arXiv subjects

Heather Prince

Publications and source records attributed to Heather Prince.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Fisher Forecasting for the DESC with $\texttt{Augur}$

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) has begun its ten-year survey of the entire visible southern hemisphere. To ensure robust cosmological measurements, computationally inexpensive investigations of modeling choices must be made to gauge the performance of proposed cosmological analyses. In this paper, we introduce the $\texttt{Augur}$ tool of the Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC), which provides Fisher forecasts for cosmological inference for the LSST using software frameworks designed for DESC science. We test the pipeline by comparing it to forecasts produced by external code and direct sampling of the posterior via nested sampling methods, finding good agreement between all methods. We additionally investigate a range of modeling and hyperparameter choices for a 3$\times$2pt investigation in harmonic space, providing users with diagnostics to obtain reliable forecasts. $\texttt{Augur}$ will be continually updated to be compatible with the other tools in the DESC software ecosystem as additional probes and functionality become available.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

A foreground-marginalized 'BK-lite' likelihood for the tensor-to-scalar ratio

The current limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio from the BICEP/Keck Collaboration (with r<0.036 at 95% confidence) puts pressure on early universe models, with less than 10% of the error on r attributed to uncertainty in Galactic foregrounds. We use the BICEP/Keck BK18 public multi-frequency likelihood to test some further assumptions made in the foreground modeling, finding little impact on the estimate for r. We then estimate foreground-marginalized cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization bandpowers. We fit them with a multivariate offset-lognormal distribution and construct a marginalized 'BK-lite' likelihood for the CMB B-mode spectrum with no nuisance parameters, serving as a method demonstration for future analyses of small sky regions, for example from the South Pole Observatory or CMB-S4.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

A cross-bispectrum estimator for CMB-HI intensity mapping correlations

Intensity mapping of 21cm emission from neutral hydrogen promises to be a powerful probe of large-scale structure in the post-reionisation epoch. However, HI intensity mapping (IM) experiments will suffer the loss of long-wavelength line-of-sight HI modes in the foreground subtraction process. This significantly reduces HI IM cross-correlations with projected large-scale structure tracers, such as CMB secondary anisotropies. Here we propose a cross-bispectrum estimator, $B^{\bar \kappa \delta T_{21} \delta T_{21}},$ to recover the cross-correlation of the HI IM field, $\delta T_{21},$ with the CMB lensing field, $\kappa,$ constructed by correlating the position-dependent HI power spectrum with the mean overdensity traced by CMB lensing. We study the cross-bispectrum estimator in the squeezed limit and forecast its detectability based on HI IM measurements from HIRAX and CMB lensing measurements from Advanced ACT. We find that $B^{\bar \kappa \delta T_{21}\delta T_{21}},$ in combination with the HI IM and CMB lensing auto-spectra, can place sub-percent constraints on the growth rate of fluctuations, $f,$ and the small scale amplitude of fluctuations, $ \sigma_8.$ The cross-bispectrum, in combination with the auto-spectra and Planck priors, improves dark energy constraints to 0.025 on $w_0$ and 0.11 on $w_a$ for flat models. These results are robust to HI foreground removal because they derive from small-scale HI modes. The HI-CMB lensing cross-bispectrum thus provides a novel way to recover HI correlations with CMB lensing and constrain cosmological parameters at a level that is competitive with next-generation galaxy redshift surveys. As a striking example of this, we find a tight constraint of 27.8 meV (29.0 meV) on the sum of neutrino masses, while varying all redshift and standard cosmological parameters within a flat $\Lambda$CDM ($w_0w_a$CDM) model.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

A Python compressed low-$\ell$ Planck likelihood for temperature and polarization

We present Planck-low-py, a binned low-$\ell$ temperature and E-mode polarization likelihood, as an option to facilitate ease of use of the Planck 2018 large-scale data in joint-probe analysis and forecasting. It is written in Python and compresses the $\ell<30$ temperature and polarization angular power spectra information from Planck into two log-normal bins in temperature and three in polarization. These angular scales constrain the optical depth to reionization and provide a lever arm to constrain the tilt of the primordial power spectrum. We show that cosmological constraints on $\Lambda$CDM model parameters using Planck-low-py are consistent with those derived with the full Commander and SimAll likelihoods from the Planck legacy release.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Data compression in cosmology: A compressed likelihood for Planck data

We apply the massively optimized parameter estimation and data compression technique (MOPED) to the public Planck 2015 temperature likelihood, reducing the dimensions of the data space to one number per parameter of interest. We present CosMOPED, a lightweight and convenient compressed likelihood code implemented in Python. In doing so we show that the $\ell<30$ Planck temperature likelihood can be well approximated by two Gaussian distributed data points, which allows us to replace the map-based low-$\ell$ temperature likelihood by a simple Gaussian likelihood. We make available a Python implementation of Planck's 2015 Plik_lite temperature likelihood that includes these low-$\ell$ binned temperature data (Planck-lite-py). We do not explicitly use the large-scale polarization data in CosMOPED, instead imposing a prior on the optical depth to reionization derived from these data. We show that the $\Lambda$CDM parameters recovered with CosMOPED are consistent with the uncompressed likelihood to within 0.1$\sigma$, and test that a 7-parameter extended model performs similarly well.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-season ACTPol Extragalactic Point Sources and their Polarization properties

We report on measurements of the polarization of extragalactic sources at 148 GHz made during the first two seasons of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarization (ACTPol) survey. The survey covered 680 deg$^{2}$ of the sky on the celestial equator. Polarization measurements of 169 intensity-selected sources brighter than 30 mJy, that are predominantly Active Galactic Nuclei, are presented. Above a total flux of 215 mJy where the noise bias removal in the polarization measurement is reliable, we detect 26 sources, 14 of which have a detection of linear polarization at greater than 3$\sigma_{p}$ significance. The distribution of the fractional polarization as a function of total source intensity is analyzed. Our result is consistent with the scenario that the fractional polarization of our measured radio source population is independent of total intensity down to the limits of our measurements and well described by a Gaussian distribution with a mean fractional polarization $p=0.028\pm$0.005 and standard deviation $\sigma_{\mathrm{p}}=0.054$, truncated at $p=0$. Extrapolating this model for the distribution of source polarization below the ACTPol detection threshold, we predict that one could get a clean measure of the E-mode polarization power spectrum of the microwave background out to $\ell=6000$ with 1 $\mu$K-arcminute maps over 10$\%$ of the sky from a future survey. We also study the spectral energy distribution of the total and polarized source flux densities by cross-matching with low radio frequency catalogs. We do not find any correlation between the spectral indices for total flux and polarized flux.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Real space lensing reconstruction using cosmic microwave background polarization

We develop a method of reconstructing the lensing field from lensed CMB temperature and polarization maps in real space as an alternative to the harmonic space estimators currently in use by extending an existing real space lensing estimator for temperature to polarization. Real space estimators have the advantage of being local in nature and they are thus equipped to deal with the nonuniform sky coverage, especially galactic cuts and point source excisions, found in experimental data. We characterize some of the properties and limitations of these estimators and test them on simulated maps with Planck, AdvACT and CMB-S4 noise. We show that the reconstructions for large-scale lensing fields are accurate, and that the polarization reconstructions improve on those from CMB temperature maps for future experiments as expected. High-fidelity lensing maps can be reconstructed with futuristic experiments like CMB-S4.

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