We exploit a suite of large \emph{N}-body simulations (up to N=$4096^3$) performed with \Abacus, of scale-free models with a range of spectral indices $n$, to better understand and quantify convergence of the matter power spectrum. Using self-similarity to identify converged regions, we show that the maximal wavenumber resolved at a given level of accuracy increases monotonically as a function of time. At the 1\% level it starts at early times from a fraction of $k_Λ$, the Nyquist wavenumber of the initial grid, and reaches at most, if the force softening is sufficiently small, $\sim 2-3 k_Λ$ at the very latest times we evolve to. At the $5\%$ level, accuracy extends up to wavenumbers of order $5k_Λ$ at late times. Expressed as a suitable function of the scale-factor, accuracy shows a very simple $n$-dependence, allowing a extrapolation to place conservative bounds on the accuracy of \emph{N}-body simulations of non-scale free models like LCDM. We note that deviations due to discretization in the converged range are not well modelled by shot noise, and subtracting it in fact degrades accuracy. Quantitatively our findings are broadly in line with the conservative assumptions about resolution adopted by recent studies using large cosmological simulations (e.g. Euclid Flagship) aiming to constrain the mildly non-linear regime. On the other hand, we remark that conclusions about small scale clustering (e.g. concerning the validity of stable clustering) obtained using PS data at wavenumbers larger than a few $k_Λ$ may need revision in light of our convergence analysis.
The determination of the resolution of cosmological N-body simulations, i.e., the range of scales in which quantities measured in them represent accurately the continuum limit, is an important open question. We address it here using scale-free models, for which self-similarity provides a powerful tool to control resolution. Such models also provide a robust testing ground for the so-called stable clustering approximation, which gives simple predictions for them. Studying large N-body simulations of such models with different force smoothing, we find that these two issues are in fact very close…
It is generally believed that a cosmological arrow of time must be associated with entropy production. Indeed, in his seminal work on cyclic cosmology, Tolman introduced a viscous fluid in order to make successive expansion/contraction cycles larger than previous ones, thereby generating an arrow of time. However, as we demonstrate in this letter, the production of entropy is not the only means by which a cosmological arrow of time may emerge. Remarkably, systems which are dissipationless may nevertheless demonstrate a preferred direction of time provided they possess attractors. An example of…
Beyond convergence studies and comparison of different codes, there are essentially no controls on the accuracy in the non-linear regime of cosmological N body simulations, even in the dissipationless limit. We propose and explore here a simple test which has not been previously employed: when cosmological codes are used to simulate an isolated overdensity, they should reproduce, in physical coordinates, those obtained in open boundary conditions without expansion. In particular, the desired collisionless nature of the simulations can be probed by testing for stability in physical coordinates …
The nature of compact groups (CGs) of galaxies, apparently so dense that the galaxies often overlap, is still a subject of debate: Are CGs roughly as dense in 3D as they appear in projection? Or are they caused by chance alignments of galaxies along the line-of-sight, within larger virialized groups or even longer filamentary structures? The nature of CGs is re-appraised using the z=0 outputs of three galaxy formation models, applied to the dissipationless Millennium Simulation. The same selection criteria are applied to mock galaxy catalogs from these models as have been applied by Hickson an…
We investigate the differential effects of metal cooling and galactic stellar winds on the cosmological formation of individual galaxies with three sets of cosmological, hydrodynamical zoom simulations of 45 halos in the mass range 10^11<M_halo<10^13M_sun. Models including both galactic winds and metal cooling (i) suppress early star formation at z>1 and predict reasonable star formation histories, (ii) produce galaxies with high cold gas fractions (30-60 per cent) at high redshift, (iii) significantly reduce the galaxy formation efficiencies for halos (M_halo<10^12M_sun) at all redshifts in a…
