arXiv subjects

Hayley J. Macpherson

Publications and source records attributed to Hayley J. Macpherson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Impact of inhomogeneous curvature on growth rate measurements from magnitude fluctuations

Our interpretation of current cosmological observations rests on the assumptions of homogeneity and isotropy, leading to uniform background curvature and expansion characterised by the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) spacetime metric. However, the large-scale structure of the Universe is non-uniform in detail, inducing inhomogeneous curvature and scale factor variations. In this paper, we use numerical cosmological simulations generated in full General Relativity to study the impact of inhomogeneous spacetime on the magnitude fluctuations of distant objects, focusing on their use as a probe of the growth rate of cosmic structure. We quantify the distortions in the magnitude correlation spectrum as a function of angular scale and redshift, and use these distortions to infer the systematic offset in the growth rate measurement. We find that at $z \lesssim 0.2$, the systematic offset in growth rate measurements between the full numerical relativity and FLRW treatments is sub-dominant to the statistical error of current datasets, confirming that FLRW modelling is adequate for current low-redshift peculiar velocity experiments. Future datasets extending to higher redshift may require theoretical models that additionally incorporate the contributions of gravitational lensing and inhomogeneous curvature.

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arXiv2026

On the potential for inhomogeneities to mimic an evolving dark energy

In this work we explore the ability of inhomogeneities to result in an apparent dynamical evolution of dark energy. The idea that inhomogeneities may alter the expansion history of the Universe is not a new one. However, with the current excitement surrounding the inferred time-evolution of the equation of state of dark energy by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), combined with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and supernovae observations, it is worth revisiting. We use numerical relativity simulations of large-scale structure formation combined with nonlinear general-relativistic ray tracing to infer dark energy parameters for synthetic observers. We adopt a simplified set-up to roughly mimic the observational properties of the DESI plus supernovae and CMB constraints. In our small sample of 20 observers, we find one who infers parameters consistent with the DESI values at 2-$σ$ significance. While it is rare in our limited sample size, we show that it is at least possible for observers to infer significant non-LCDM parameters when their universe is well-described by a cosmological constant on average.

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arXiv2026

Large-scale weak lensing convergence in nonlinear general relativity

In this work we investigate the weak lensing convergence using an end-to-end nonlinear general relativistic framework. Combining numerical relativity simulations of large-scale structure formation with general relativistic ray-tracing, we compare our nonlinear calculation to the expectation based on perturbation theory for a set of 20 synthetic observers. We focus on large angular scales $\ell < 100$ across a broad range of redshifts with $0.05<z<3$. We confirm the importance of Doppler lensing for redshifts below $z\sim$0.6, as predicted by previous works. On average across our observers, linear perturbation theory predicts the nonlinear convergence to within 3-30% across all redshifts and angular scales we study. In general, we find smaller angular scales are better matched by linear theory than larger angular scales. While we cannot definitively identify the source of the discrepancy, for our particular study of redshift slices on observers' light cones the differences are mostly below the level of cosmic variance.

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arXiv2025

A theoretical prediction for the dipole in nearby distances using cosmography

Cosmography is a widely applied method to infer kinematics of the Universe at small cosmological scales while remaining agnostic about the theory of gravity at play. Usually cosmologists invoke the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric in cosmographic analyses, however generalised approaches allow for analyses outside of any assumed geometrical model. These methods have great promise to be able to model-independently map the cosmic neighborhood where the Universe has not yet converged to isotropy. In this regime, anisotropies can bias parameter inferences if they are not accounted for, and thus must be included for precision cosmology analyses, even when the principle aim is to infer the background cosmology. In this paper, we develop a method to predict the dipole in luminosity distances that arises due to nearby inhomogeneities. This is the leading-order correction to the standard isotropic distance-redshift law. Within a very broad class of general-relativistic universe models, we provide an interpretation of the dipole in terms of the gradients in expansion rate and density which is free from any underlying background cosmology. We use numerical relativity simulations, with improved initial data methods, alongside fully relativistic ray tracing to test the power of our prediction. We find our prediction accurately captures the dipole signature in our simulations to within ~10% for redshifts $z\lesssim 0.07$ in reasonably smooth simulations. In the presence of more non-linear density fields, we find this reduces to $z\lesssim 0.02$. This represents up to an order of magnitude improvement with respect to what is achieved by naive, local cosmography-based predictions. Our paper thus addresses important issues regarding convergence properties of anisotropic cosmographic series expansions that would otherwise limit their applicability to very narrow redshift ranges.

