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Erfan Nourbakhsh

Publications and source records attributed to Erfan Nourbakhsh.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2022

Galaxy blending effects in deep imaging cosmic shear probes of cosmology

Upcoming deep imaging surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time will be confronted with challenges that come with increased depth. One of the leading systematic errors in deep surveys is the blending of objects due to higher surface density in the more crowded images; a considerable fraction of the galaxies which we hope to use for cosmology analyses will overlap each other on the observed sky. In order to investigate these challenges, we emulate blending in a mock catalogue consisting of galaxies at a depth equivalent to 1.3 yr of the full 10-yr Rubin Observatory that includes effects due to weak lensing, ground-based seeing, and the uncertainties due to extraction of catalogues from imaging data. The emulated catalogue indicates that approximately 12 per cent of the observed galaxies are ``unrecognized'' blends that contain two or more objects but are detected as one. Using the positions and shears of half a billion distant galaxies, we compute shear--shear correlation functions after selecting tomographic samples in terms of both spectroscopic and photometric redshift bins. We examine the sensitivity of the cosmological parameter estimation to unrecognized blending employing both jackknife and analytical Gaussian covariance estimators. An $\sim0.025$ decrease in the derived structure growth parameter $S_8 = σ_8 (Ω_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.5}$ is seen due to unrecognized blending in both tomographies with a slight additional bias for the photo-$z$-based tomography. This bias is greater than the $2σ$ statistical error in measuring $S_8$.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2021

The LSST-DESC 3x2pt Tomography Optimization Challenge

This paper presents the results of the Rubin Observatory Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) 3x2pt tomography challenge, which served as a first step toward optimizing the tomographic binning strategy for the main DESC analysis. The task of choosing an optimal tomographic binning scheme for a photometric survey is made particularly delicate in the context of a metacalibrated lensing catalogue, as only the photometry from the bands included in the metacalibration process (usually riz and potentially g) can be used in sample definition. The goal of the challenge was to collect and compare bin assignment strategies under various metrics of a standard 3x2pt cosmology analysis in a highly idealized setting to establish a baseline for realistically complex follow-up studies; in this preliminary study, we used two sets of cosmological simulations of galaxy redshifts and photometry under a simple noise model neglecting photometric outliers and variation in observing conditions, and contributed algorithms were provided with a representative and complete training set. We review and evaluate the entries to the challenge, finding that even from this limited photometry information, multiple algorithms can separate tomographic bins reasonably well, reaching figures-of-merit scores close to the attainable maximum. We further find that adding the g band to riz photometry improves metric performance by ~15% and that the optimal bin assignment strategy depends strongly on the science case: which figure-of-merit is to be optimized, and which observables (clustering, lensing, or both) are included.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2019

Probing the Fundamental Nature of Dark Matter with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Astrophysical and cosmological observations currently provide the only robust, empirical measurements of dark matter. Future observations with Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will provide necessary guidance for the experimental dark matter program. This white paper represents a community effort to summarize the science case for studying the fundamental physics of dark matter with LSST. We discuss how LSST will inform our understanding of the fundamental properties of dark matter, such as particle mass, self-interaction strength, non-gravitational couplings to the Standard Model, and compact object abundances. Additionally, we discuss the ways that LSST will complement other experiments to strengthen our understanding of the fundamental characteristics of dark matter. More information on the LSST dark matter effort can be found at https://lsstdarkmatter.github.io/ .

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2012

Viscous accretion of a polytropic self-gravitating disk in the presence of wind

Self-similar and semi-analytical solutions are found for the height-averaged equations govern the dynamical behavior of a polytropic, self-gravitating disk under the effects of winds, around the nascent object. In order to describe time evolution of the system, we adopt a radius dependent mass loss rate, then highlight its importance on both the traditional $α$ and innovative $β$ models of viscosity prescription. In agreement with some other studies, our solutions represent that Toomre parameter is less than one in most regions on the $β$-disk which indicate that in such disks gravitational instabilities can occur in various distances from the central accretor and so the $β$-disk model might provide a good explanation of how the planetary systems form. The purpose of the present work is twofold. First, examining the structure of disk with wind in comparison to no-wind solution; and second, to see if the adopted viscosity prescription affects significantly the dynamical behavior of the disk-wind system. We also considered the temperature distribution in our disk by a polytropic condition. The solutions imply that, under our boundary conditions, the radial velocity is larger for $α$-disks and increases as wind becomes stronger in both viscosity models. Also, we noticed that the disk thickness increases by amplifying the wind or adopting larger values for polytropic exponent $γ$. It also may globally decrease if one prescribe $β$-model for the viscosity. Moreover, in both viscosity models, surface density and mass accretion rate reduce as wind gets stronger or $γ$ increases.

astro-ph.SR↗