arXiv subjects

Enea Di Dio

Publications and source records attributed to Enea Di Dio.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Testing the Equivalence Principle in Galaxy Clusters

Clusters of galaxies have been used to measure a subtle effect predicted by Einstein: gravitational redshift. This signal encodes pristine information about our Universe, since it is sensitive to the depth of the clusters' gravitational potential wells. In this work, we show how gravitational redshift can be used to test a fundamental physical principle: the weak equivalence principle. This principle stipulates that all matter falls in the same way in a gravitational potential, regardless of its nature. By comparing the amplitude of the gravitational redshift signal with the velocity dispersion in galaxy clusters, we build a novel test of this principle targeted to the unknown dark matter. Our test is sensitive to any additional interaction that would alter the way dark matter falls in gravitational potentials, hence leading to a violation of the equivalence principle. We show that currently available data can constrain the presence of a fifth force in clusters at the level of 7-14%, while the newest surveys will reach a precision of a few percents. This demonstrates the crucial role played by galaxy clusters in testing fundamental properties of dark matter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Angular bispectrum of matter number counts in cosmic structures

The bispectrum of galaxy number counts is a key probe of large-scale structure, offering insights into the initial conditions of the Universe, the nature of gravity, and cosmological parameters. In this work, we present the first full-sky computation of the angular bispectrum in second-order perturbation theory without invoking the Limber approximation, and formulated for finite redshift bins via window functions. To our knowledge, even the Newtonian part within this setup is novel. Building on this, we also include, up to second order in perturbation theory, the dynamical general relativistic and radiation effects, together with the leading relativistic projection effects. For simplicity, we neglect tracer bias and line-of-sight integrated contributions, however note that in particular the former can be straightforwardly incorporated within our framework. We evaluate the bispectrum contributions for two redshift bins, $1.75 \leq z \leq 2.25$ and $0.55 \leq z \leq 0.65$, and compare our theoretical prediction against relativistic light-cone simulations, with line-of-sight integral effects removed so as to enable direct consistency checks. As expected, we find that the Newtonian contributions are typically one or more orders of magnitudes larger than the relativistic signal across the entire spectrum for both redshifts. At $z=2$, we find that projection and dynamical relativistic effects have comparable amplitudes on large scales; somewhat unexpectedly, however, radiation effects dominate the relativistic signal in the squeezed limit. At $z=0.6$, the expected hierarchy is recovered, though dynamical corrections remain non-negligible -- only a factor of 2-3 smaller than projection effects. Our theoretical results agree fairly well with simulation measurements for the total bispectrum. To facilitate future applications and reproducibility, we make the corresponding code publicly available.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Gravitational Redshift from Galaxy Clusters -- a Relativistic Approach

The light that we receive from clusters of galaxies is redshifted by the presence of the clusters' gravitational potential. This effect, known as gravitational redshift, was first detected from a sample of stacked clusters in 2011, by taking redshift differences between the centre of each cluster and the respective member galaxies. However, the interpretation of this result was later challenged by several studies, which emphasised the possible influence of additional kinematic effects on the observed signal, like the transverse Doppler effect. In this work, we present the first derivation of all such effects within a relativistic framework, accurate to third order in the weak-field approximation. This framework allows us to correctly capture the hierarchy of terms on the scale of clusters and at the same time account for all relativistic effects. We compare our result with previous literature and show that some terms of the same order of the transverse Doppler effect were not properly included, leading to an overestimation of the kinematic contamination. In particular, we do not find any contribution arising from the so-called light-cone effect and obtain a larger correction due the motion of the central galaxy. Our derivation is independent of the Euler equation, providing a straightforward framework to test the weak equivalence principle.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Rotation of the CMB polarisation by foreground lensing

We investigate the weak lensing corrections to the CMB polarization anisotropies. We concentrate on the effect of rotation and show that the rotation of polarisation is a true physical effect which has to be taken into account at second order in perturbation theory. We clarify inconsistencies on the treatment of this rotation in the recent literature. We also show that at first order in perturbation theory there is no rotation of polarisation also for vector and tensor modes.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Wide-angle effects in the galaxy bispectrum