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arXiv2025

The Effect of Nonlinear Gravity on the Cosmological Background During Preheating

We use numerical relativity to study the violent preheating era at the end of inflation. This epoch can result in highly nonlinear fluctuations in density and gravitational potential which feed back onto the averaged expansion rate -- an effect known as backreaction. Usually, simulations of preheating use the Friedmann constraint to enforce the Hubble expansion of spacetime during the evolution. In numerical relativity, this is not required and the inhomogeneous spacetime is evolved self-consistently. For a 'vanilla' preheating model, we find a violation of the Friedmann constraint at the level of $0.005\%$ over the entire simulation. This violation increases to $\sim10\%$ as we sample smaller scales in the simulation domain.

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arXiv2024

First investigation of void statistics in numerical relativity simulations

We apply and extend standard tools for void statistics to cosmological simulations that solve Einstein's equations with numerical relativity (NR). We obtain a simulated void catalogue without Newtonian approximations, using a new watershed void finder which operates on fluid-based NR simulations produced with the Einstein Toolkit. We compare and contrast measures of void size and void fraction, and compare radial stacked density profiles to empirically-derived Hamaus-Sutter-Wandelt (HSW) density profiles and profiles based on distance to void boundaries. We recover statistics roughly consistent with Newtonian N-body simulations where such a comparison is meaningful. We study variation of dynamical spatial curvature and local expansion explicitly demonstrating the spatial fluctuations of these quantities in void regions. We find that voids in our simulations expand ~10-30% faster than the global average and the spatial curvature density parameter in the centre of voids reaches ~60-80%.

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arXiv2024

Redshift drift in a universe with structure III: Numerical relativity

Measurements of the cosmic redshift drift - the change in redshift of a source over time - will enable independent detection of cosmological expansion thanks to the immense precision soon reached by new facilities such as the Square Kilometer Array Observatory and the Extremely Large Telescope. We conduct the first ever redshift drift computation in fully relativistic cosmological simulations, with the simulations performed with the Einstein Toolkit. We compute the redshift drift over the full skies of 50 synthetic observers in the simulation. We compare all-sky averages for each observer - and across all observers - to the Einstein-de Sitter (EdS) model which represents the large-scale spatially-averaged spacetime of the simulation. We find that at $z\approx0.2$ the mean redshift drift across the sky for all observers deviates from the EdS prediction at the percent level, reducing to $\sim0.1\%$ by $z\approx 1$. However, fluctuations in the redshift drift across the sky are $\sim 10-30\%$ at $z\approx 0.1$ and a few percent at $z\approx 0.5$. Such fluctuations are large enough to potentially exceed the expected precision of upcoming redshift drift measurements. Additionally, we find that along 0.48% of the light rays the redshift drift becomes temporarily positive at very low redshift of $z\lesssim 0.02$. This occurs despite our simulation data being based on a matter-dominated model universe. By including a cosmological constant, we expect a slower growth of structures than in the leading-order EdS space-time, and this may reduce the anisotropy over the observers' skies, although we generally expect our results to hold as order-of-magnitude estimates. Redshift drift is arguably one of the most important measurements to be made by next-generation telescopes. Our results collectively serve as preparation for interpreting such a measurement in the presence of realistic cosmic structures.

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arXiv2024

Towards Cosmography of the Local Universe

Anisotropies in the distance-redshift relation of cosmological sources are expected due to large-scale inhomogeneities in the local Universe. When the observed sources are tracing a large-scale matter flow in a general spacetime geometry, the distance-redshift relation with its anisotropies can be described with a geometrical prediction that generalises the well-known Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker result. Furthermore, it turns out that a finite set of multipole coefficients contain the full information about a finite-order truncation of the distance-redshift relation of a given observer. The multipoles of the distance-redshift relation are interesting new cosmological observables that have a direct physical interpretation in terms of kinematical quantities of the underlying matter flow. Using light cones extracted from $N$-body simulations we quantify the anisotropies expected in a $Λ$ cold dark matter cosmology by running a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis on the observed data. In this observational approach the survey selection implements an implicit smoothing scale over which the effective rest frame of matter is fitted. The perceived anisotropy therefore depends significantly on the redshift range and distribution of sources. We find that the multipoles of the expansion rate, as well as the observer's velocity with respect to the large-scale matter flow, can be determined robustly with our approach.

