arXiv subjects

Joel Meyers

Publications and source records attributed to Joel Meyers.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Accurate neural network emulator for primordial light element abundances

Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions of primordial light-element abundances offer a powerful probe of early-Universe physics. However, high-accuracy numerical BBN calculations have become a major computational bottleneck for large-scale cosmological inferences due to the complex nuclear network. Here we present BBNet, a fast and accurate deep learning emulator for primordial abundances. The training data are generated by full numerical calculations using two public BBN codes, PArthENoPE and AlterBBN, modified to accommodate extended cosmologies that include dark radiation and a stiff equation of state. The network employs a residual multi-head architecture to capture convoluted physical relationships. BBNet produces primordial helium-4 and deuterium abundances with negligible errors in milliseconds per sample, achieving a speed-up of up to $10^4$ times relative to first-principles solvers while remaining unbiased over wide parameter ranges. Therefore, our emulator can supersede traditional simplified numerical prescriptions that compromise accuracy for speed. Based on extensive assessments of its performance, we conclude that BBNet is an optimal solution to the theoretical prediction of primordial element abundances. It will serve as a reliable tool for precision cosmology and new-physics searches.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

SageNet: Fast Neural Network Emulation of the Stiff-amplified Gravitational Waves from Inflation

Accurate modeling of the inflationary gravitational waves (GWs) requires time-consuming, iterative numerical integrations of differential equations to take into account their backreaction on the expansion history. To improve computational efficiency while preserving accuracy, we present SageNet (Stiff-Amplified Gravitational-wave Emulator Network), a deep learning framework designed to replace conventional numerical solvers. SageNet employs a Long Short-Term Memory architecture to emulate the present-day energy density spectrum of the inflationary GWs with possible stiff amplification, $Ω_\mathrm{GW}(f)$. Trained on a data set of 25,689 numerically generated solutions, SageNet allows accurate reconstructions of $Ω_\mathrm{GW}(f)$ and generalizes well to a wide range of cosmological parameters; 89.3% of the test emulations with randomly distributed parameters exhibit errors of under 4%. In addition, SageNet demonstrates its ability to learn and reproduce the artificial, adaptive sampling patterns in numerical calculations, which implement denser sampling of frequencies around changes of spectral indices in $Ω_\mathrm{GW}(f)$. The dual capability of learning both physical and artificial features of the numerical GW spectra establishes SageNet as a robust alternative to exact numerical methods. Finally, our benchmark tests show that SageNet reduces the computation time from tens of seconds to milliseconds, achieving a speed-up of ~$10^4$ times over standard CPU-based numerical solvers with the potential for further acceleration on GPU hardware. These capabilities make SageNet a powerful tool for accelerating Bayesian inference procedures for extended cosmological models. In a broad sense, the SageNet framework offers a fast, accurate, and generalizable solution to modeling cosmological observables whose theoretical predictions demand costly differential equation solvers.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Sensitivity of Next-Generation CMB Surveys to Neutrinos and Other Light Relics

Neutrinos and other light relics leave characteristic imprints in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, making their observation a sensitive probe of the particle content and thermal history of the early universe. The energy density in these relativistic species is parameterized by their effective number $N_\mathrm{eff}$. Measuring this parameter at the percent level, which is a long-standing science goal of CMB-S4 and other experiments, would test a wide range of well-motivated physics within and beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In this paper, we present Fisher-matrix forecasts of the projected sensitivity to $N_\mathrm{eff}$ of several CMB-S4 survey configurations considered during its extensive design phase. The conceptual design reaches $σ(N_\mathrm{eff}) < 0.03$ over its seven-year observing period, while the revised configuration achieves the same precision over a longer timescale. We complement these results with a cosmic-variance-limited survey over the same multipole range to quantify the room for improvement accessible with additional instrumental, observational, and theoretical efforts. Finally, we discuss the broad implications of precise $N_\mathrm{eff}$ measurements for the radiation sector, big bang nucleosynthesis, light thermal relics, and other early-universe physics. The forecasts presented in this work are performed with the publicly released DRAFT (Dark Radiation Anisotropy Flowdown Team) tool. It provides an end-to-end pipeline from simulated foreground maps and component separation to delensing and projected sensitivities for any cosmological parameter, and it can be directly applied to other cosmic microwave background survey designs.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Insights for Early Dark Energy with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), as one of the earliest processes in the universe accessible to direct observation, offers a powerful and independent probe of the cosmic expansion history. With recent advances in both theory and observation, including efficient and flexible BBN codes, percent-level measurements of primordial deuterium and helium-4 abundances, refined measurements of nuclear reaction rates, and precise determinations of the baryon density from the cosmic microwave background, particularly keen insights can be gained from BBN. In this work, we leverage these developments to place model-independent constraints on deviations from the Standard Model expansion history during BBN. Using the latest abundance data, we apply principal component analysis to identify the most constrained and physically meaningful modes of expansion history variation. This approach allows us to impose the most general constraints on early dark energy during the epoch of BBN. We further examine whether general modifications to the expansion rate could alleviate the long-standing lithium problem. Our results demonstrate that BBN, sharpened by modern data and statistical techniques, remains an indispensable probe of dark energy and new physics in the early universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

