arXiv subjects

Fabian Schmidt

Publications and source records attributed to Fabian Schmidt.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Information content in the redshift-space galaxy power spectrum and bispectrum

We present a Fisher information study of the statistical impact of galaxy bias and selection effects on the estimation of key cosmological parameters from galaxy redshift surveys; in particular, the angular diameter distance, Hubble parameter, and linear growth rate at a given redshift, the cold dark matter density, and the tilt and running of the primordial power spectrum. The line-of-sight-dependent selection contributions we include here are known to exist in real galaxy samples. We determine the maximum wavenumber included in the analysis by requiring that the next-order corrections to the galaxy power spectrum or bispectrum, treated here at next-to-leading and leading order, respectively, produce shifts of $\lesssim 0.25σ$ on each of the six cosmological parameters. With the galaxy power spectrum alone, selection effects can deteriorate the constraints severely, especially on the linear growth rate. Adding the galaxy bispectrum helps break parameter degeneracies significantly. We find that a joint power spectrum-bispectrum analysis of a Euclid-like survey can still measure the linear growth rate to 10% precision after complete marginalization over selection bias. We also discuss systematic parameter shifts arising from ignoring selection effects and/or other bias parameters, and emphasize that it is necessary to either control selection effects at the percent level or marginalize over them. We obtain similar results for the Roman Space Telescope and HETDEX.

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arXiv2021

The Novel Probes Project -- Tests of Gravity on Astrophysical Scales

We introduce The Novel Probes Project, an initiative to advance the field of astrophysical tests of the dark sector by creating a forum that connects observers and theorists. This review focuses on tests of gravity and is intended to be of use primarily to observers, but also to theorists with interest in the development of experimental tests. It is twinned with a separate review on tests of dark matter self-interactions (Adhikari et al., in prep.). Our focus is on astrophysical probes of gravity in the weak-field regime, ranging from stars to quasilinear cosmological scales. These are complementary to both strong-field tests and background and linear probes in cosmology. In particular, the nonlinear screening mechanisms that are an integral part of viable modified gravity models lead to characteristic signals specifically on astrophysical scales. The constraining power of these signals is not limited by cosmic variance, but comes with the challenge of building robust theoretical models of the nonlinear dynamics of stars, galaxies, clusters and large scale structure. In this review we lay the groundwork for a thorough exploration of the astrophysical regime with an eye to using the current and next generation of observations for tests of gravity. We begin by setting the scene for how theories beyond General Relativity are expected to behave, focusing primarily on screened fifth forces. We describe the analytic and numerical techniques for exploring the pertinent astrophysical systems, as well as the signatures of modified gravity. With these in hand we present a range of observational tests, and discuss prospects for future measurements and theoretical developments.

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arXiv2020

Galaxy shape statistics in the effective field theory

Intrinsic galaxy alignments yield an important contribution to the observed statistics of galaxy shapes. The general bias expansion for galaxy sizes and shapes in three dimensions has been recently described by Vlah, Chisari \& Schmidt using the general perturbative effective field theory (EFT) framework, in analogy to the clustering of galaxies. In this work, we present a formalism that uses the properties of spherical tensors to project galaxy shapes onto the observed sky in the flat-sky approximation and compute the two-point functions at next-to-leading order as well as the leading-order three-point functions of galaxy shapes and number counts. The resulting expressions are given in forms that are convenient for efficient numerical implementation. For a source redshift distribution typical of Stage IV surveys, we find that that nonlinear intrinsic alignment contributions to galaxy shape correlations become relevant at angular wavenumbers $l \gtrsim 100$.