What do the data, as distinguished from cosmological models, tell us about cosmological parameters that determined the model of the universe? In this paper, we address this question in the context of the WMAP angular power spectra for the cosmic microwave background radiation. Nonparametric methods are ideally suited for this purpose because they are model-independent by construction, and therefore allow inferences that are as data-driven as possible. Our analysis is based on a nonparametric fit to the WMAP 7-year power spectrum data, with uncertainties characterized in the form of a high-dime…
The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) causes attenuation of the VHE spectra of extragalactic sources, via pair-production. The amount of attenuation depends on the distance of the source, i.e. on the integration over the line of sight path taken by the VHE photons. The line of sight path calculation, depends on the values of the cosmological parameters and the evolution of these parameters. With the recent indications of a lower EBL level from observations and the greater sensitivity of the proposed future Cherenkov experiments it will be possible to detect higher redshift sources. We study…
We present angular power spectra and cosmological parameter constraints derived from the Planck PR4 (NPIPE) maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background. NPIPE, released by the Planck Collaboration in 2020, is a new processing pipeline for producing calibrated frequency maps from Planck data. We have created new versions of the CamSpec likelihood using these maps and applied them to constrain LCDM and single-parameter extensions. We find excellent consistency between NPIPE and the Planck 2018 maps at the parameter level, showing that the Planck cosmology is robust to substantial changes in the mapm…
We apply two Bayesian hierarchical inference schemes to infer shear power spectra, shear maps and cosmological parameters from the CFHTLenS weak lensing survey - the first application of this method to data. In the first approach, we sample the joint posterior distribution of the shear maps and power spectra by Gibbs sampling, with minimal model assumptions. In the second approach, we sample the joint posterior of the shear maps and cosmological parameters, providing a new, accurate and principled approach to cosmological parameter inference from cosmic shear data. As a first demonstration on …
Perturbation theory of large-scale structures of the Universe at next-to-leading order and next-to-next-to-leading order provides us with predictions of cosmological statistics at sub-percent level in the mildly non-linear regime. Its use to infer cosmological parameters from spectroscopic surveys, however, is hampered by the computational cost of making predictions for a large number of parameters. In order to reduce the running time of the codes, we present a fast scheme in the context of the regularized perturbation theory approach and applied it to power spectra at 2-loop level and bispect…
The cosmological peculiar velocity field (deviations from the pure Hubble flow) of matter carries significant information on dark energy, dark matter and the underlying theory of gravity on large scales. Peculiar motions of galaxies introduce systematic deviations between the observed galaxy redshifts z and the corresponding cosmological redshifts z_cos. A novel method for estimating the angular power spectrum of the peculiar velocity field based on observations of galaxy redshifts and apparent magnitudes m (or equivalently fluxes) is presented. This method exploits the fact that a mean relati…
Observations have shown that the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies is not random, but rather is aligned with the major axes of central galaxies (CGs). The strength of the alignment is dependent on the properties of both the satellites and centrals. Theoretical studies using dissipationless N-body simulations are limited by their inability to directly predict the shape of CGs. Using hydrodynamical simulations including gas cooling, star formation, and feedback, we carry out a study of galaxy alignment and its dependence on the galaxy properties predicted directly from the simulations.W…
The statistical distribution of galaxies is a powerful probe to constrain cosmological models and gravity. In particular the matter power spectrum $P(k)$ brings information about the cosmological distance evolution and the galaxy clustering together. However the building of $P(k)$ from galaxy catalogues needs a cosmological model to convert angles on the sky and redshifts into distances, which leads to difficulties when comparing data with predicted $P(k)$ from other cosmological models, and for photometric surveys like LSST. The angular power spectrum $C_\ell(z_1,z_2)$ between two bins locate…