New Interpretations of the Cosmological Preference for a Negative Neutrino Mass

Recent observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) show some tension with a $Λ$CDM cosmology. For one, the cosmological parameters determined by the CMB are at odds with the expansion history determined by latest BAO measurements. In addition, the combined data has placed uncomfortably strong constraints on neutrino mass. Both effects can be interpreted as negative neutrino mass, one describing the change to the expansion history and the other one describing enhanced lensing. In this paper, we show the current tensions can be solved with a single change either to the lensing of the CMB or the expansion of the universe. We show additional lensing could arise from a variety of models with new light fields. However, these models rarely give the same signal in temperature and polarization, giving a concrete test of the scenario. Alternatively, dark sector models can explain the changes to the expansion by changing the evolution of the matter density. These models introduce new forces, giving rise to long range signals in the three-point statistics of galaxies. We discuss a range of other examples which all illustrate the pattern that additional signals should appear if these tensions are explained by beyond the Standard Model physics.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Time-dependent deflection reconstruction: new technique to search for gravitational waves with the cosmic microwave background

Gravitational waves (GWs) passing through the Earth cause a correlated pattern of time-dependent deflections of the apparent position of astronomical sources. We build upon standard lensing reconstruction techniques to develop a new time-dependent quadratic estimator, providing a novel technique to search for the deflections produced by GWs using observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We find that the time-dependent deflection reconstruction is many orders of magnitude more sensitive than the ordinary static lensing estimator, and it can be employed with the data collected by existing and future CMB surveys, without requiring any modification to the experimental or survey design. We demonstrate that CMB surveys offer sensitivity to GWs across a broad frequency range: while the sensitivity will not be competitive over the frequency range covered by pulsar timing arrays, it does extend coverage to both lower and higher frequencies. Finally, we discuss how our methods can be extended to search for other time-varying signals, and also how it can be applied to surveys at other wavelengths.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Running the small-correlated-against-large estimator at scale: Applications of small-scale CMB lensing estimators on realistic simulations

The Small-Correlated-Against-Large Estimator (SCALE) for small-scale lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a novel method for measuring the amplitude of CMB lensing power without the need for reconstruction of the lensing field. In our previous study, we showed that the SCALE method can outperform existing reconstruction methods to detect the presence of lensing at small scales ($\ell \gg 3000$). Here we develop a procedure to include information from SCALE in cosmological parameter inference. We construct a precise neural network emulator to quickly map cosmological parameters to desired CMB observables such as temperature and lensing power spectra and SCALE cross spectra. We also outline a method to apply SCALE to full-sky maps of the CMB temperature field, and construct a likelihood for the application of SCALE in parameter estimation. SCALE supplements conventional observables such as the CMB power spectra and baryon acoustic oscillations in constraining parameters that are sensitive to the small-scale lensing amplitude such as the neutrino mass $m_ν$. We show that including estimates of the small-scale lensing amplitude from SCALE in such an analysis provides enough constraining information to measure the minimum neutrino mass at $4σ$ significance in the scenario of minimal mass, and higher significance for higher mass. Finally, we show that SCALE will play a powerful role in constraining models of clustering that generate scale-dependent modulation to the distribution of matter and the lensing power spectrum, as predicted by models of warm or fuzzy dark matter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Deep Learning for Primordial $B$-mode Extraction