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arXiv2020

Galaxy bias and primordial non-Gaussianity: insights from galaxy formation simulations with IllustrisTNG

We study the impact that large-scale perturbations of (i) the matter density and (ii) the primordial gravitational potential with local primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) have on galaxy formation using the IllustrisTNG model. We focus on the linear galaxy bias $b_1$ and the coefficient $b_ϕ$ of the scale-dependent bias induced by PNG, which describe the response of galaxy number counts to these two types of perturbations, respectively. We perform our study using separate universe simulations, in which the effect of the perturbations is mimicked by changes to the cosmological parameters: modified cosmic matter density for $b_1$ and modified amplitude $\mathcal{A}_s$ of the primordial scalar power spectrum for $b_ϕ$. We find that the widely used universality relation $b_ϕ= 2δ_c(b_1 - 1)$ is a poor description of the bias of haloes and galaxies selected by stellar mass $M_*$, which is instead described better by $b_ϕ(M_*) = 2δ_c(b_1(M_*) - p)$ with $p \in [0.4, 0.7]$. This is explained by the different impact that matter overdensities and local PNG have on the median stellar-to-halo-mass relation. A simple model of this impact allows us to describe the stellar mass dependence of $b_1$ and $b_ϕ$ fairly well. Our results also show a nontrivial relation between $b_1$ and $b_ϕ$ for galaxies selected by color and black hole mass accretion rate. Our results provide refined priors on $b_ϕ$ for local PNG constraints and forecasts using galaxy clustering. Given that the widely used universality relation underpredicts $b_ϕ(M_*)$, existing analyses may underestimate the true constraining power on local PNG.

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arXiv2020

Measuring the Tidal Response of Structure Formation: Anisotropic Separate Universe Simulations using TreePM

We present anisotropic "separate universe" simulations which modify the N-body code Gadget-4 in order to represent a large-scale tidal field through an anisotropic expansion factor. These simulations are used to measure the linear, quasi-linear and nonlinear response of the matter power spectrum to a spatially uniform trace-free tidal field up to wavenumber $k = 7 h \text{Mpc}^{-1}$. Together with the response to a large-scale overdensity measured in previous work, this completely describes the nonlinear matter bispectrum in the squeezed limit. We find that the response amplitude does not approach zero on small scales in physical coordinates, but rather a constant value at $z=0$, $R_K\approx 0.5$ for $k \geq 3 h\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ up to the scale where we consider our simulations reliable, $k \leq 7 h\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ at $z=0$. This shows that even the inner regions of haloes are affected by the large-scale tidal field. We also measure directly the alignment of halo shapes with the tidal field, finding a clear signal which increases with halo mass.

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arXiv2020

Unbiased Cosmology Inference from Biased Tracers using the EFT Likelihood

We present updates on the cosmology inference using the effective field theory (EFT) likelihood presented previously in Schmidt et al., 2018, Elsner et al., 2019 [1,2]. Specifically, we add a cutoff to the initial conditions that serve as starting point for the matter forward model. We show that this cutoff, which was not employed in any previous related work, is important to regularize loop integrals that otherwise involve small-scale, non-perturbative modes. We then present results on the inferred value of the linear power spectrum normalization $σ_{8}$ from rest-frame halo catalogs using both second- and third-order bias expansions, imposing uniform priors on all bias parameters. Due to the perfect bias-$σ_{8}$ degeneracy at linear order, constraints on $σ_{8}$ rely entirely on nonlinear information. The results show the expected convergence behavior when lowering the cutoff in wavenumber, $Λ$. When including modes up to $k \leq Λ= 0.1\,h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ in the second-order case, $σ_{8}$ is recovered to within $\lesssim 6\,\%$ for a range of halo masses and redshifts. The systematic bias shrinks to $4\,\%$ or less for the third-order bias expansion on the same range of scales. Together with additional evidence we provide, this shows that the residual mismatch in $σ_{8}$ can be attributed to higher-order bias contributions. We conclude that the EFT likelihood is able to infer unbiased cosmological constraints, within expected theoretical systematic errors, from physical biased tracers on quasilinear scales

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arXiv2020

Taking measurements of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect forward: including uncertainties from velocity reconstruction with forward modeling

We measure the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, imprinted by maxBCG clusters, on the Planck SMICA map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Our measurement, for the first time, directly accounts for uncertainties in the velocity reconstruction step through the process of Bayesian forward modeling. We show that this often neglected uncertainty budget typically increases the final uncertainty on the measured kSZ signal amplitude by $\simeq15\%$ at cluster scale. We observe evidence for the kSZ effect, at a significance of $\simeq2σ$. Our analysis, when applied to future higher-resolution CMB data, together with minor improvements in map-filtering and signal-modeling methods, should yield both significant and unbiased measurements of the kSZ signal, which can then be used to probe and constrain baryonic content of galaxy clusters and galaxy groups.

