arXiv subjects

Arya Farahi

Publications and source records attributed to Arya Farahi.

64 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

The DESI Experiment Part I: Science,Targeting, and Survey Design

DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment that will study baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the growth of structure through redshift-space distortions with a wide-area galaxy and quasar redshift survey. To trace the underlying dark matter distribution, spectroscopic targets will be selected in four classes from imaging data. We will measure luminous red galaxies up to $z=1.0$. To probe the Universe out to even higher redshift, DESI will target bright [O II] emission line galaxies up to $z=1.7$. Quasars will be targeted both as direct tracers of the underlying dark matter distribution and, at higher redshifts ($ 2.1 < z < 3.5$), for the Ly-$α$ forest absorption features in their spectra, which will be used to trace the distribution of neutral hydrogen. When moonlight prevents efficient observations of the faint targets of the baseline survey, DESI will conduct a magnitude-limited Bright Galaxy Survey comprising approximately 10 million galaxies with a median $z\approx 0.2$. In total, more than 30 million galaxy and quasar redshifts will be obtained to measure the BAO feature and determine the matter power spectrum, including redshift space distortions.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2016

The DESI Experiment Part II: Instrument Design

DESI (Dark Energy Spectropic Instrument) is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment that will study baryon acoustic oscillations and the growth of structure through redshift-space distortions with a wide-area galaxy and quasar redshift survey. The DESI instrument is a robotically-actuated, fiber-fed spectrograph capable of taking up to 5,000 simultaneous spectra over a wavelength range from 360 nm to 980 nm. The fibers feed ten three-arm spectrographs with resolution $R= λ/Δλ$ between 2000 and 5500, depending on wavelength. The DESI instrument will be used to conduct a five-year survey designed to cover 14,000 deg$^2$. This powerful instrument will be installed at prime focus on the 4-m Mayall telescope in Kitt Peak, Arizona, along with a new optical corrector, which will provide a three-degree diameter field of view. The DESI collaboration will also deliver a spectroscopic pipeline and data management system to reduce and archive all data for eventual public use.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2016

Flint Water Crisis: Data-Driven Risk Assessment Via Residential Water Testing

Recovery from the Flint Water Crisis has been hindered by uncertainty in both the water testing process and the causes of contamination. In this work, we develop an ensemble of predictive models to assess the risk of lead contamination in individual homes and neighborhoods. To train these models, we utilize a wide range of data sources, including voluntary residential water tests, historical records, and city infrastructure data. Additionally, we use our models to identify the most prominent factors that contribute to a high risk of lead contamination. In this analysis, we find that lead service lines are not the only factor that is predictive of the risk of lead contamination of water. These results could be used to guide the long-term recovery efforts in Flint, minimize the immediate damages, and improve resource-allocation decisions for similar water infrastructure crises.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2016

Galaxy Cluster Mass Estimation from Stacked Spectroscopic Analysis

We use simulated galaxy surveys to study: i) how galaxy membership in redMaPPer clusters maps to the underlying halo population, and ii) the accuracy of a mean dynamical cluster mass, $M_σ(λ)$, derived from stacked pairwise spectroscopy of clusters with richness $λ$. Using $\sim\! 130,000$ galaxy pairs patterned after the SDSS redMaPPer cluster sample study of Rozo et al. (2015 RMIV), we show that the pairwise velocity PDF of central--satellite pairs with $m_i < 19$ in the simulation matches the form seen in RMIV. Through joint membership matching, we deconstruct the main Gaussian velocity component into its halo contributions, finding that the top-ranked halo contributes $\sim 60\%$ of the stacked signal. The halo mass scale inferred by applying the virial scaling of Evrard et al. (2008) to the velocity normalization matches, to within a few percent, the log-mean halo mass derived through galaxy membership matching. We apply this approach, along with mis-centering and galaxy velocity bias corrections, to estimate the log-mean matched halo mass at $z=0.2$ of SDSS redMaPPer clusters. Employing the velocity bias constraints of Guo et al. (2015), we find $\langle \ln(M_{200c})|λ\rangle = \ln(M_{30}) + α_m \ln(λ/30)$ with $M_{30} = 1.56 \pm 0.35 \times 10^{14} M_\odot$ and $α_m = 1.31 \pm 0.06_{stat} \pm 0.13_{sys}$. Systematic uncertainty in the velocity bias of satellite galaxies overwhelmingly dominates the error budget.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Holographic p-wave Superconductor with Disorder