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arXiv2024

The impact of anisotropic sky-sampling on the Hubble constant in numerical relativity

We study the impact of nearby inhomogeneities on an observer's inference of the Hubble constant. Large-scale structures induce a dependence of cosmological parameters on observer position as well as an anisotropic variance of those parameters across an observer's sky. While the former has been explored quite thoroughly, the latter has not. Incomplete sampling of an anisotropic sky could introduce a bias in our cosmological inference if we assume an isotropic expansion law. In this work, we use numerical relativity simulations of large-scale structure combined with ray tracing to produce synthetic catalogs mimicking the low-redshift Pantheon supernova dataset. Our data contains all general-relativistic contributions to fluctuations in the distances and redshifts along geodesics in the simulation. We use these synthetic observations to constrain $H_0$ for a set of randomly-positioned observers. We study both the dependence on observer position as well as the impact of rotating the sample of supernovae on the observer's sky. We find a 1--2\% variance in $H_0$ between observers when they use an isotropic sample of objects. However, we find the inferred value of $H_0$ can vary by up to 4--6\% when observers simply rotate their Pantheon data set on the sky. While the variances we find are below the level of the ``Hubble tension'', our results may suggest a reduction in the significance of the tension if anisotropy of expansion can be correctly accounted for.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Inhomogeneous Cosmology using General Relativistic Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics coupled to Numerical Relativity

We perform three-dimensional simulations of homogeneous and inhomogeneous cosmologies via the coupling of a numerical relativity code for spacetime evolution and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code. Evolution of a flat dust and radiation dominated Friedmann-Lemaître-Roberston-Walker (FLRW) spacetime shows an agreement of exact solutions with residuals on the order $10^{-6}$ and $10^{-3}$ respectively, even at low grid resolutions. We demonstrate evolution of linear perturbations of density, velocity and metric quantities to the FLRW with residuals of only $10^{-2}$ compared to exact solutions. Finally, we demonstrate the evolution of non-linear perturbations of the metric past shell-crossing, such that dark matter halo formation is possible. We show that numerical relativistic smoothed particle hydrodynamics is a viable method for understanding non-linear effects in cosmology.

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arXiv2023

Cosmological distances with general-relativistic ray tracing: framework and comparison to cosmographic predictions

In this work we present the first results from a new ray-tracing tool to calculate cosmological distances in the context of fully nonlinear general relativity. We use this tool to study the ability of the general cosmographic representation of luminosity distance, as truncated at third order in redshift, to accurately capture anisotropies in the "true" luminosity distance. We use numerical relativity simulations of cosmological large-scale structure formation which are free from common simplifying assumptions in cosmology. We find the general, third-order cosmography is accurate to within 1% for redshifts to z\approx 0.034 when sampling scales strictly above 100 Mpc/h, which is in agreement with an earlier prediction. We find the inclusion of small-scale structure generally spoils the ability of the third-order cosmography to accurately reproduce the full luminosity distance for wide redshift intervals, as might be expected. For a simulation sampling small-scale structures, we find a +/- 5% variance in the monopole of the ray-traced luminosity distance at z \approx 0.02. Further, all 25 observers we study here see a 9--20% variance in the luminosity distance across their sky at z \approx 0.03, which reduces to 2--5% by z \approx 0.1. These calculations are based on simulations and ray tracing which adopt fully nonlinear general relativity, and highlight the potential importance of fair sky-sampling in low-redshift isotropic cosmological analysis.

