arXiv subjects

Ermis Mitsou

Publications and source records attributed to Ermis Mitsou.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Infrared (in)sensitivity of relativistic effects in cosmological observable statistics

The relativistic effects in cosmological observables contain critical information about the initial conditions and gravity on large scales. Compared to the matter density fluctuation, some of these relativistic contributions scale with negative powers of comoving wave number, implying a growing sensitivity to infrared modes. However, this can be inconsistent with the equivalence principle and can also lead to infrared divergences in the observable $N$-point statistics. Recent perturbative calculations have shown that this infrared sensitivity is indeed spurious due to subtle cancellations in the cosmological observables that have been missed in the bulk of the literature. Here we demonstrate that the cosmological observable statistics are infrared-insensitive in a general and fully non-linear way, assuming diffeomorphism invariance and adiabatic fluctuations on large scales.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Large gauge transformations, local coordinates and cosmological observables

In recent years new types of coordinate transformations have appeared in cosmology on top of the standard gauge transformations, such as the dilatations and special conformal transformations, or the ones leading to (conformal) Fermi coordinates. Some of these can remove effects that are invariant under the standard gauge transformations and also affect asymptotic boundary conditions, thus introducing a non-trivial ambiguity in our cosmological modeling. In this short note we point out that this ambiguity is irrelevant for the quantities we use to compare our model with observations -- the cosmological observable relations -- as they are invariant under all of these transformations. Importantly, this invariance holds only if one takes into account all the relativistic contributions to an observable, which is not the case in the literature in general. We finally also show that the practically-relevant property of conformal Fermi coordinates (a FLRW metric up to second order in distance) can be achieved through a globally-defined standard gauge transformation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Non-Gaussianity in the Squeezed Three-Point Correlation from the Relativistic Effects

Assuming a LCDM universe in a single-field inflationary scenario, we compute the three-point correlation function of the observed matter density fluctuation in the squeezed triangular configuration, accounting for all the relativistic effects at the second order in perturbations. This squeezed three-point correlation function characterizes the local-type primordial non-Gaussianity, and it has been extensively debated in literature whether there exists a prominent feature in galaxy clustering on large scales in a single-field inflationary scenario either from the primordial origin or the intrinsic nonlinearity in general relativity. First, we show that theoretical descriptions of galaxy bias are incomplete in general relativity due to ambiguities in spatial gauge choice, while those of cosmological observables are independent of spatial gauge choice. Hence a proper relativistic description of galaxy bias is needed to reach a definitive conclusion in galaxy clustering. Second, we demonstrate that the gauge-invariant calculations of the cosmological observables remain unaffected by extra coordinate transformations like CFC or large diffeomorphism like dilatation. Finally, we show that the relativistic effects associated with light propagation in observations cancel each other, and hence there exists NO non-Gaussian contribution from the so-called projection effects.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

The spatial gauge-dependence of single-field inflationary bispectra

In single-field inflationary models the bispectra are usually given in the $\zeta$-gauge, because its temporal part leads to the super-horizon conservation of fluctuations. However, this property is independent of the choice of {\it spatial} gauge, so in this letter we explore this freedom. We compute the variation of the bispectra under the most general spatial gauge transformation that is globally defined and privileges no point, direction or scale. In the squeezed configuration we then obtain a generalization of the classic $\zeta$-gauge consistency relations, which we also derive through the `large diffeomorphism' approach for all four bispectra. At leading order in the long wave-number the transformation only affects the case where the long mode is a scalar. The first effect is a shift of the tilt factor, so that one can significantly reduce the amplitude of that contribution. Secondly, there is now an extra term depending on the triangle shape, the same as in solid inflation, which is due to the fact that the 3-metric has a scalar anisotropy in generic spatial gauge. At next-to-leading order there is no variation, so the conformal consistency relations of the $\zeta$-gauge are preserved.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Pure Lorentz spin connection theories and uniqueness of General Relativity