Primordial non-Gaussianities (PNG) leave unique signatures in the bispectrum of the large-scale structure. With upcoming galaxy surveys set to improve PNG constraints by at least one order of magnitude, it is important to account for any potential contamination. In our work we show how to include wide-angle effects into the 3-dimensional observed galaxy bispectrum. We compute the leading wide-angle corrections to the monopole, finding that they could mimic local PNG with an amplitude of $f_{\rm NL} = \mathcal{O}\left( 0.1 \right)$. We also compute the dipole induced by wide-angle effects, whose amplitude is a few-percent of the flat-sky monopole. We estimate that wide-angle effects in the monopole can be safely neglected for survey volumes of the order of $8~\mathrm{Gpc}^3 h^{-3}$, while the dipole can start being detected from surveys probing volumes larger than $50~\mathrm{Gpc}^3 h^{-3}$. Our formalism can be readily adapted to realistic survey geometries and to include relativistic effects, which may become relevant at high redshifts.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

The power spectrum of luminosity distance fluctuations in General Relativity

At low redshift, it is possible to combine spectroscopic information of galaxies with their luminosity or angular diameter distance to directly measure the projection of peculiar velocities (PV) along the line-of-sight. A PV survey probing a large fraction of the sky is subject to so-called wide-angle effects, arising from the variation of the line-of-sight across the sky, and other sub-leading projection effects due to the propagation of the photons in a perturbed cosmological background. In this work, for the first time, we provide a complete description, within linear theory and General Relativity, of the power spectrum of luminosity distance fluctuations, clarifying its relation to the observables in a PV survey. We find that wide-angle effects will be detected at high significance by future observations and will have to be included in the cosmological analysis. Other relativistic projections effects could also be detected provided accurate, per object, distances are available.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

The skewness of the distance-redshift relation in $Λ$CDM

Starting from a recently proposed framework for the evaluation of the cosmological averages, we evaluate the higher-order moments for the distribution of a given observable. Then, we explicitly discuss the case of the Hubble-Lemaître diagram and evaluate its skewness at the leading order in the cosmological perturbative expansion of the gravitational potential. In particular, we focus on perturbations of the luminosity distance due to gravitational lensing. Finally, we discuss our findings in view of recent numerical relativistic simulations, confirming that the skewness in the Hubble-Lemaître diagram primarily originates from the late-time matter bispectrum, with other line-of-sight projection effects being sub-dominant.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Large Scale Limit of the Observed Galaxy Power Spectrum

The large scale limit of the galaxy power spectrum provides a unique window into the early Universe through a possible detection of scale dependent bias produced by primordial non Gaussianities. On such large scales, relativistic effects could become important and be confused for a primordial signal. In this Letter we provide the first consistent estimate of such effects in the observed galaxy power spectrum, and discuss their possible degeneracy with local primordial non Gaussianities. We also clarify the physical differences between the two signatures, as revealed by their different sensitivity to the large scale gravitational potential. Our results indicate that, while relativistic effects could easily account for 10% of the observed power spectrum, the subset of those with a similar scale dependence to a primordial signal can be safely ignored for current galaxy surveys, but it will become relevant for future observational programs.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

The Hawking Energy in a Perturbed Friedmann-Lemaître Universe

Hawking's quasi-local energy definition quantifies the energy enclosed by a spacelike 2-sphere in terms of the amount of lightbending on the sphere caused by the energy distribution inside the sphere. This paper establishes for the first time a direct connection between the formal mathematical definition of a quasi-local energy and observations, in the context of cosmological perturbation theory. This is achieved by studying the Hawking Energy of spherical sections of the past lightcone of a cosmic observer in a perturbed Friedmann-Lemaître spacetime. We express the Hawking Energy in terms of gauge-invariant perturbation variables and comment on the cosmic observables needed to in principle measure it. We then calculate its angular power spectrum and interpret its contributions.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

A smoking gun from the power spectrum dipole for elastic interactions in the dark sector

