arXiv subjects

J. Della Costa

Publications and source records attributed to J. Della Costa.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A measurement of $H_0$ from DESI DR1 using energy densities

We present a new measurement of the Hubble constant, independent of standard rulers and robust to pre-recombination modifications such as Early Dark Energy (EDE), obtained by calibrating the total energy density of the Universe. We start using the present-day photon density as an anchor, and use the baryon-to-photon ratio from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis based measurements and the baryon-to-matter ratio from the baryons' imprint on galaxy clustering to translate to a physical matter density at present day. We then compare this to measurements of the ratio of the matter density to the critical density ($Ω_{\mathrm{m}}$), calculated using the relative positions of the baryon acoustic oscillations, to measure the critical density of the universe and hence $H_0$. The important measurements of the evolution of the energy density all happen at low redshift, so we consider this a low-redshift measurement. We validate our method both on a suite of $N$-body mocks and on noiseless theory vectors generated across a wide range of Hubble parameters in both $Λ$CDM and EDE cosmologies. Using DESI DR1 data combined with the angular CMB acoustic scale and the latest BBN constraints, we find $H_0 = 69.0 \pm 2.5$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$, consistent with existing early and late-time determinations of the Hubble constant. We consider the impact of non-standard dark energy evolution on our measurement. Future data, including that from further iterations of DESI and from Euclid, will add to these results providing a powerful test of the Hubble tension.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

DESI Data Release 1: Stellar Catalogue

In this paper we present the stellar Value-Added Catalogue (VAC) based on the DESI Data Release 1. This VAC contains stellar parameter, abundance and radial velocity measurements for more than 4 million stars. It also contains, for the first time, measurements from individual epochs for more than a million stars with at least two observations. The main contribution to the catalogue comes from the bright program of the main survey, which includes $\sim $2.5 million stars, and the backup program, which includes $\sim $ 1 million stars. The combined magnitude range for the stars in the catalogue extends from ${\it Gaia}$ G $\sim 12$ to G $\sim 21$. For the magnitude range $17.5<G<21$ this catalogue represents a factor of 10 increase in the number of stars with radial velocity and abundance measurements compared to existing surveys. Despite DESI's resolution (R $\sim 2500-5000$), the median radial velocity uncertainty for stars in the catalogue is better than 1 km s$^{-1}$. The stellar parameters and abundances of stars in DESI are measured by two independent pipelines, and after applying a temperature-dependent calibration, [Fe/H] abundances of high signal-to-noise stars are accurate to better than $\sim$ 0.1 dex when compared to high-resolution surveys. The catalogue probes different Galactic components including a particularly large number of distant stars: tens of thousands of stars further than 10 kpc, and thousands further than 50 kpc. The catalogue also contains several thousand extremely metal-poor stars with ${\rm [Fe/H]}<-3$. The released sample of stars includes measurements for thousands of stars that are members of dwarf galaxies, open and globular clusters as well as members of several dozen stellar streams. The next public DESI data release is expected in less than two years and will contain three times as many stars as DR1.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

DESI DR2 Results IV: Alcock-Paczyński Measurements from the Lyman Alpha Forest and Cosmological Constraints

We present Alcock-Paczyński (AP) measurements from the full shape of Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) forest correlation functions measured from the second data release (DR2) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Our measurements include information from the Ly$α$ forest auto-correlation and its cross-correlation with quasars. We constrain the AP effect with $1\%$ precision at an effective redshift $z_\mathrm{eff}=2.33$, which is twice as tight as the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) constraint from the same data. When using the joint Ly$α$ AP and BAO results, we measure the ratios $D_\text{H}(z_\mathrm{eff})/r_\text{d}=8.600 \pm 0.066$ and $D_\text{M}(z_\mathrm{eff})/r_\text{d}=39.32 \pm 0.33$, where $D_\text{M}$ is the transverse comoving distance, $D_\text{H}$ is the Hubble distance, and $r_\text{d}$ is the sound horizon at the drag epoch. Assuming $Λ$CDM, Ly$α$ forest measurements combined with a nucleosynthesis prior produce a constraint on the Hubble constant $H_0=66.5\pm1.3\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$. The Ly$α$ AP result corresponds to a matter fraction constraint $Ω_\text{m}=0.325\pm0.018$ in $Λ$CDM, which is $1.4σ$ higher than DESI BAO. This impacts the DESI results relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), slightly reducing their discrepancy from $2.4σ$ to $2.2σ$. We present updated constraints on extended models using the joint DESI DR2 BAO and Ly$α$ forest full shape data, together with external data sets. When considering a time-evolving dark energy equation of state parametrized by $w_0$ and $w_a$, we find it is preferred over $Λ$CDM at $2.7σ$ for the combination of DESI and CMB data, and at $3.2σ$ when also including supernovae. With the new Ly$α$ AP measurement, DESI provides its most precise anchor for the expansion history at $z > 1$ in the matter-dominated Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Cosmological constraints from the DESI DR1 Bispectrum Full-Shape and DR2 BAO