We test a method to reduce unwanted sample variance when predicting Lyman-$α$ (ly$α$) forest power spectra from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Sample variance arises due to sparse sampling of modes on large scales and propagates to small scales through non-linear gravitational evolution. To tackle this, we generate initial conditions in which the density perturbation amplitudes are {\it fixed} to the ensemble average power spectrum -- and are generated in {\it pairs} with exactly opposite phases. We run $50$ such simulations ($25$ pairs) and compare their performance against $50$ sta…
We investigate the effect of radio-frequency interference (RFI) excision in estimating the cosmological \hi\ 21 cm power spectrum. Flagging of RFI-contaminated channels results in a non-uniform sampling of the instrumental bandpass response. Hence, the Fourier transformation (FT) of visibilities from frequency to delay domain contaminates the higher foreground-free delay modes, and separating the spectrally fluctuating \hi\ signal from spectrally smooth foregrounds becomes challenging. We have done a comparative analysis between two algorithms, one-dimensional CLEAN and Least Square Spectral A…
We constrain cosmological parameters by analysing the angular power spectra of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR12 galaxies, a spectroscopic follow-up of around 1.3 million SDSS galaxies over 9,376 deg$^2$ with an effective volume of $\sim 6.5$ (Gpc $h^{-1}$)$^3$ in the redshift range $0.15 \leq z < 0.80$. We split this sample into 13 tomographic bins ($Δz = 0.05$); angular power spectra were calculated using a Pseudo-$C_{\ell}$ estimator, and covariance matrices were estimated using log-normal simulated maps. Cosmological constraints obtained from these data were combined with co…
We investigate potential constraints from cosmic shear on the dark matter particle mass, assuming all dark matter is made up of light thermal relic particles. Given the theoretical uncertainties involved in making cosmological predictions in such warm dark matter scenarios we use analytical fits to linear warm dark matter power spectra and compare (i) the halo model using a mass function evaluated from these linear power spectra and (ii) an analytical fit to the non-linear evolution of the linear power spectra. We optimistically ignore the competing effect of baryons for this work. We find app…
A full account of galaxy evolution in the context of LCDM cosmology requires measurements of the average star-formation rate (SFR) and cold gas abundance across cosmic time. Emission from the CO ladder traces cold gas, and [CII] fine structure emission at 158 um traces the SFR. Intensity mapping surveys the cumulative surface brightness of emitting lines as a function of redshift, rather than individual galaxies. CMB spectral distortion instruments are sensitive to both the mean and anisotropy of the intensity of redshifted CO and [CII] emission. Large-scale anisotropy is proportional to the p…
The recent implementation of radiative transfer algorithms in numerous hydrodynamics codes has led to a dramatic improvement in studies of feedback in various astrophysical environments. However, because of methodological limitations and computational expense, the spectra of radiation sources are generally sampled at only a few evenly-spaced discrete emission frequencies. Using one-dimensional radiative transfer calculations, we investigate the discrepancies in gas properties surrounding model stars and accreting black holes that arise solely due to spectral discretization. We find that even i…
We observationally examine cosmological models based on primordial power spectra with quantized wavevectors. Introducing a linearly quantized power spectrum with $k_0=3.225\times10^{-4}\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ and spacing $Δk = 2.257 \times 10^{-4} \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ provides a better fit to the Planck 2018 observations than the concordance baseline, with $Δχ^2 = -8.55$. Extending the results of Lasenby et al [1], we show that the requirement for perturbations to remain finite beyond the future conformal boundary in a universe containing dark matter and a cosmological constant results in a linearly …
The Cosmological Principle, the combined assumptions of cosmological isotropy and homogeneity, underpins the standard model of Big Bang cosmology with which we interpret astronomical observations. A new test of isotropy over the redshift range $2<z<4$ and across large angular scales on the sky is presented. We use the cosmological distribution of neutral hydrogen, as probed by the Ly$α$ forest seen towards distant quasars. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey provides the largest dataset of quasar spectra available to date. We use combined information from Data Releases 12 and 14 to select a sample of…