Models with pure momentum exchange in the dark sector have been shown to provide a promising scenario to tackle the tension in the clustering inferred from high- and low-redshift probes. A distinctive feature of these models is that only the Euler equation for the dark matter component is modified and the correction is such that the net effect can be associated to an additional friction determined by the interaction rate. In this work, we show that the strength of the interaction parameter needed to resolve the $σ_8$ tension could be detected from the dipole of the matter power spectrum that is expected to be measured in upcoming surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

The gauge invariant cosmological Jacobi map from weak lensing at leading order

We compute the weak lensing Jacobi map at first order in perturbation theory and show that it is both, gauge invariant and symmetric. Linear perturbations therefore do not induce any rotation. However, vector and tensor perturbations do induce $B$-modes in the shear. We show that contrary to what is often claimed in the literature, the shear $B$-mode power spectrum is not fully determined by the rotation power spectrum. Also the $E$-mode shear power spectrum is not determined by the convergence power spectrum. While this difference is small for scalar perturbations, it becomes very relevant for tensor perturbations, i.e. gravitational waves.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

The relativistic galaxy number counts in the weak field approximation

We present a novel approach to compute systematically the relativistic projection effects at any order in perturbation theory within the weak field approximation. In this derivation the galaxy number counts is written completely in terms of the redshift perturbation. The relativistic effects break the symmetry along the line-of-sight and they source, contrarily to the standard perturbation theory, the odd multipoles of the matter power spectrum or 2-point correlation function, providing a unique signature for their detection in Large Scale Structure surveys. We show that our approach agrees with previous derivations (up to third order) of relativistic effects and, for the first time, we derive a model for the transverse Doppler effect. Moreover, we show that in the Newtonian limit this approach is consistent with standard perturbation theory at any order.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Modeling relativistic contributions to the halo power spectrum dipole

We study the power spectrum dipole of an N-body simulation which includes relativistic effects through ray-tracing and covers the low redshift Universe up to $z_{\rm max} = 0.465$ (RayGalGroup simulation). We model relativistic corrections as well as wide-angle, evolution, window and lightcone effects. Our model includes all relativistic corrections up to third-order including third-order bias expansion. We consider all terms which depend linearly on $\mathcal{H}/k$ (weak field approximation). We also study the impact of 1-loop corrections to the matter power spectrum for the gravitational redshift and transverse Doppler effect. We found wide-angle and window function effects to significantly contribute to the dipole signal. When accounting for all contributions, our dipole model can accurately capture the gravitational redshift and Doppler terms up to the smallest scales included in our comparison ($k=0.48\,h{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$), while our model for the transverse Doppler term is less accurate. We find the Doppler term to be the dominant signal for this low redshift sample. We use Fisher matrix forecasts to study the potential for the future Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to detect relativistic contributions to the power spectrum dipole. A conservative estimate suggests that the DESI-BGS sample should be able to have a detection of at least $4.4σ$, while more optimistic estimates find detections of up to $10σ$. Detecting these effects in the galaxy distribution allows new tests of gravity on the largest scales, providing an interesting additional science case for galaxy survey experiments.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

The impact of relativistic effects on the 3D Quasar-Lyman-$α$ cross-correlation

We study the impact of relativistic effects in the 3-dimensional cross-correlation between Lyman-$α$ forest and quasars. Apart from the relativistic effects, which are dominated by the Doppler contribution, several systematic effects are also included in our analysis (intervening metals, unidentified high column density systems, transverse proximity effect and effect of the UV fluctuations). We compute the signal-to-noise ratio for the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the extended Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) surveys, showing that DESI will be able to detect the Doppler contribution in a Large Scale Structure (LSS) survey for the first time, with a S/N $>7$ for $r_{\rm min} > 10$ Mpc$/h$, where r$_{\rm min}$ denotes the minimum comoving separation between sources. We demonstrate that several physical parameters, introduced to provide a full modelling of the cross-correlation function, are affected by the Doppler contribution. By using a Fisher matrix approach, we establish that if the Doppler contribution is neglected in the data analysis, the derived parameters will be shifted by a non-negligible amount for the upcoming surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