We present cosmological constraints from the combination of DESI DR1 full-shape measurements, including for the LRG bispectrum, and DESI DR2 BAO data. The joint analysis accounts for cross-covariance using mocks, while ShapeFit compression mitigates prior volume effects that hinder beyond-$Λ$CDM analyses. In $Λ$CDM, the bispectrum (P+B) shifts $σ_8$ up by $1.1σ$ and $S_8$ by $1.2σ$, reducing their uncertainties by $26\%$ and $28\%$, respectively. For $w_0w_a$CDM, DESI-only analyses with the bispectrum shift dark energy parameters toward $Λ$CDM, staying consistent with a cosmological constant within $1σ$. Adding CMB creates a preference for evolving dark energy: DESI+CMB (P+B) shows a $2.8σ$ deviation from $Λ$CDM. Including DES-Dovekie supernovae alone reduces this to $1.6σ$, while the full combination DESI+CMB+DES-Dovekie gives $3.1σ$, driven primarily by the CMB. The bispectrum consistently weakens evidence for time-varying dark energy relative to power-spectrum-only analyses. The bispectrum also enhances sensitivity to massive neutrinos: in DESI-only analysis, the power-spectrum-only posterior for $\sum m_ν$ is consistent with zero, whereas adding the bispectrum yields a mean of $0.26\pm0.17$~eV and a $95\%$ upper limit of $0.57$~eV, shifting the peak into the positive region and agreeing with oscillation lower bounds. For modified gravity, the bispectrum further constrains $μ_0 = 0.12\pm0.49$ from DESI-only data, consistent with general relativity. Our analysis shows that accounting for cross-dataset covariances and avoiding prior volume effects yields robust constraints, with the bispectrum raising amplitude parameters and tightening their uncertainties.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

$H_0$ Without the Sound Horizon (or Supernovae): A 2% Measurement in DESI DR1

The sound horizon scale $r_s$ is a key source of information for early-time $H_0$ measurements, and is therefore a common target of new physics proposed to solve the Hubble tension. We present a sub-2% measurement of the Hubble constant that is independent of this scale, using data from the first data release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI DR1). Building on previous work, we remove dependency on the sound horizon size using a heuristic rescaling procedure at the power spectrum level. A key innovation is the inclusion of \emph{uncalibrated} (agnostic to $r_s$) post-reconstruction BAO measurements from DESI DR1, as well as using the CMB acoustic scale $θ_*$ as a high-redshift anchor. Uncalibrated type-Ia supernovae are often included as an independent source of $Ω_m$ information; here we demonstrate the robustness of our results by additionally considering two supernova-independent alternative datasets. We find somewhat higher values of $H_0$ relative to our previous work: $69.2^{+1.3}_{-1.4}$, $70.3^{+1.4}_{-1.2}$, and $69.6^{+1.3}_{-1.8}\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ respectively when including measurements from i) Planck/ACT CMB lensing $\times$ unWISE galaxies, ii) the DES Year 3 6$\times$2pt analysis, and iii) Planck/ACT CMB lensing + the DES Year 5 supernova analysis. These remarkably consistent constraints achieve better than 2% precision; they are among the most stringent sound horizon-independent measurements from LSS to date, and provide a powerful avenue for probing the origin of the Hubble tension.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Deep Spectroscopy with DESI for Photometric Redshift Training and Calibration