The search for primordial gravitational waves is a central goal of cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys. Isolating the characteristic $B$-mode polarization signal sourced by primordial gravitational waves is challenging for several reasons: the amplitude of the signal is inherently small; astrophysical foregrounds produce $B$-mode polarization contaminating the signal; and secondary $B$-mode polarization fluctuations are produced via the conversion of $E$ modes. Current and future low-noise, multi-frequency observations enable sufficient precision to address the first two of these challenges such that secondary $B$ modes will become the bottleneck for improved constraints on the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves. The dominant source of secondary $B$-mode polarization is gravitational lensing by large scale structure. Various strategies have been developed to estimate the lensing deflection and to reverse its effects the CMB, thus reducing confusion from lensing $B$ modes in the search for primordial gravitational waves. However, a few complications remain. First, there may be additional sources of secondary $B$-mode polarization, for example from patchy reionization or from cosmic polarization rotation. Second, the statistics of delensed CMB maps can become complicated and non-Gaussian, especially when advanced lensing reconstruction techniques are applied. We previously demonstrated how a deep learning network, ResUNet-CMB, can provide nearly optimal simultaneous estimates of multiple sources of secondary $B$-mode polarization. In this paper, we show how deep learning can be applied to estimate and remove multiple sources of secondary $B$-mode polarization, and we further show how this technique can be used in a likelihood analysis to produce nearly optimal, unbiased estimates of the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Multimodality in the Search for New Physics in Pulsar Timing Data and the Case of Kination-amplified Gravitational-wave Background from Inflation

We investigate the kination-amplified inflationary gravitational-wave background (GWB) interpretation of the signal recently reported by various pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments. Kination is a post-inflationary phase in the expansion history dominated by the kinetic energy of some scalar field, characterized by a stiff equation of state $w=1$. Within the inflationary GWB model, we identify two modes which can fit the current data sets (NANOGrav and EPTA) with equal likelihood: the kination-amplification (KA) mode and the ordinary, non-kination-amplification (no-KA) mode. The multimodality of the likelihood motivates a Bayesian analysis with nested sampling. We analyze the free spectra of current PTA data and mock free spectra constructed with higher signal-to-noise ratios, using nested sampling. The analysis of the mock spectrum designed to be consistent with the best fit to the NANOGrav 15 yr (NG15) data successfully reveals the expected bimodal posterior for the first time while excluding the reheating mode that appears in the fit to the current NG15 data, making a case for our correct treatment of potential multimodal posteriors arising from future PTA data sets. The resultant Bayes factor is $B\equiv Z_\mathrm{no-KA}/Z_\mathrm{KA}=2.9\pm1.9$, indicating comparable statistical significance between the two modes. Given the theoretical model-building challenges of producing highly blue-tilted primordial tensor spectra, the KA mode has the advantage of requiring a less blue primordial spectrum, compared with the no-KA mode. The synergy between future cosmic microwave background polarization, pulsar timing and laser interferometer measurements of gravitational waves will help resolve the ambiguity implied by the multimodal posterior in PTA-only searches.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Cosmic Neutrino Decoupling and its Observable Imprints: Insights from Entropic-Dual Transport

Very different processes characterize the decoupling of neutrinos to form the cosmic neutrino background (C$ν$B) and the much later decoupling of photons from thermal equilibrium to form the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The C$ν$B emerges from the fuzzy, energy-dependent neutrinosphere and encodes the physics operating in the early universe in the temperature range $T\sim 10\,{\rm MeV}$ to $T\sim10\,{\rm keV}$. This is the epoch where beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics may be influential in setting the light element abundances and the necessarily distorted fossil neutrino energy spectra. Here we use techniques honed in extensive CMB studies to analyze the C$ν$B as calculated in detailed neutrino energy transport and nuclear reaction simulations. Our moment method, relative entropy, and differential visibility approach can leverage future high precision CMB and primordial abundance measurements to provide new insights into the C$ν$B and any BSM physics it encodes. We demonstrate that the evolution of the energy spectrum of the C$ν$B throughout the weak decoupling epoch is accurately captured in the Standard Model by only three parameters per species, a non-trivial conclusion given the deviation from thermal equilibrium. Furthermore, we can interpret each of the three parameters as physical characteristics of a non-equilibrium system. The success of our compact description within the Standard Model motivates its use also in BSM scenarios. We demonstrate how observations of primordial light element abundances can be used to place constraints on the C$ν$B energy spectrum, deriving response functions that can be applied for general C$ν$B spectral distortions. Combined with the description of those deviations that we develop here, our methods provide a convenient and powerful framework to constrain the impact of BSM physics on the C$ν$B.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

The Cosmological Preference for Negative Neutrino Mass

The most precise determination of the sum of neutrino masses from cosmological data, derived from analysis of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and baryon acoustic acoustic oscillations (BAO) from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), favors a value below the minimum inferred from neutrino flavor oscillation experiments. We explore which data is most responsible of this puzzling aspect of the current constraints on neutrino mass and whether it is related to other anomalies in cosmology. We demonstrate conclusively that the preference for negative neutrino masses is a consequence of larger than expected lensing of the CMB in both the two- and four-point lensing statistics. Furthermore, we show that this preference is robust to changes in likelihoods of the BAO and CMB optical depth analyses given the available data. We then show that this excess clustering is not easily explained by changes to the expansion history and is likely distinct from the preference for for dynamical dark energy in DESI BAO data. Finally, we discuss how future data may impact these results, including an analysis of Planck CMB with mock DESI 5-year data. We conclude that the negative neutrino mass preference is likely to persist even as more cosmological data is collected in the near future.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

