the weak lensing inferred matter profiles ΔΣ(R) of 698 South Pole Telescope (SPT) thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (tSZE) selected and MCMF optically confirmed galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.25 < z < 0.94 that have associated weak gravitational lensing shear profiles from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Rescaling these profiles to account for the mass dependent size and the redshift dependent density produces average rescaled matter profiles ΔΣ(R/R200c)/(ρcritR200c) with a lower dispersion than the unscaled ΔΣ(R) versions, indicating a significant degree of self-similarity. Galaxy clusters from hydrodynamical simulations also exhibit matter profiles that suggest a high degree of self-similarity, with RMS variation among the average rescaled matter profiles with redshift and mass falling by a factor of approximately six and 23, respectively, compared to the unscaled average matter profiles. We employed this regularity in a new Bayesian method for weak lensing mass calibration that employs the so-called cluster mass posterior P(M200|ζ̂, λ̂, z), which describes the individual cluster masses given their tSZE (ζ̂) and optical (λ̂, z) observables. This method enables simultaneous constraints on richness λ-mass and tSZE detection significance ζ-mass relations using average rescaled cluster matter profiles. We validated the method using realistic mock datasets and present observable-mass relation constraints for the SPT×DES sample, where we constrained the amplitude, mass trend, redshift trend, and intrinsic scatter. Our observable-mass relation results are in agreement with the mass calibration derived from the recent cosmological analysis of the SPT×DES data based on a cluster-by-cluster lensing calibration. Our new mass calibration technique offers a higher efficiency when compared to the single cluster calibration technique. We present new validation tests of the observable-mass relation that indicate the underlying power-law form and scatter are adequate to describe the real cluster sample but that also suggest a redshift variation in the intrinsic scatter of the λ-mass relation may offer a better description. In addition, the average rescaled matter profiles offer high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) constraints on the shape of real cluster matter profiles, which are in good agreement with available hydrodynamical ΛCDM simulations. This high S/N profile contains information about baryon feedback, the collisional nature of dark matter, and potential deviations from general relativity.Key words: gravitational lensing: weak / galaxies: clusters: general / large-scale structure of Universe

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Determining Physical Parameters of Shielded Uranium using Gamma Spectroscopy and the Differential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) Method

Inverse radiation transport is a well-established method for determining unknown parameters within a system that exhibits particle leakage. Two significant challenges of solving inverse transport problems are (1) to determine multiple unknowns without false convergence on local minima and (2) to be able to quantify uncertainty. It was recently demonstrated that the Differential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) method effectively meets both of these challenges. In Bledsoe's 2014 article, the DREAM method was only applied to numerical test cases in which measured data were simulated using MCNP. This paper provides results of research conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in which DREAM was applied to two-dimensional inverse transport problems using real-world measurements. The DREAM method uses a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to obtain a posterior distribution of unknown parameters. In this application, the posterior distribution is determined by using a uniform prior distribution and a likelihood function. The goal of the inverse problem is to find the regions in which the likelihood function is at or near its maximum. In the traditional MCMC approach, a single Markov chain is employed. In practice, MCMC approaches have a high acceptance rate to solutions that are near the current point of sampling, but they exhibit slow convergence to solutions far from the sampling point. The DREAM algorithm was designed to alleviate this issue by initiating multiple Markov chains and using the differential evolution algorithm to generate trial points for each chain. Solving for the mass of radioactive material within a voluminous source is a challenging problem for gamma-ray spectroscopy. Inverse gamma-ray transport can supply a range of possible material compositions, but reducing the differences between predicted and actual measurements can lead to false results. DREAM is a rapid technique for determining the most likely solution for several unknown parameters in an inverse transport problem. This work applies DREAM to a series of gamma spectroscopy experiments performed at ORNL.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