We update the list of GeV-TeV extragalactic γ-ray sources using the 2-year catalog from the Fermi-LAT and recent results ground-based γ-ray telescopes. Breaks in the spectra between the high energy (100 MeV <E< 300 GeV) and the very high energy (E> 200 GeV) ranges, and their dependence on distance, are discussed in the context of absorption on the extragalactic background light (EBL). We calculate the size of the expected break using a model for the EBL and compare it to the data taking into account systematic uncertainties in the measurements. We develop a novel Bayeasian model to describe th…
Abstract abridged. The eROSITA X-ray telescope aboard the SRG orbital observatory, in the course of its all-sky survey, is expected to detect about three million active galactic nuclei (AGN) and hundred thousand clusters and groups of galaxies. Such a sample complemented with redshift information, will open a new window into the studies of the Large-Scale structure (LSS) of the Universe and the determination of its cosmological parameters. The purpose of this work is to assess the prospects of cosmological measurements with the eROSITA sample of AGN and clusters of galaxies. We assume the avai…
We have investigated the long term average spectral properties of galactic X-ray binaries in the energy range of 3-20 keV, using long term monitoring data from MAXI -Gas Slit Camera (GSC). These long term average spectra are used to construct separately the composite spectra of galactic High Mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) and Low Mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). These composite spectra can be described empirically with piece-wise power-law with three components. X-rays from HMXBs are considered as important contributors to heating and ionization of neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium during …
We consider the effects of entanglement in the initial quantum state of scalar and tensor fluctuations during inflation. We allow the gauge-invariant scalar and tensor fluctuations to be entangled in the initial state and compute modifications to the various cosmological power spectra. We compute the angular power spectra ($C_l$'s) for some specific cases of our entangled state and discuss what signals one might expect to find in CMB data. This entanglement also can break rotational invariance, allowing for the possibility that some of the large scale anomalies in the CMB power spectrum might …
Extracting the non-Gaussian information encoded in the higher-order clustering statistics of the large-scale structure is key to fully realizing the potential of upcoming galaxy surveys. We investigate the information content of the redshift-space {\it weighted skew spectra} of biased tracers as efficient estimators for 3-point clustering statistics. The skew spectra are constructed by correlating the observed galaxy field with an appropriately-weighted square of it. We perform numerical Fisher forecasts using two synthetic datasets; the halo catalogs from the Quijote N-body simulations and th…
We present $\it{CosmoPower}$, a suite of neural cosmological power spectrum emulators providing orders-of-magnitude acceleration for parameter estimation from two-point statistics analyses of Large-Scale Structure (LSS) and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) surveys. The emulators replace the computation of matter and CMB power spectra from Boltzmann codes; thus, they do not need to be re-trained for different choices of astrophysical nuisance parameters or redshift distributions. The matter power spectrum emulation error is less than $0.4\%$ in the wavenumber range $k \in [10^{-5}, 10] \, \mat…
We use the non-equlibrium statistical field theory for classical particles, recently developed by Mazenko and Das and Mazenko, together with the free generating functional we have previously derived for point sets initially correlated in phase space, to calculate the time evolution of power spectra in the free theory, i.e. neglecting particle interactions. We provide expressions taking linear and quadratic momentum correlations into account. Up to this point, the expressions are general with respect to the free propagator of the microscopic degrees of freedom. We then specialise the propagator…
We present the leading order non-linear density and velocity power spectra in the complete form; previous studies have omitted the vector- and tensor-type perturbations simultaneously excited by the scalar-type perturbation in nonlinear order. These additional contributions are comparable to the scalar-type purely relativistic perturbations, and thus negligible in the current paradigm of concordance cosmology: i.e., concerning density and velocity perturbations of the pressureless matter in perturbation regime well inside of matter-dominated epoch, we show that pure Einstein's gravity contribu…
