arXiv subjects

Alice Pisani

Publications and source records attributed to Alice Pisani.

46 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Multipole analysis of redshift-space distortions around cosmic voids

We perform a comprehensive redshift-space distortion analysis based on cosmic voids in the large-scale distribution of galaxies observed with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. To this end, we measure multipoles of the void-galaxy cross-correlation function and compare them with standard model predictions in cosmology. Merely considering linear-order theory allows us to accurately describe the data on the entire available range of scales and to probe void-centric distances down to about $2h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$. Common systematics, such as the Fingers-of-God effect, scale-dependent galaxy bias, and nonlinear clustering do not seem to play a significant role in our analysis. We constrain the growth rate of structure via the redshift-space distortion parameter $β$ at two median redshifts, $β(\bar{z}=0.32)=0.599^{+0.134}_{-0.124}$ and $β(\bar{z}=0.54)=0.457^{+0.056}_{-0.054}$, with a precision that is competitive with state-of-the-art galaxy-clustering results. While the high-redshift constraint perfectly agrees with model expectations, we observe a mild $2σ$ deviation at $\bar{z}=0.32$, which increases to $3σ$ when the data is restricted to the lowest available redshift range of $0.15<z<0.33$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Power law cosmology model comparison with CMB scale information

Despite the ability of the cosmological concordance model ($Λ$CDM) to describe the cosmological observations exceedingly well, power law expansion of the Universe scale radius, $R(t)\propto t^n$, has been proposed as an alternative framework. We examine here these models, analyzing their ability to fit cosmological data using robust model comparison criteria. Type Ia supernovae (SNIa), baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) and acoustic scale information from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been used. We find that SNIa data either alone or combined with BAO can be well reproduced by both $Λ$CDM and power law expansion models with $n\sim 1.5$, while the constant expansion rate model $(n=1)$ is clearly disfavored. Allowing for some redshift evolution in the SNIa luminosity essentially removes any clear preference for a specific model. The CMB data are well known to provide the most stringent constraints on standard cosmological models, in particular, through the position of the first peak of the temperature angular power spectrum, corresponding to the sound horizon at recombination, a scale physically related to the BAO scale. Models with $n\geq 1$ lead to a divergence of the sound horizon and do not naturally provide the relevant scales for the BAO and the CMB. We retain an empirical footing to overcome this issue: we let the data choose the preferred values for these scales, while we recompute the ionization history in power law models, to obtain the distance to the CMB. In doing so, we find that the scale coming from the BAO data is not consistent with the observed position of the first peak of the CMB temperature angular power spectrum for any power law cosmology. Therefore, we conclude that when the three standard probes are combined, the $Λ$CDM model is very strongly favored over any of these alternative models, which are then essentially ruled out.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Constraints on Cosmology and Gravity from the Dynamics of Voids

The Universe is mostly composed of large and relatively empty domains known as cosmic voids, whereas its matter content is predominantly distributed along their boundaries. The remaining material inside them, either dark or luminous matter, is attracted to these boundaries and causes voids to expand faster and to grow emptier over time. Using the distribution of galaxies centered on voids identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and adopting minimal assumptions on the statistical motion of these galaxies, we constrain the average matter content $Ω_\mathrm{m}=0.281\pm0.031$ in the Universe today, as well as the linear growth rate of structure $f/b=0.417\pm0.089$ at median redshift $\bar{z}=0.57$, where $b$ is the galaxy bias ($68\%$ C.L.). These values originate from a percent-level measurement of the anisotropic distortion in the void-galaxy cross-correlation function, $\varepsilon = 1.003\pm0.012$, and are robust to consistency tests with bootstraps of the data and simulated mock catalogs within an additional systematic uncertainty of half that size. They surpass (and are complementary to) existing constraints by unlocking cosmological information on smaller scales through an accurate model of nonlinear clustering and dynamics in void environments. As such, our analysis furnishes a powerful probe of deviations from Einstein's general relativity in the low-density regime which has largely remained untested so far. We find no evidence for such deviations in the data at hand.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Real-space density profile reconstruction of stacked voids

We present a non-parametric, model-independent method to reconstruct the spherical density profiles of void stacks in real space, without redshift-space distortions. Our method uses the expected spherical symmetry of stacked voids to build the shape of the spherical density profile of cosmic voids in real space without any assumption about the cosmological model. We test the reconstruction algorithm with both a toy model and a full dark matter simulation. We present the result for the simulation: the reconstruction of the spherical density profile for a simulated stacked void in real space. We also present a first application of the algorithm to reconstruct real cosmic void stacks density profiles in real space from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Sutter et al. 2012b). We discuss capabilities of the algorithm and possible future improvements. Reconstructed density profiles from real voids open the way to the study of the spherically averaged dynamical structure of voids.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Counting voids to probe dark energy

We show that the number of observed voids in galaxy redshift surveys is a sensitive function of the equation of state of dark energy. Using the Fisher matrix formalism we find the error ellipses in the $w_0-w_a$ plane when the equation of state of dark energy is assumed to be of the form $w_{CPL}(z)=w_0 +w_a z/(1+z)$. We forecast the number of voids to be observed with the ESA Euclid satellite and the NASA WFIRST mission, taking into account updated details of the surveys to reach accurate estimates of their power. The theoretical model for the forecast of the number of voids is based on matches between abundances in simulations and the analytical prediction. To take into account the uncertainties within the model, we marginalize over its free parameters when calculating the Fisher matrices. The addition of the void abundance constraints to the data from Planck, HST and supernova survey data noticeably tighten the $w_0-w_a$ parameter space. We thus quantify the improvement in the constraints due to the use of voids and demonstrate that the void abundance is a sensitive new probe for the dark energy equation of state.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Mastering the effects of peculiar velocities in cosmic voids