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arXiv2020

Compensated Isocurvature Perturbations in the Galaxy Power Spectrum

We investigate the potential of the galaxy power spectrum to constrain compensated isocurvature perturbations (CIPs), primordial fluctuations in the baryon density that are compensated by fluctuations in CDM density to ensure an unperturbed total matter density. We show that CIPs contribute to the galaxy overdensity at linear order, and if they are close to scale-invariant, their effects are nearly perfectly degenerate with the local PNG parameter $f_{\rm nl}$ if they correlate with the adiabatic perturbations. This degeneracy can however be broken by analyzing multiple galaxy samples with different bias parameters, or by taking CMB priors on $f_{\rm nl}$ into account. Parametrizing the amplitude of the CIP power spectrum as $P_{σσ} = A^2P_{\mathcal{R}\mathcal{R}}$ (where $P_{\mathcal{R}\mathcal{R}}$ is the adiabatic power spectrum) we find, for a number of fiducial galaxy samples in a simplified forecast setup, that constraints on $A$, relative to those on $f_{\rm nl}$, of order $σ_{A}/σ_{f_{\rm nl}} \approx 1-2$ are achievable for CIPs correlated with adiabatic perturbations, and $σ_{A}/σ_{f_{\rm nl}} \approx 5$ for the uncorrelated case. These values are independent of survey volume, and suggest that current galaxy data are already able to improve significantly on the tightest existing constraints on CIPs from the CMB. Future galaxy surveys that aim to achieve $σ_{f_{\rm nl}} \sim 1$ have the potential to place even stronger bounds on CIPs.

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arXiv2020

The Likelihood for LSS: Stochasticity of Bias Coefficients at All Orders

In the EFT of biased tracers the noise field $\varepsilon_g$ is not exactly uncorrelated with the nonlinear matter field $δ$. Its correlation with $δ$ is effectively captured by adding stochasticities to each bias coefficient. We show that if these stochastic fields are Gaussian (the impact of their non-Gaussianity being subleading on quasi-linear scales anyway) it is possible to resum exactly their effect on the conditional likelihood ${\cal P}[δ_g|δ]$ to observe a galaxy field $δ_g$ given an underlying $δ$. This resummation allows to take them into account in EFT-based approaches to Bayesian forward modeling. We stress that the resulting corrections to a purely Gaussian conditional likelihood with white-noise covariance are the most relevant on scales where the EFT is under control: they are more important than any non-Gaussianity of the noise $\varepsilon_g$.

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arXiv2020

Baryon-CDM isocurvature galaxy bias with IllustrisTNG

We study the impact that baryon-CDM relative density perturbations $δ_{bc}$ have on galaxy formation using cosmological simulations with the IllustrisTNG model. These isocurvature (non-adiabatic) perturbations can be induced primordially, if multiple fields are present during inflation, and are generated before baryon-photon decoupling when baryons did not comove with CDM. The presence of long-wavelength $δ_{bc}$ perturbations in our simulations is mimicked by modifying the ratios of the cosmic densities of baryons $Ω_b$ and CDM $Ω_c$, at fixed total matter density $Ω_m$. We measure the corresponding galaxy bias parameter $b_δ^{bc}$ as the response of galaxy abundances to $δ_{bc}$. When selecting by total host halo mass, $b_δ^{bc}$ is negative and it decreases with mass and redshift. Stellar-mass selected simulated galaxies show a weaker or even the opposite trend because of the competing effects of $δ_{bc}$ on the halo mass function and stellar-to-halo-mass relations. We show that simple modeling of the latter two effects describes $b_δ^{bc}$ for stellar-mass-selected objects well. We find $b_δ^{bc} =0.6$ for $M_* = 10^{11}\ M_{\odot}/h$ and $z=0.5$, which is representative of BOSS DR12 galaxies. For $δ_{bc}$ modes generated by baryon-photon interactions, we estimate the impact on the DR12 power spectrum to be below $1\%$, and shifts on inferred distance and growth rate parameters should not exceed $0.1\%$.