Deep spectroscopic samples can be used to improve photometric redshift (photo-$z$) estimates and reduce uncertainties on redshift distributions. Such improvements can increase the cosmological constraining power of large imaging-based experiments such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and mitigate what may be a limiting systematic effect. We present results from the ``DESI-Deep pilot'' program, which was designed to assess the capability of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the 4m Mayall telescope to measure redshifts of galaxies as faint as expected lensing samples for early LSST data ($m_i \leq 24.5$). We find that DESI is remarkably efficient at this task, with redshift success rates comparable to the results of observations from 10m-class telescopes with only $\sim2\times$ longer integration time (rather than $\sim 8\times$ longer as would be expected from aperture-area scaling), while simultaneously achieving $\sim30$ times larger multiplexing. We also find that the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra scales as expected for background-limited observations even for the longest exposure times ($\sim 7$ hours) and faintest targets in the program. These results demonstrate that DESI could provide the definitive redshift sample for the early years of LSST with a modest investment of observing time. Based upon the results of this program, we provide updated predictions for the time required to collect benchmark samples for photo-$z$ training and calibration using a variety of spectroscopic facilities. Finally, we describe a potential "DESI-Deep" survey designed to train and calibrate photo-$z$'s for imaging experiments, and provide forecasts of its impact on cosmological inference.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

Cosmological constraints from the DESI DR1 joint power spectrum and bispectrum analysis

We derive cosmological parameter constraints from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 1 (DR1) galaxy clustering data, based on a joint full-shape analysis of the power spectrum multipoles and the bispectrum monopole using the ShapeFit framework. This is the follow-up of our previous work, in which we obtained for the first time constraints on the ShapeFit parameters using the bispectrum of DESI DR1. Here we present the first ShapeFit cosmological inference results using the bispectrum of DESI DR1. We recover values for the matter density parameter and Hubble constant of respectively $Ω_m=0.310\pm0.012$ and $H_0=[68.92\pm0.97]\,\mathrm{km\, s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}}$, consistent with previous results from the full DESI DR1 dataset that did not use the bispectrum signal. The inclusion of the bispectrum significantly tightens the constraints on the amplitude of fluctuations, reducing the error-bars in $\ln(A_s\times10^{10})$ by approximately 20\%, compared to using the power spectrum alone. We also explore extended cosmological models by performing fits for the evolving dark energy equation of state $w_0w_a$, and the sum of neutrino masses $\sum m_ν$. In these cases, we obtain constraints slightly larger than the ones from previous works from the DESI collaboration, due to not combining the full-shape results with other probes in all tracers. We find no strong evidence of deviations from standard $Λ$CDM, with the dark energy equation-of-state remaining within 2$σ$ from a cosmological constant $Λ$, and the neutrino mass being consistent with the normal hierarchy, $\sum m_ν<0.1\,[eV]$ at 95\% confidence limit. These constraints are broadly consistent with other DESI DR1 analyses, thus validating the robustness of the ShapeFit compression approach and the inclusion of the bispectrum for cosmological inference.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Identifying Anomalous DESI Galaxy Spectra with a Variational Autoencoder

The tens of millions of spectra being captured by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) provide tremendous discovery potential. In this work we show how Machine Learning, in particular Variational Autoencoders (VAE), can detect anomalies in a sample of approximately 200,000 DESI spectra comprising galaxies, quasars and stars. We demonstrate that the VAE can compress the dimensionality of a spectrum by a factor of 100, while still retaining enough information to accurately reconstruct spectral features. We then detect anomalous spectra as those with high reconstruction error and those which are isolated in the VAE latent representation. The anomalies identified fall into two categories: spectra with artefacts and spectra with unique physical features. Awareness of the former can help to improve the DESI spectroscopic pipeline; whilst the latter can lead to the identification of new and unusual objects. To further curate the list of outliers, we use the Astronomaly package which employs Active Learning to provide personalised outlier recommendations for visual inspection. In this work we also explore the VAE latent space, finding that different object classes and subclasses are separated despite being unlabelled. We demonstrate the interpretability of this latent space by identifying tracks within it that correspond to various spectral characteristics. For example, we find tracks that correspond to increasing star formation and increase in broad emission lines along the Balmer series. In upcoming work we hope to apply the methods presented here to search for both systematics and astrophysically interesting objects in much larger datasets of DESI spectra.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

Data Release 1 of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

In 2021 May the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration began a 5-year spectroscopic redshift survey to produce a detailed map of the evolving three-dimensional structure of the universe between $z=0$ and $z\approx4$. DESI's principle scientific objectives are to place precise constraints on the equation of state of dark energy, the gravitationally driven growth of large-scale structure, and the sum of the neutrino masses, and to explore the observational signatures of primordial inflation. We present DESI Data Release 1 (DR1), which consists of all data acquired during the first 13 months of the DESI main survey, as well as a uniform reprocessing of the DESI Survey Validation data which was previously made public in the DESI Early Data Release. The DR1 main survey includes high-confidence redshifts for 18.7M objects, of which 13.1M are spectroscopically classified as galaxies, 1.6M as quasars, and 4M as stars, making DR1 the largest sample of extragalactic redshifts ever assembled. We summarize the DR1 observations, the spectroscopic data-reduction pipeline and data products, large-scale structure catalogs, value-added catalogs, and describe how to access and interact with the data. In addition to fulfilling its core cosmological objectives with unprecedented precision, we expect DR1 to enable a wide range of transformational astrophysical studies and discoveries.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