How do peculiar velocities affect observed voids? To answer this question we use the VIDE toolkit to identify voids in mock galaxy populations embedded within an N-body simulation both with and without peculiar velocities included. We compare the resulting void populations to assess the impact on void properties. We find that void abundances and spherically-averaged radial density profiles are mildly affected by peculiar velocities. However, peculiar velocities can distort by up to 10% the shapes for a particular subset of voids depending on the void size and density contrast, which can lead to increased variance in Alcock-Paczyński test. We offer guidelines for performing optimal cuts on the void catalogue to reduce this variance by removing the most severely affected voids while preserving the unaffected ones. In addition, since this shape distortion is largely limited to the line of sight, we show that the void radii are only affected at the $\sim$ 10% level and the macrocenter positions at the $\sim$ 20% (even before performing cuts), meaning that cosmological probes based on the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe and gravitational lensing are not severely impacted by peculiar velocities.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

VIDE: The Void IDentification and Examination toolkit

We present VIDE, the Void IDentification and Examination toolkit, an open-source Python/C++ code for finding cosmic voids in galaxy redshift surveys and N-body simulations, characterizing their properties, and providing a platform for more detailed analysis. At its core, VIDE uses a substantially enhanced version of ZOBOV (Neyinck 2008) to calculate a Voronoi tessellation for estimating the density field and a performing a watershed transform to construct voids. Additionally, VIDE provides significant functionality for both pre- and post-processing: for example, vide can work with volume- or magnitude-limited galaxy samples with arbitrary survey geometries, or dark matter particles or halo catalogs in a variety of common formats. It can also randomly subsample inputs and includes a Halo Occupation Distribution model for constructing mock galaxy populations. VIDE uses the watershed levels to place voids in a hierarchical tree, outputs a summary of void properties in plain ASCII, and provides a Python API to perform many analysis tasks, such as loading and manipulating void catalogs and particle members, filtering, plotting, computing clustering statistics, stacking, comparing catalogs, and fitting density profiles. While centered around ZOBOV, the toolkit is designed to be as modular as possible and accommodate other void finders. VIDE has been in development for several years and has already been used to produce a wealth of results, which we summarize in this work to highlight the capabilities of the toolkit. VIDE is publicly available at http://bitbucket.org/cosmicvoids/vide public and http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Cosmology: from theory to data, from data to theory

Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental limits to cosmological knowledge?". We then describe the methodology for investigation: theoretical hypotheses are used to model, predict and anticipate results; data is used to infer theory. We illustrate with concrete examples of principled analysis approaches from the study of cosmic microwave background anisotropies and surveys of large-scale structure, culminating in a summary of the highest precision probe to date of the physical origin of cosmic structures: the Planck 2013 constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

A measurement of the Alcock-Paczynski effect using cosmic voids in the SDSS

We perform an Alcock-Paczynski test using stacked cosmic voids identified in the SDSS Data Release 7 main sample and Data Release 10 LOWZ and CMASS samples. We find ~1,500 voids out to redshift $0.6$ using a heavily modified and extended version of the watershed algorithm ZOBOV, which we call VIDE (Void IDentification and Examination). To assess the impact of peculiar velocities we use the mock void catalogs presented in Sutter et al. (2013). We find a constant uniform flattening of 14% along the line of sight when peculiar velocities are included. This flattening appears universal for all void sizes at all redshifts and for all tracer densities. We also use these mocks to identify an optimal stacking strategy. After correcting for systematic effects we find that our Alcock-Paczynski measurement leads to a preference of our best-fit value of $Ω_{\rm M}\sim 0.15$ over $Ω_{\rm M} = 1.0$ by a likelihood ratio of 10. Likewise, we find a factor of $4.5$ preference of the likelihood ratio for a $Λ$CDM $Ω_{\rm M} = 0.3$ model and a null measurement. Taken together, we find substantial evidence for the Alcock-Paczynski signal in our sample of cosmic voids. Our assessment using realistic mocks suggests that measurements with future SDSS releases and other surveys will provide tighter cosmological parameter constraints. The void-finding algorithm and catalogs used in this work will be made publicly available at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Voids in the SDSS DR9: observations, simulations, and the impact of the survey mask

We present and study cosmic voids identified using the watershed void finder VIDE in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9, compare these voids to ones identified in mock catalogs, and assess the impact of the survey mask on void statistics such as number functions, ellipticity distributions, and radial density profiles. The nearly 1,000 identified voids span three nearly volume-limited samples from redshift z = 0.43 to 0.7. For comparison we use 98 of the publicly available 2LPT-based mock galaxy catalogs of Manera et al., and also generate our own mock catalogs by applying a Halo Occupation Distribution model to an N-body simulation. We find that the mask reduces the number density of voids at all scales by a factor of three and slightly skews the relative size distributions. This engenders an increase in the mean ellipticity by roughly 30%. However, we find that radial density profiles are largely robust to the effects of the mask. We see excellent agreement between the data and both mock catalogs, and find no tension between the observed void properties and the properties derived from ΛCDM simulations. We have added the void catalogs from both data and mock galaxy populations discussed in this work to the Public Cosmic Void Catalog at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

astro-ph.CO↗