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arXiv2020

Separate Universe Simulations with IllustrisTNG: baryonic effects on power spectrum responses and higher-order statistics

We measure power spectrum response functions in the presence of baryonic physical processes using separate universe simulations with the IllustrisTNG galaxy formation model. The response functions describe how the small-scale power spectrum reacts to long-wavelength perturbations and they can be efficiently measured with the separate universe technique by absorbing the effects of the long modes into a modified cosmology. Specifically, we focus on the total first-order matter power spectrum response to an isotropic density fluctuation $R_1(k,z)$, which is fully determined by the logarithmic derivative of the nonlinear matter power spectrum ${\rm dln}P_m(k,z)/{\rm dln}k$ and the growth-only response function $G_1(k,z)$. We find that $G_1(k,z)$ is not affected by the baryonic physical processes in the simulations at redshifts $z < 3$ and on all scales probed ($k \lesssim 15h/{\rm Mpc}$, i.e. length scales $\gtrsim 0.4 {\rm Mpc}/h$). In practice, this implies that the power spectrum fully specifies the baryonic dependence of its response function. Assuming an idealized lensing survey setup, we evaluate numerically the baryonic impact on the squeezed-lensing bispectrum and the lensing super-sample power spectrum covariance, which are given in terms of responses. Our results show that these higher-order lensing statistics can display varying levels of sensitivity to baryonic effects compared to the power spectrum, with the squeezed-bispectrum being the least sensitive. We also show that ignoring baryonic effects on lensing covariances slightly overestimates the error budget (and is therefore conservative from the point of view of parameter error bars) and likely has negligible impact on parameter biases in inference analyses.

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arXiv2020

The EFT Likelihood for Large-Scale Structure

We derive, using functional methods and the bias expansion, the conditional likelihood for observing a specific tracer field given an underlying matter field. This likelihood is necessary for Bayesian-inference methods. If we neglect all stochastic terms apart from the ones appearing in the auto two-point function of tracers, we recover the result of Schmidt et al., 2018. We then rigorously derive the corrections to this result, such as those coming from a non-Gaussian stochasticity (which include the stochastic corrections to the tracer bispectrum) and higher-derivative terms. We discuss how these corrections can affect current applications of Bayesian inference. We comment on possible extensions to our result, with a particular eye towards primordial non-Gaussianity. This work puts on solid theoretical grounds the EFT-based approach to Bayesian forward modeling.

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arXiv2020

Cosmology Inference from Biased Tracers using the EFT-based Likelihood

The effective-field-theory (EFT) approach to the clustering of galaxies and other biased tracers allows for an isolation of the cosmological information that is protected by symmetries, in particular the equivalence principle, and thus is robust to the complicated dynamics of dark matter, gas, and stars on small scales. All existing implementations proceed by making predictions for the lowest-order $n$-point functions of biased tracers, as well as their covariance, and comparing with measurements. Recently, we presented an EFT-based expression for the conditional probability of the density field of a biased tracer given the matter density field, which in principle combines information from arbitrarily high order $n$-point functions. Here, we report results based on this likelihood by applying it to halo catalogs in real space, specifically on the inference of the power spectrum normalization $σ_8$. We include bias terms up to second order as well as the leading higher-derivative term. For a cutoff value of $Λ= 0.1 h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$, we recover the ground-truth value of $σ_8$ to within 95% CL for different halo samples and redshifts. We discuss possible sources for the remaining systematic bias in $σ_8$ as well as future developments.