General Relativity can be reformulated as a diffeomorphism invariant gauge theory of the Lorentz group, with Lagrangian of the type $f(F\wedge F)$, where $F$ is the curvature 2-form of the spin connection. A theory from this class with a generic $f$ is known to propagate eight degrees of freedom: a massless graviton, a massive graviton and a scalar. General Relativity in this formalism avoids extra degrees of freedom because the function $f$ is special and leads to the appearance of six extra primary constraints on the phase space variables. Our main new result is that there are other theories of the type $f(F\wedge F)$ that lead to six extra primary constraints. However, only in the case of GR the dynamics is such that these six primary constraints get supplemented by six secondary constraints, which gives the end result of two propagating degrees of freedom. This is how uniqueness of GR manifests itself in this ``pure spin connection" formalism. The other theories we discover are shown to give examples of irregular dynamical systems. At the linear level around (anti-)de Sitter space they have two degrees of freedom, as General Relativity, with the extra ones manifesting themselves only non-linearly.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Deformations of GR, Geometrodynamics and Reality Conditions

In four dimensions complexified General Relativity (GR) can be non-trivially deformed: There exists an (infinite-parameter) set of modifications all having the same count of degrees of freedom. It is trivial to impose reality conditions that give versions of the deformed theories corresponding to Riemannian and split metric signatures. We revisit the Lorentzian signature case. To make the problem tractable, we restrict our attention to a four-parameter set of deformations that are natural extensions of Ashtekar's Hamiltonian formalism for GR. The Hamiltonian of the later is a linear combination of $EEE$ and $EEB$. We consider theories for which the Hamiltonian constraint is a general linear combination of $EEE, EEB, EBB$ and $BBB$. Our main result is the computation of the evolution equations for the modified theories as geometrodynamics evolution equations for the 3-metric. We show that only for GR (and the related theory of Self-Dual Gravity) these equations close in the sense that they can be written in terms of only the metric and its first time derivative. Modified theories are therefore seen to be essentially non-metric in the sense that their dynamics cannot be reduced to geometrodynamics. We then show this to be related to the problem with Lorentzian reality conditions: the conditions of reality of the 3-metric and its time derivative are not acceptable because they are not preserved by the dynamics. Put differently, their conservation implies extra reality conditions on higher-order time derivatives, which then leaves no room for degrees of freedom.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Cutting out the cosmological middle man: General Relativity in the light-cone coordinates

Analytical computations in relativistic cosmology can be split into two sets: time evolution relating the initial conditions to the observer's light-cone and light propagation to obtain observables. Cosmological perturbation theory in the FLRW coordinates constitutes an efficient tool for the former task, but the latter is dramatically simpler in light-cone-adapted coordinates that trivialize the light rays towards the observer world-line. Here we point out that time evolution and observable reconstruction can be combined into a single computation that relates directly initial conditions to observables. This is possible if one works uniquely in such light-cone coordinates, thus completely bypassing the FLRW "middle-man" coordinates. We first present in detail these light-cone coordinates, extending and generalizing the presently available material in the literature, and construct a particularly convenient subset for cosmological perturbation theory. We then express the Einstein and energy-momentum conservation equations in these coordinates at the fully non-linear level. This is achieved through a careful 2+1+1 decomposition which leads to relatively compact expressions and provides good control over the geometrical interpretation of the involved quantities. Finally, we consider cosmological perturbation theory to linear order, paying attention to the remaining gauge symmetries and consistently obtaining gauge-invariant equations. Moreover, we show that it is possible to implement statistical homogeneity on stochastic fluctuations, despite the fact that the coordinate system privileges the observer world-line.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Tetrad formalism for exact cosmological observables

The standard description of cosmological observables is incomplete, because it does not take into account the correct angular parametrization of the sky, i.e. the one determined by the observer frame. The corresponding corrections must be taken into account for reliable results at non-linear orders. This can be accomplished by introducing an orthonormal basis, or "tetrad", at the observer point, representing the frame with respect to which observations are performed. In this work we consider the tetrad formulation of General Relativity, thus associating tetrads to sources as well, and develop a new formalism for describing cosmological observables associated with localized sources. It is based on a manifold which we call the "observer space-time", whose coordinates are the proper time, redshift and angles an observer uses to parametrize measurements, and on which the rest of the observables are defined. This manifold does not have to be diffeomorphic to the true space-time and allows us to resolve caustics in the latter, in contrast to similar coordinate-based formalisms. As a concrete example, we work out the definitions and equations for the angular diameter distance, weak lensing and number count observables. As for the observables associated to the CMB, they lie inside the phase space distribution of the photon fluid, so we also revisit the construction of general-relativistic matrix kinetic theory from the tetrad formalism viewpoint. Here too the latter appears as the natural approach for relating the macroscopic dynamics to the microscopic quantum field theory, and therefore for constructing the matrix Boltzmann equations, without any approximation on the gravitational side. (... more in the manuscript)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

$\bar T$: A New Cosmological Parameter?