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arXiv2022

Potential signature of a quadrupolar Hubble expansion in Pantheon+ supernovae

The assumption of isotropy -- that the Universe looks the same in all directions on large scales -- is fundamental to the standard cosmological model. This model forms the building blocks of essentially all of our cosmological knowledge to date. It is therefore critical to empirically test in which regimes its core assumptions hold. Anisotropies in the cosmic expansion are expected on small scales due to nonlinear structures in the late Universe, however, the extent to which these anisotropies might impact our low-redshift observations remains to be fully tested. In this paper, we use fully general relativistic simulations to calculate the expected local anisotropic expansion and identify the dominant multipoles in cosmological parameters to be the quadrupole in the Hubble parameter and the dipole in the deceleration parameter. We constrain these multipoles simultaneously in the new Pantheon+ supernova compilation. The fiducial analysis is done in the rest frame of the CMB with peculiar velocity corrections. Under the fiducial range of redshifts in the Hubble flow sample, we find a $\sim 2σ$ deviation from isotropy. We constrain the eigenvalues of the quadrupole in the Hubble parameter to be $λ_1 =0.021\pm{ 0.011}$ and $ {λ_2= 3.15\times 10^{-5}}\pm 0.012$ and place a $1σ$ upper limit on its amplitude of $2.88\%$. We find no significant dipole in the deceleration parameter, finding constraints of $q_{\rm dip} = 4.5^{+1.9}_{-5.4}$. However, in the rest frame of the CMB without corrections, we find $ q_{ \rm dip} = 9.6^{+4.0}_{-6.9}$, a $>2σ$ positive amplitude. We also investigate the impact of these anisotropies on the Hubble tension. We find a maximal shift of $0.30$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ in the monopole of the Hubble parameter and conclude that local anisotropies are unlikely to fully explain the observed tension.

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arXiv2022

Covariant transverse-traceless projection for secondary gravitational waves

Second-order tensor modes induced by nonlinear gravity are a key component of the cosmological background of gravitational waves. A detection of this background would allow us to probe the primordial power spectrum at otherwise inaccessible scales. Usually, the energy density of these gravitational waves is studied within perturbation theory in a particular gauge -- a connection between our physical spacetime and a fictitious background. It is a widely recognized issue that the second-order, scalar-induced gravitational waves are gauge dependent. This issue arises because they are not well-defined as tensors in the physical spacetime at second-order and are thus unphysical. In this paper, we propose the covariant transverse-traceless projection of the extrinsic curvature to study cosmological gravitational waves on a spatial hypersurface. We define a new energy density which is based purely on spacetime tensors, independent of perturbation theory, and thus is gauge invariant by definition. We show that, in the context of second-order perturbation theory, this new energy density contains only propagating modes in the constant-time hypersurface in the Newtonian gauge. We further show that we can recover the same gravitational waves after a transformation to the synchronous gauge, so long as we correctly identify the Newtonian hypersurface.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

The quadrupole in the local Hubble parameter: first constraints using Type Ia supernova data and forecasts for future surveys

The cosmological principle asserts that the Universe looks spatially homogeneous and isotropic on sufficiently large scales. Given the fundamental implications of the cosmological principle, it is important to empirically test its validity on various scales. In this paper, we use the Type Ia supernova (SN~Ia) magnitude-redshift relation, from both the Pantheon and JLA compilations, to constrain theoretically motivated anisotropies in the Hubble flow. In particular, we constrain the quadrupole moment in the effective Hubble parameter and the dipole moment in the effective deceleration parameter. We find no significant quadrupole term regardless of the redshift frame we use. Our results are consistent with the theoretical expectation of a quadrupole moment of a few percent at scales of $\sim 100 h^{-1}$ Mpc. We place an upper limit of a $\sim 10\%$ quadrupole amplitude relative to the monopole, $H_0$, at these scales. We find that we can detect a $\sim 7\%$ quadrupole moment at the 5$σ$ level, for a forecast low-$z$ sample of 1055 SNe~Ia. We find an exponentially decaying dipole moment of the deceleration parameter varies in significance depending on the redshift frame we use. In the heliocentric frame, as expected, it is detected at $\sim 3 σ$ significance. In the rest-frame of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), we find a marginal $\sim 2 σ$ dipole, however, after applying peculiar velocity corrections, the dipole is insignificant. Finally, we find the best-fit frame of rest relative to the supernovae to differ from that of the CMB.