The DESI Single Fiber Lens Search. I. Four Thousand Spectroscopically Selected Galaxy-Galaxy Gravitational Lens Candidates

We present 4,110 strong gravitational lens candidates, 3,887 of which are new discoveries, selected from a sample of 5,837,154 luminous red galaxies (LRGs) observed with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Candidates are identified via the presence of background ionized oxygen [O II] nebular emission lines in the foreground LRG spectra which may originate from the lensing of higher redshift star-forming galaxies. Using the measured foreground redshift, background redshift, and integrated flux of the background [O II] doublet, we integrate over impact parameters to compute the probability that each candidate is a lens. We expect 53% of candidates to be true lenses with Einstein radii ranging from 0.1'' to 4'', which can be confirmed with high-resolution imaging. Confirmed strong lenses from this sample will form a valuable cosmological dataset, as strong gravitational lensing is the only method to directly measure dark matter halo substructure at cosmological distances. We independently recover the host of the multiply imaged gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova iPTF16geu. Monitoring these lenses for future multiply lensed transients will enable (a) H0 measurements via time-delay cosmography and (b) substructure measurements via flux ratios.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

DESI DR2 Results II: Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmological Constraints

We present baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements from more than 14 million galaxies and quasars drawn from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 2 (DR2), based on three years of operation. For cosmology inference, these galaxy measurements are combined with DESI Lyman-$α$ forest BAO results presented in a companion paper. The DR2 BAO results are consistent with DESI DR1 and SDSS, and their distance-redshift relationship matches those from recent compilations of supernovae (SNe) over the same redshift range. The results are well described by a flat $Λ$CDM model, but the parameters preferred by BAO are in mild, $2.3σ$ tension with those determined from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), although the DESI results are consistent with the acoustic angular scale $θ_*$ that is well-measured by Planck. This tension is alleviated by dark energy with a time-evolving equation of state parametrized by $w_0$ and $w_a$, which provides a better fit to the data, with a favored solution in the quadrant with $w_0>-1$ and $w_a<0$. This solution is preferred over $Λ$CDM at $3.1σ$ for the combination of DESI BAO and CMB data. When also including SNe, the preference for a dynamical dark energy model over $Λ$CDM ranges from $2.8-4.2σ$ depending on which SNe sample is used. We present evidence from other data combinations which also favor the same behavior at high significance. From the combination of DESI and CMB we derive 95% upper limits on the sum of neutrino masses, finding $\sum m_ν<0.064$ eV assuming $Λ$CDM and $\sum m_ν<0.16$ eV in the $w_0w_a$ model. Unless there is an unknown systematic error associated with one or more datasets, it is clear that $Λ$CDM is being challenged by the combination of DESI BAO with other measurements and that dynamical dark energy offers a possible solution.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

A New Way to Discover Strong Gravitational Lenses: Pair-wise Spectroscopic Search from DESI DR1

We present a new method to search for strong gravitational lensing systems by pairing spectra that are close together on the sky in a spectroscopic survey. We visually inspect 26,621 spectra in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 1 that are selected in this way. We further inspect the 11,848 images corresponding to these spectra in the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 10, and obtain 2046 conventional strong gravitational lens candidates, of which 1906 are new. This constitutes the largest sample of lens candidates identified to date in spectroscopic data. Besides the conventional candidates, we identify a new class of systems that we term "dimple lenses". These systems have a low-mass foreground galaxy as a lens, typically smaller in angular extent and fainter compared with the lensed background source galaxy, producing subtle surface brightness indentations in the latter. We report the discovery of 318 of these "dimple-lens" candidates. We suspect that these represent dwarf galaxy lensing. With follow-up observations, they could offer a new avenue to test the cold dark matter model by probing their mass profiles, stellar mass-halo mass relation, and halo mass function for $M_{\textrm{Halo}} \lesssim 10^{13}\,M_\odot$. Thus, in total, we report 2164 new lens candidates. Our method demonstrates the power of pairwise spectroscopic analysis and provides a pathway complementary to imaging-based and single-spectrum lens searches.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