The background photon temperature $\bar T$ is one of the fundamental cosmological parameters. Despite its significance, $\bar T$ has never been allowed to vary in the data analysis, owing to the precise measurement of the comic microwave background (CMB) temperature by COBE FIRAS. However, even in future CMB experiments, $\bar T$ will remain unknown due to the unknown monopole contribution $\Theta_0$ at our position to the observed (angle-averaged) temperature $\langle T\rangle^{\rm obs}$. By fixing $\bar T\equiv\langle T\rangle^{\rm obs}$, the standard analysis underestimates the error bars on cosmological parameters, and the best-fit parameters obtained in the analysis are biased in proportion to the unknown amplitude of $\Theta_0$. Using the Fisher formalism, we find that these systematic errors are smaller than the error bars from the $Planck$ satellite. However, with $\bar T\equiv\langle T\rangle^{\rm obs}$, these systematic errors will always be present and irreducible, and future cosmological surveys might misinterpret the measurements.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Cosmological Information Contents on the Light-Cone

We develop a theoretical framework to describe the cosmological observables on the past light cone such as the luminosity distance, weak lensing, galaxy clustering, and the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We consider that all the cosmological observables include not only the background quantity, but also the perturbation quantity, and they are subject to cosmic variance, which sets the fundamental limits on the cosmological information that can be derived from such observables, even in an idealized survey with an infinite number of observations. To quantify the maximum cosmological information content, we apply the Fisher information matrix formalism and spherical harmonic analysis to cosmological observations, in which the angular and the radial positions of the observables on the light cone carry different information. We discuss the maximum cosmological information that can be derived from five different observables: (1) type Ia supernovae, (2) cosmic microwave background anisotropies, (3) weak gravitational lensing, (4) local baryon density, and (5) galaxy clustering. We compare our results with the cosmic variance obtained in the standard approaches, which treat the light cone volume as a cubic box of simultaneity. We discuss implications of our formalism and ways to overcome the fundamental limit.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

General and consistent statistics for cosmological observations

This paper focuses on two aspects of the statistics of cosmological observables that are important for the next stages of precision cosmology. First, we note that the theory of reduced angular $N$-point spectra has only been developed in detail up to the trispectrum case and in a fashion that makes it difficult to go beyond. To fill this gap, here we present a constructive approach that provides a systematic description of reduced angular $N$-point spectra and their covariance matrices, for arbitrary $N$. Second, we focus on the common practice in the literature on cosmological observables, which consists in simply discarding a part of the expression, namely, the terms containing fields evaluated at the observer position. We point out that this is not justified beyond linear order in perturbation theory, as these terms contribute to all the multipoles of the corresponding spectra and with a magnitude that is of the same order as the rest of the non-linear corrections. We consider the possibility that the reason for neglecting these terms is a conceptual discomfort when using ensemble averages, which originates in an apparent tension between the ergodic hypothesis and the privileged position of the observer on the light-cone. We clarify this subtle issue by performing a careful derivation of the relation between the theoretical statistical predictions and the observational estimators for all $N$. We conclude that there is no inconsistency whatsoever in ensemble-averaging fields at and near the observer position, thus clearing the way for consistent and robust high-precision calculations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

General Relativistic Cosmological N-body Simulations I: time integration

This is the first in a series of papers devoted to fully general-relativistic $N$-body simulations applied to late-time cosmology. The purpose of this paper is to present the combination of a numerical relativity scheme, discretization method and time-integration algorithm that provides satisfyingly stable evolution. More precisely, we show that it is able to pass a robustness test and to follow scalar linear modes around an expanding homogeneous and isotropic space-time. Most importantly, it is able to evolve typical cosmological initial conditions on comoving scales down to tenths of megaparsecs with controlled constraint and energy-momentum conservation violations all the way down to the regime of strong inhomogeneity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Spin connection formulations of real Lorentzian General Relativity