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arXiv2021

Luminosity distance and anisotropic sky-sampling at low redshifts: a numerical relativity study

Most cosmological data analysis today relies on the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric, providing the basis of the current standard cosmological model. Within this framework, interesting tensions between our increasingly precise data and theoretical predictions are coming to light. It is therefore reasonable to explore the potential for cosmological analysis outside of the exact FLRW cosmological framework. In this work we adopt the general luminosity-distance series expansion in redshift with no assumptions of homogeneity or isotropy. This framework will allow for a full model-independent analysis of near-future low-redshift cosmological surveys. We calculate the effective observational 'Hubble', 'deceleration', 'curvature' and 'jerk' parameters of the luminosity-distance series expansion in numerical relativity simulations of realistic structure formation, for observers located in different environments and with different levels of sky-coverage. With a 'fairly-sampled' sky, we find 0.6% and 4% cosmic variance in the 'Hubble' and 'deceleration' parameters for scales of 200 Mpc/h (corresponding to density contrasts of ~0.05 in the simulated model universe), respectively. On top of this, we find that typical observers measure maximal sky-variance of 2% and 120% in the same parameters, as compared to their analogies in the large scale FLRW model. Our work suggests the inclusion of low-redshift anisotropy in cosmological analysis could be important for drawing correct conclusions about our Universe.

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arXiv2021

A prediction for anisotropies in the nearby Hubble flow

We assess the dominant low-redshift anisotropic signatures in the distance-redshift relation and redshift drift signals. We adopt general-relativistic irrotational dust models allowing for gravitational radiation -- the `quiet universe models' -- which are extensions of the silent universe models. Using cosmological simulations evolved with numerical relativity, we confirm that the quiet universe model is a good description on scales larger than those of collapsing structures. With this result, we reduce the number of degrees of freedom in the fully general luminosity distance and redshift drift cosmographies by a factor of $\sim 2$ and $\sim 2.5$, respectively, for the most simplified case. We predict a dominant dipolar signature in the distance-redshift relation for low-redshift data, with direction along the gradient of the large-scale density field. Further, we predict a dominant quadrupole in the anisotropy of the redshift drift signal, which is sourced by the electric Weyl curvature tensor. The signals we predict in this work should be tested with present and near-future cosmological surveys.

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arXiv2020

Numerical solutions to Einstein's equations in a shearing-dust Universe: a code comparison

A number of codes for general-relativistic simulations of cosmological structure formation have been developed in recent years. Here we demonstrate that a sample of these codes produce consistent results beyond the Newtonian regime. We simulate solutions to Einstein's equations dominated by gravitomagnetism -- a vector-type gravitational field that doesn't exist in Newtonian gravity and produces frame-dragging, the leading-order post-Newtonian effect. We calculate the coordinate-invariant effect on intersecting null geodesics by performing ray tracing in each independent code. With this observable quantity, we assess and compare each code's ability to compute relativistic effects.

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arXiv2019

Inhomogeneous cosmology in an anisotropic Universe

With the era of precision cosmology upon us, and upcoming surveys expected to further improve the precision of our observations below the percent level, ensuring the accuracy of our theoretical cosmological model is of the utmost importance. Current tensions between our observations and predictions from the standard cosmological model have sparked curiosity in extending the model to include new physics. Although, some suggestions include simply accounting for aspects of our Universe that are ignored in the standard model. One example acknowledges the fact that our Universe contains significant density contrasts on small scales; in the form of galaxies, galaxy clusters, filaments, and voids. This small-scale structure is smoothed out in the standard model, by assuming large-scale homogeneity of the matter distribution, which could have a measurable effect due to the nonlinearity of Einstein's equations. This backreaction of small-scale structures on the large-scale dynamics has been suggested to explain the measured accelerating expansion rate of the Universe. Current standard cosmological simulations ignore the effects of General Relativity by assuming purely Newtonian dynamics. In this thesis, we take the first steps towards quantifying the backreaction of small-scale structures by performing cosmological simulations that solve Einstein's equations directly. Simulations like these will allow us to quantify potentially important effects on our observations that could become measurable as the precision of these observations increases into the future.

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