The relativistic dipole and gravitational redshift on LSS

We compute the dipole of the galaxy correlation function at 1-loop in perturbation theory by including all the relevant relativistic contributions. This provides a description and understanding of what the dipole truly measures, in particular in relation to the gravitational redshift effect in Large Scale Structure. In order to develop this perturbative approach we have computed for the first time the relevant relativistic corrections to third order in perturbation theory, including the corresponding non-linear galaxy bias model. This perturbative approach agrees on a wide range of scales with good accuracy with previous numerical results based on geodesic light tracing in N-body simulations. Previous claims of gravitational redshift detection may have neglected several relativistic effects which are comparable with the amplitude of gravitational redshift around 10 Mpc/h scales and which complicate the gravitational redshift interpretation of the measurement.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

The Full-Sky Angular Bispectrum in Redshift Space

We compute the redshift-dependent angular bispectrum of galaxy number counts at tree-level, including nonlinear clustering bias and estimating numerically for the first time the effect of redshift space distortions (RSD). We show that for narrow redshift bins the amplitude of nonlinear RSD is comparable with the matter density perturbations. While our numerical results only include terms relevant on sub-horizon scales, the formalism can readily be extended to the full tree-level bispectrum. Our approach does not rely on the flat-sky approximation and it can be easily generalized to different sources by including the appropriate bias expansion. We test the accuracy of Limber approximation for different z-bins. We highlight the subtle but relevant differences in the angular bispectrum of galaxy number counts with respect to CMB, due to the different scale dependence of perturbations. Our formalism can also be directly applied to the angular HI intensity mapping bispectrum.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

A blind method to recover the mask of a deep galaxy survey

We present a blind method to determine the properties of a foreground contamination, given by a visibility mask, that affects a deep galaxy survey. Angular cross correlations of density fields in different redshift bins are expected to vanish (apart from a contribution due to lensing), but are sensitive to the presence of a foreground that modulates the flux limit across the sky. After formalizing the expected effect of a foreground mask on the measured galaxy density, under a linear, luminosity-dependent bias model for galaxies, we construct two estimators that single out the mask contribution if a sufficient number of independent redshift bins is available. These estimators are combined to give a reconstruction of the mask. We use Milky-Way reddening as a prototype for the mask. Using a set of 20 large mock catalogs covering $1/4$-th of the sky and number-matched to $Hα$ emitters to mimic an Euclid-like sample, we demonstrate that our method can reconstruct the mask and its angular clustering at scales $\ell<100$, beyond which the cosmological signal becomes dominant. The uncertainty of this reconstruction is quantified to be $1/3$-rd of the sample variance of the signal. Such a reconstruction requires knowledge of the average and square average of the mask, but we show that it is possible to recover this information either from external models or internally from the data. It also relies on knowledge of how the impact of the foreground changes with redshift (due to the extinction curve in our case), but this can be tightly constrained by cross correlations of different redshift bins. The strong points of this blind reconstruction technique lies in the ability to find "unknown unknowns" that affect a survey, and in the facility to quantify, using sets of mock catalogs, how its uncertainty propagates to clustering measurements. [Abridged]

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

CMB-lensing beyond the leading order: temperature and polarization anisotropies

We investigate the weak lensing corrections to the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies. We consider all the effects beyond the leading order: post-Born corrections, LSS corrections and, for the polarization anisotropies, the correction due to the rotation of the polarization direction between the emission at the source and the detection at the observer. We show that the full next-to-leading order correction to the B-mode polarization is not negligible on small scales and is dominated by the contribution from the rotation, this is a new effect not taken in account in previous works. Considering vanishing primordial gravitational waves, the B-mode correction due to rotation is comparable to cosmic variance for $\ell \gtrsim 3500$, in contrast to all other spectra where the corrections are always below that threshold for a single multipole. Moreover, the sum of all the effects is larger than cosmic variance at high multipoles, showing that higher-order lensing corrections to B-mode polarization are in principle detectable.

astro-ph.CO↗