At the core of the standard cosmological model lies the assumption that the redshift of distant galaxies is independent of photon wavelength. This invariance of cosmological redshift with wavelength is routinely found in all galaxy spectra with a precision of $Δ$z~10$^{-4}$. The combined use of approximately half a million high-quality galaxy spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) allows us to explore this invariance down to a nominal precision in redshift of one part per million (statistical). Our analysis is performed over the redshift interval 0.02<z<0.25. We use the centroids of …
Axion production due to photon-axion mixing in tangled magnetic field(s) prior to recombination epoch and magnetic field damping can generate cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral distortions. In particular, contribution of both processes to CMB $μ$ distortion in the case of resonant photon-axion mixing is studied. Assuming that magnetic field power spectrum is approximated by a power law $P_B(k)\propto k^n$ with spectral index $n$, it is shown that for magnetic field cut-off scales $172.5$ pc $\leq λ_B\leq 4\times 10^3$ pc, axion contribution to CMB $μ$ distortion is subdominant in compa…
We compare two competing relativistic approaches to the N-body simulation of the Universe large-scale structure. To this end, employing the corresponding alternative computer codes ("gevolution" and "screening"), we conduct a series of cosmological simulations in boxes of different sizes and calculate the power spectra of the scalar perturbation $Φ$, the frame-dragging vector potential ${\bf B}$ and the difference between scalar modes $χ=Φ-Ψ$. We demonstrate that the corresponding power spectra are in very good agreement between the compared schemes. For example, the relative difference of the…
We address the problem of evaluating the power spectrum of the velocity field of the ICM using only information on the plasma density fluctuations, which can be measured today by Chandra and XMM-Newton observatories. We argue that for relaxed clusters there is a linear relation between the rms density and velocity fluctuations across a range of scales, from the largest ones, where motions are dominated by buoyancy, down to small, turbulent scales: $(δρ_k/ρ)^2 = η_1^2 (V_{1,k}/c_s)^2$, where $δρ_k/ρ$ is the spectral amplitude of the density perturbations at wave number $k$, $V_{1,k}^2=V_k^2/3$ …
We study effects of multiple scalar fields (scalar isocurvatons) with the Hubble scale masses on the inflationary bispectrum in the squeezed limit, particular paying attention to the question how to disentangle mass spectra of such fields. We consider two isocurvatons with almost degenerate masses and the coupling of an inflaton to both isocurvatons as an example. We find that the characteristic feature associated with nearly degenerate masses appears in the oscillating part of the bispectrum, which is dominated by a waveform with a specific wavelength roughly given by an inverse of the mass d…
All Tree-Level Massive Cosmological Correlators via Spectral Gluing
Max Planck Institute for Physics, Werner-Heisenberg-Institut（马克斯·普朗克物理研究所，维尔纳·海森堡研究所）；Max Planck-IAS-NTU Center for Particle Physics, Cosmology and Geometry（马克斯·普朗克-IAS-南洋理工大学粒子物理、宇宙学与几何中心）
We present $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$ estimators for the small-scale power spectrum and bispectrum in cosmological simulations. In combination with traditional methods, these allow spectra to be efficiently computed across a vast range of scales, requiring orders of magnitude less computation time than Fast Fourier Transform based approaches alone. These methods are applicable to any tracer; simulation particles, halos or galaxies, and take advantage of the simple geometry of the box and periodicity to remove almost all dependence on large random particle catalogs. By working in configuration-space, b…
Conditional variational autoencoders for cosmological model discrimination and anomaly detection in cosmic microwave background power spectra
Liaoning Key Laboratory of Cosmology and Astrophysics, College of Sciences, Northeastern University（东北大学理学院天体物理与宇宙学辽宁省重点实验室）；International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学亚太理论物理中心）；Taiji Laboratory for Gravitational Wave Universe (Beijing/Hangzhou), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学太极引力波宇宙实验室（北京/杭州））；MOE Key Laboratory of Data Analytics and Optimization for Smart Industry, Northeastern University（东北大学教育部智能制造数据分析与优化重点实验室）；National Frontiers Science Center for Industrial Intelligence and Systems Optimization, Northeastern University（东北大学国家工业智能与系统优化前沿科学中心）