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arXiv2019

A robust measurement of the first higher-derivative bias of dark matter halos

We present a new simulation technique in which any chosen mode $\mathbf{k}$ of the density contrast field can be amplified by an amplitude $Δ$. These amplified-mode simulations allow us to study the response of the halo density field to a long-wavelength mode other than the DC mode. In this sense they are a generalization of the separate-universe simulations to finite-wavelength modes. In particular, we use these simulations to obtain robust measurements of the first higher-derivative bias of dark matter halos $b_{\nabla^2 δ}$. We find a negative bias at all mass considered, roughly following the $-R_L^2(M)$ relation, the Lagrangian radius of halos squared, as naively expected. We compare our results with those obtained from a fit to the 1-loop halo-matter power spectrum, as well as with the recent results from Abidi and Baldauf (2018), and to the prediction from the peak theory.

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arXiv2019

An EFT description of galaxy intrinsic alignments

We present a general perturbative effective field theory (EFT) description of galaxy shape correlations, which are commonly known as intrinsic alignments. This rigorous approach extends current analytical modelling strategies in that it only relies on the equivalence principle. We present our results in terms of three-dimensional statistics for two- and three-point functions of both galaxy shapes and number counts. In case of the two-point function, we recover the well-known linear alignment result at leading order, but also present the full next-to-leading order expressions. In case of the three-point function we present leading order results for all the auto- and cross-correlations of galaxy shapes and densities. We use a spherical tensor basis to decompose the tensor perturbations in different helicity modes, which allows us to make use of isotropy and parity properties in the correlators. Combined with the results on projection presented in a forthcoming companion paper, our framework is directly applicable to accounting for intrinsic alignment contamination in weak lensing surveys, and to extracting cosmological information from intrinsic alignments.

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arXiv2019

The Odd-Parity Galaxy Bispectrum

The galaxy bispectrum contains a wealth of information about the early universe, gravity, as well as astrophysics such as galaxy bias. In this paper, we study the parity-odd part of the galaxy bispectrum which is hitherto unexplored. In the standard cosmological model, the odd-parity bispectrum is generated by galaxy velocities through redshift-space distortions. While small in the case of General Relativity coupled with smooth dark energy, the signal could be larger in modified gravity scenarios. Thus, apart from being a very useful consistency test of measurements of galaxy clustering, the odd bispectrum offers a novel avenue for searching for new physics.

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arXiv2019

A new scale in the bias expansion

The fact that the spatial nonlocality of galaxy formation is controlled by some short length scale like the Lagrangian radius is the cornerstone of the bias expansion for large-scale-structure tracers. However, the first sources of ionizing radiation between $z\approx 15$ and $z\approx 6$ are expected to have significant effects on the formation of galaxies we observe at lower redshift, at least on low-mass galaxies. These radiative-transfer effects introduce a new scale in the clustering of galaxies, i.e. the finite distance which ionizing radiation travels until it reaches a given galaxy. This mean free path can be very large, of order $100\,h^{-1}\,{\rm Mpc}$. Consequently, higher-derivative terms in the bias expansion could turn out to be non-negligible even on these scales: treating them perturbatively would lead to a massive loss in predictivity and, for example, could spoil the determination of the BAO feature or constraints on the neutrino mass. Here, we investigate under what assumptions an explicit non-perturbative model of radiative-transfer effects can maintain the robustness of large-scale galaxy clustering as a cosmological probe.

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arXiv2019

General relativistic effects in the galaxy bias at second order

The local galaxy bias formalism relies on the energy constraint equation at the formation time to relate the metric perturbation to the matter density contrast. In the Newtonian approximation, this relationship is linear, which allows us to specify the initial galaxy density as a function of local physical operators. In general relativity however, the relationship is intrinsically nonlinear and a modulation of the short-wavelength mode by the long-wavelength mode might be expected. We describe in detail how to obtain local coordinates where the coupling of the long- to the short-wavelength modes is removed through a change of coordinates (in the absence of the primordial non-Gaussianity). We derive the general-relativistic correction to the galaxy bias expansion at second order. The correction does not come from the modulation of small-scale clustering by the long-wavelength mode; instead, it arises from distortions of the volume element by the long-wavelength mode and it does not lead to new bias parameters.

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