DESI DR1 Ly$α$ forest: 3D full-shape analysis and cosmological constraints

We perform an analysis of the full shapes of Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) forest correlation functions measured from the first data release (DR1) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Our analysis focuses on measuring the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect and the cosmic growth rate times the amplitude of matter fluctuations in spheres of $8$ $h^{-1}\text{Mpc}$, $fσ_8$. We validate our measurements using two different sets of mocks, a series of data splits, and a large set of analysis variations, which were first performed blinded. Our analysis constrains the ratio $D_M/D_H(z_\mathrm{eff})=4.525\pm0.071$, where $D_H=c/H(z)$ is the Hubble distance, $D_M$ is the transverse comoving distance, and the effective redshift is $z_\mathrm{eff}=2.33$. This is a factor of $2.4$ tighter than the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) constraint from the same data. When combining with Ly$α$ BAO constraints from DESI DR2, we obtain the ratios $D_H(z_\mathrm{eff})/r_d=8.646\pm0.077$ and $D_M(z_\mathrm{eff})/r_d=38.90\pm0.38$, where $r_d$ is the sound horizon at the drag epoch. We also measure $fσ_8(z_\mathrm{eff}) = 0.37\; ^{+0.055}_{-0.065} \,(\mathrm{stat})\, \pm 0.033 \,(\mathrm{sys})$, but we do not use it for cosmological inference due to difficulties in its validation with mocks. In $Λ$CDM, our measurements are consistent with both cosmic microwave background (CMB) and galaxy clustering constraints. Using a nucleosynthesis prior but no CMB anisotropy information, we measure the Hubble constant to be $H_0 = 68.3\pm 1.6\;\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ within $Λ$CDM. Finally, we show that Ly$α$ forest AP measurements can help improve constraints on the dark energy equation of state, and are expected to play an important role in upcoming DESI analyses.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

DESI DR2 Results I: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest

We present the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) measurements with the Lyman-alpha (LyA) forest from the second data release (DR2) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. Our BAO measurements include both the auto-correlation of the LyA forest absorption observed in the spectra of high-redshift quasars and the cross-correlation of the absorption with the quasar positions. The total sample size is approximately a factor of two larger than the DR1 dataset, with forest measurements in over 820,000 quasar spectra and the positions of over 1.2 million quasars. We describe several significant improvements to our analysis in this paper, and two supporting papers describe improvements to the synthetic datasets that we use for validation and how we identify damped LyA absorbers. Our main result is that we have measured the BAO scale with a statistical precision of 1.1% along and 1.3% transverse to the line of sight, for a combined precision of 0.65% on the isotropic BAO scale at $z_{eff} = 2.33$. This excellent precision, combined with recent theoretical studies of the BAO shift due to nonlinear growth, motivated us to include a systematic error term in LyA BAO analysis for the first time. We measure the ratios $D_H(z_{eff})/r_d = 8.632 \pm 0.098 \pm 0.026$ and $D_M(z_{eff})/r_d = 38.99 \pm 0.52 \pm 0.12$, where $D_H = c/H(z)$ is the Hubble distance, $D_M$ is the transverse comoving distance, $r_d$ is the sound horizon at the drag epoch, and we quote both the statistical and the theoretical systematic uncertainty. The companion paper presents the BAO measurements at lower redshifts from the same dataset and the cosmological interpretation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Cosmology from Planck CMB Lensing and DESI DR1 Quasar Tomography

We present a measurement of the amplitude of matter fluctuations over the redshift range 0.8 <= z <= 3.5 from the cross correlation of over 1.2 million spectroscopic quasars selected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) across 7,200 deg$^2$ (approx 170 quasars/deg$^2$) and Planck PR4 (NPIPE) cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing maps. We perform a tomographic measurement in three bins centered at effective redshifts z=1.44, 2.27 and 2.75, which have ample overlap with the CMB lensing kernel. From a joint fit using the angular clustering of all three redshift bins (auto and cross-spectra), and including an $Ω_m$ prior from DESI DR1 baryon acoustic oscillations to break the $Ω_m-σ_8$ degeneracy, we constrain the amplitude of matter fluctuations in the matter-dominated regime to be $σ_8=0.929^{+0.059}_{-0.074}$ and $S_8\equiv σ_8(Ω_m/0.3)^{0.5} = 0.922^{+0.059}_{-0.073}$. We provide a growth of structure measurement with the largest spectroscopic quasar sample to date at high redshift, which is 1.5$σ$ higher than predictions from $Λ$CDM fits to measurements of the primary CMB from Planck PR4. The cross-correlation between PR4 lensing maps and DESI DR1 quasars is detected with a signal-to-noise ratio of 21.7 and the quasar auto-correlation at 27.2 for the joint analysis of all redshift bins. We combine our measurement with the CMB lensing auto-spectrum from the ground-based Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT DR6) and Planck PR4 to perform a sound-horizon-free measurement of the Hubble constant, yielding $H_0=69.1^{+2.2}_{-2.6}\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ through its sensitivity to the matter-radiation equality scale.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