We implement the effects of disorder on a holographic p-wave superconductor by introducing a random chemical potential which defines the local energy of the charge carriers. Since there are various possibilities for the orientation of the vector order parameter, we explore the behavior of the condensate in the parallel and perpendicular directions to the introduced disorder. We clarify the nature of various branches representing competing solutions and construct the disordered phase diagram. We find that moderate disorder enhances superconductivity as determined by the value of the condensate. Though we mostly focus on uncorrelated noise, we also consider a disorder characterized by its spectral properties and study in detail its influence on the spectral properties of the condensate and charge density. We find fairly universal responses of the resulting power spectra characterized by linear functions of the disorder power spectrum.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

A Dirty Holographic Superconductor

We study the effects of disorder on a holographic superconductor by introducing a random chemical potential on the boundary. We consider various realizations of disorder and find that the critical temperature for superconductivity is enhanced. We also present evidence for a precise form of renormalization in this system. Namely, when the random chemical potential is characterized by a Fourier spectrum of the form $k^{-2α}$ we find that the spectra of the condensate and the charge density are again power-laws, whose exponents are accurately and universally governed by linear functions of $α$.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

A Model for Multi-property Galaxy Cluster Statistics

The massive dark matter halos that host groups and clusters of galaxies have observable properties that appear to be log-normally distributed about power-law mean scaling relations in halo mass. Coupling this assumption with either quadratic or cubic approximations to the mass function in log space, we derive closed-form expressions for the space density of halos as a function of multiple observables as well as forms for the low-order moments of properties of observable-selected samples. Using a Tinker mass function in a ΛCDM cosmology, we show that the cubic analytic model reproduces results obtained from direct, numerical convolution at the 10 percent level or better over nearly the full range of observables covered by current observations and for redshifts extending to z = 1.5. The model provides an efficient framework for estimating effects arising from selection and covariance among observable properties in survey samples.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Gravitational Collapse, Chaos in CFT Correlators and the Information Paradox

We consider gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field in asymptotically Anti de Sitter spacetime. Following the AdS/CFT dictionary we further study correlations in the field theory side by way of the Klein-Gordon equation of a probe scalar field in the collapsing background. We present evidence that in a certain regime the probe scalar field behaves chaotically, thus supporting Hawking's argument in the black hole information paradox proposing that although the information can be retrieved in principle, deterministic chaos impairs, in practice, the process of unitary extraction of information from a black hole. We emphasize that quantum chaos will change this picture.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

Excursion Set Theory for Correlated Random Walks

We present a new method to compute the first crossing distribution in excursion set theory for the case of correlated random walks. We use a combination of the path integral formalism of Maggiore & Riotto, and the integral equation solution of Zhang & Hui, and Benson et al. to find a numerically robust and convenient algorithm to derive the first crossing distribution in terms of a perturbative expansion around the limit of an uncorrelated random walk. We apply this methodology to the specific case of a Gaussian random density field filtered with a Gaussian smoothing function. By comparing our solutions to results from Monte Carlo calculations of the first crossing distribution we demonstrate that our method accurate for power spectra $P(k)\propto k^n$ for $n=1$, becoming less accurate for smaller values of $n$. It is therefore complementary to the method of Musso & Sheth, which will therefore be more useful for standard $Λ$CDM power spectra. Our approach is quite general, and can be adapted to other smoothing functions, and also to non-Gaussian density fields.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Dark Matter Halo Merger Histories Beyond Cold Dark Matter: I - Methods and Application to Warm Dark Matter

We describe a methodology to accurately compute halo mass functions, progenitor mass functions, merger rates and merger trees in non-cold dark matter universes using a self-consistent treatment of the generalized extended Press-Schechter formalism. Our approach permits rapid exploration of the subhalo population of galactic halos in dark matter models with a variety of different particle properties or universes with rolling, truncated, or more complicated power spectra. We make detailed comparisons of analytically derived mass functions and merger histories with recent warm dark matter cosmological N-body simulations, and find excellent agreement. We show that, once the accretion of smoothly distributed matter is accounted for, coarse-grained statistics such as the mass accretion history of halos can be almost indistinguishable between cold and warm dark matter cases. However, the halo mass function and progenitor mass functions differ significantly, with the warm dark matter cases being strongly suppressed below the free-streaming scale of the dark matter. We demonstrate the importance of using the correct solution for the excursion set barrier first-crossing distribution in warm dark matter - if the solution for a flat barrier is used instead the truncation of the halo mass function is much slower, leading to an overestimate of the number of low mass halos.

astro-ph.CO↗