We derive the pure spin connection and constraint-free BF formulations of real four-dimensional Lorentzian vacuum General Relativity. In contrast to the existing complex formulations, an important advantage is that they do not require the reality constraints that complicate quantization. We also consider the corresponding modified gravity theories and point out that, contrary to their self-dual analogues, they are not viable because they necessarily contain ghosts. In particular, this constrains the set of potentially viable unified theories one can build by extending the gauge group to the ones with the action structure of General Relativity. We find, however, that the resulting theories do not admit classical solutions. This issue can be solved by introducing extra dynamical fields which, incidentally, could also provide a way to include a matter sector.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

Apples with Apples comparison of 3+1 conformal numerical relativity schemes

This paper contains a comprehensive comparison catalog of `Apples with Apples' tests for the BSSNOK, CCZ4 and Z4c numerical relativity schemes, with and without constraint damping terms for the latter two. We use basic numerical methods and reach the same level of accuracy as existing results in the literature. We find that the best behaving scheme is generically CCZ4 with constraint damping terms.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

Gauge-Invariant Formalism of Cosmological Weak Lensing

We present the gauge-invariant formalism of cosmological weak lensing, accounting for all the relativistic effects due to the scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations at the linear order. While the light propagation is fully described by the geodesic equation, the relation of the photon wavevector to the physical quantities requires the specification of the frames, where they are defined. By constructing the local tetrad bases at the observer and the source positions, we clarify the relation of the weak lensing observables such as the convergence, the shear, and the rotation to the physical size and shape defined in the source rest-frame and the observed angle and redshift measured in the observer rest-frame. Compared to the standard lensing formalism, additional relativistic effects contribute to all the lensing observables. We explicitly verify the gauge-invariance of the lensing observables and compare our results to previous work. In particular, we demonstrate that even in the presence of the vector and tensor perturbations, the physical rotation of the lensing observables vanishes at the linear order, while the tetrad basis rotates along the light propagation compared to a FRW coordinate. Though the latter is often used as a probe of primordial gravitational waves, the rotation of the tetrad basis is indeed not a physical observable. We further clarify its relation to the E-B decomposition in weak lensing. Our formalism provides a transparent and comprehensive perspective of cosmological weak lensing.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Observed Angles and Geodesic Light-Cone Coordinates

We discuss the interpretation of the angles in the Geodesic Light-Cone (GLC) coordinates. In particular, we clarify the way in which these angles can be identified with the observed ones. We show that, although this identification is always possible in principle, one cannot implement it in the usual gauge-fixing way, i.e. through a set of conditions on the GLC metric. Rather, one needs to invoke a tetrad at the observer and a Cartesian-like coordinate system in order to obtain the desired map globally on the observed sky.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

A multipole-expanded effective field theory for vortex ring-sound interactions

The low-energy dynamics of a zero temperature superfluid or of the compressional modes of an ordinary fluid can be described by a simple effective theory for a scalar field---the superfluid 'phase'. However, when vortex lines are present, to describe all interactions in a local fashion one has to switch to a magnetic-type dual two-form description, which comes with six degrees of freedom (in place of one) and an associated gauge redundancy, and is thus considerably more complicated. Here we show that, in the case of vortex $rings$ and for bulk modes that are much longer than the typical ring size, one can perform a systematic multipole expansion of the effective action and recast it into the simpler scalar field language. In a sense, in the presence of vortex rings the non-single valuedness of the scalar can be hidden inside the rings, and thus out of the reach of the multipole expansion. As an application of our techniques, we compute by standard effective field theory methods the sound emitted by an oscillating vortex ring.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

A numerical relativity scheme for cosmological simulations

Cosmological simulations involving the fully covariant gravitational dynamics may prove relevant in understanding relativistic/non-linear features and, therefore, in taking better advantage of the upcoming large scale structure survey data. We propose a new 3+1 integration scheme for General Relativity in the case where the matter sector contains a minimally-coupled perfect fluid field. The original feature is that we completely eliminate the fluid components through the constraint equations, thus remaining with a set of unconstrained evolution equations for the rest of the fields. This procedure does not constrain the lapse function and shift vector, so it holds in arbitrary gauge and also works for arbitrary equation of state. An important advantage of this scheme is that it allows one to define and pass an adaptation of the robustness test to the cosmological context, at least in the case of pressureless perfect fluid matter, which is the relevant one for late-time cosmology.

gr-qc↗