The Backup Program of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's Milky Way Survey

The Milky Way Backup Program (MWBP), a survey currently underway with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-m Telescope, works at the margins of the DESI Main surveys to obtain spectra of millions of additional stars from the Gaia catalog. Efficiently utilizing twilight times (<18 deg) and poor weather conditions, the MWBP extends the range of stellar sources studied to both brighter magnitudes and lower Galactic latitude and declination than the stars studied in DESI's Main Milky Way Survey. While the MWBP prioritizes candidate giant stars selected from the Gaia catalog (using color and parallax criteria), it also includes an unbiased sample of bright stars (i.e., 11.2 < G < 16 mag) as well as fainter sources (to G < 19 mag). As of March 1, 2025, the survey had obtained spectra of ~7 million stars, approximately 1.2 million of which are included in the DESI Data Release 1. The full survey, when completed, will cover an area of more than 21,000 square degrees and include approximately 10 million Gaia sources, roughly equal to the number of stellar spectra obtained through the DESI Main Survey, while only utilizing <9% of all DESI observing time.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2025

Cosmological implications of DESI DR2 BAO measurements in light of the latest ACT DR6 CMB data

We report cosmological results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) when combined with recent data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). By jointly analyzing ACT and Planck data and applying conservative cuts to overlapping multipole ranges, we assess how different Planck+ACT dataset combinations affect consistency with DESI. While ACT alone exhibits a tension with DESI exceeding 3$σ$ within the $Λ$CDM model, this discrepancy is reduced when ACT is analyzed in combination with Planck. For our baseline DESI DR2 BAO+Planck PR4+ACT likelihood combination, the preference for evolving dark energy over a cosmological constant is about 3$σ$, increasing to over 4$σ$ with the inclusion of Type Ia supernova data. While the dark energy results remain quite consistent across various combinations of Planck and ACT likelihoods with those obtained by the DESI collaboration, the constraints on neutrino mass are more sensitive, ranging from $\sum m_ν< 0.061$ eV in our baseline analysis, to $\sum m_ν< 0.077$ eV (95\% confidence level) in the CMB likelihood combination chosen by ACT when imposing the physical prior $\sum m_ν>0$ eV.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Validation of the DESI DR2 Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from Galaxies and Quasars

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) data release 2 (DR2) galaxy and quasar clustering data represents a significant expansion of data from DR1, providing improved statistical precision in BAO constraints across multiple tracers, including bright galaxies (BGS), luminous red galaxies (LRGs), emission line galaxies (ELGs), and quasars (QSOs). In this paper, we validate the BAO analysis of DR2. We present the results of robustness tests on the blinded DR2 data and, after unblinding, consistency checks on the unblinded DR2 data. All results are compared to those obtained from a suite of mock catalogs that replicate the selection and clustering properties of the DR2 sample. We confirm the consistency of DR2 BAO measurements with DR1 while achieving a reduction in statistical uncertainties due to the increased survey volume and completeness. We assess the impact of analysis choices, including different data vectors (correlation function vs. power spectrum), modeling approaches and systematics treatments, and an assumption of the Gaussian likelihood, finding that our BAO constraints are stable across these variations and assumptions with a few minor refinements to the baseline setup of the DR1 BAO analysis. We summarize a series of pre-unblinding tests that confirmed the readiness of our analysis pipeline, the final systematic errors, and the DR2 BAO analysis baseline. The successful completion of these tests led to the unblinding of the DR2 BAO measurements, ultimately leading to the DESI DR2 cosmological analysis, with their implications for the expansion history of the Universe and the nature of dark energy presented in the DESI key paper.

astro-ph.CO↗