No $ν$s is Good News

The baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) analysis from the first year of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), when combined with data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), has placed an upper-limit on the sum of neutrino masses, $\sum m_ν< 70$ meV (95%). In addition to excluding the minimum sum associated with the inverted hierarchy, the posterior is peaked at $\sum m_ν= 0$ and is close to excluding even the minumum sum, 58 meV at 2$σ$. In this paper, we explore the implications of this data for cosmology and particle physics. The sum of neutrino mass is determined in cosmology from the suppression of clustering in the late universe. Allowing the clustering to be enhanced, we extended the DESI analysis to $\sum m_ν< 0$ and find $\sum m_ν= - 160 \pm 90$ meV (68%), and that the suppression of power from the minimum sum of neutrino masses is excluded at 99% confidence. We show this preference for negative masses makes it challenging to explain the result by a shift of cosmic parameters, such as the optical depth or matter density. We then show how a result of $\sum m_ν=0$ could arise from new physics in the neutrino sector, including decay, cooling, and/or time-dependent masses. These models are consistent with current observations but imply new physics that is accessible in a wide range of experiments. In addition, we discuss how an apparent signal with $\sum m_ν< 0$ can arise from new long range forces in the dark sector or from a primordial trispectrum that resembles the signal of CMB lensing.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Synergy between cosmological and laboratory searches in neutrino physics

The intersection of the cosmic and neutrino frontiers is a rich field where much discovery space still remains. Neutrinos play a pivotal role in the hot big bang cosmology, influencing the dynamics of the universe over numerous decades in cosmological history. Recent studies have made tremendous progress in understanding some properties of cosmological neutrinos, primarily their energy density. Upcoming cosmological probes will measure the energy density of relativistic particles with higher precision, but could also start probing other properties of the neutrino spectra. When convolved with results from terrestrial experiments, cosmology can become even more acute at probing new physics related to neutrinos or even Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Any discordance between laboratory and cosmological data sets may reveal new BSM physics and/or suggest alternative models of cosmology. We give examples of the intersection between terrestrial and cosmological probes in the neutrino sector, and briefly discuss the possibilities of what different laboratory experiments may see in conjunction with cosmological observatories.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Improving Constraints on Inflation with CMB Delensing

The delensing of cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps will be increasingly valuable for extracting as much information as possible from future CMB surveys. Delensing provides many general benefits, including sharpening of the acoustic peaks, more accurate recovery of the damping tail, and reduction of lensing-induced $B$-mode power. In this paper we present several applications of delensing focused on testing theories of early-universe inflation with observations of the CMB. We find that delensing the CMB results in improved parameter constraints for reconstructing the spectrum of primordial curvature fluctuations, probing oscillatory features in the primordial curvature spectrum, measuring the spatial curvature of the universe, and constraining several different models of isocurvature perturbations. In some cases we find that delensing can recover almost all of the constraining power contained in unlensed spectra, and it will be a particularly valuable analysis technique to achieve further improvements in constraints for model parameters whose measurements are not expected to improve significantly when utilizing only lensed CMB maps from next-generation CMB surveys. We also quantify the prospects of testing the single-field inflation tensor consistency condition using delensed CMB data; we find it to be out of reach of current and proposed experimental technology and advocate for alternative detection methods.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Improving Constraints on Models Addressing the Hubble Tension with CMB Delensing

The Hubble Tension is a well-known issue in modern cosmology that refers to the apparent disagreement in inferences of the Hubble constant $H_0$ as found through low-redshift observations and those derived from the $Λ$CDM model utilizing early universe observations. Several extensions to $Λ$CDM have been proposed to address the Hubble Tension that involve new ingredients or dynamics in the early universe. Reversing the effects of gravitational lensing on cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps produces sharper acoustic peaks in power spectra and allows for tighter constraints on cosmological parameters. We investigate the efficacy of CMB delensing for improving the constraints on parameters used in extensions of the $Λ$CDM model that are aimed at resolving the Hubble Tension (such as varying fundamental constants, contributions from early dark energy, and self-interacting dark radiation). We use Fisher forecasting to predict the expected constraints with and without this delensing procedure. We demonstrate that CMB delensing improves constraints on $H_0$ by $\sim$ 20% for viable models and significantly improves constraints on parameters across the board in the low-noise regime.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Beyond Fisher Forecasting for Cosmology

The planning and design of future experiments rely heavily on forecasting to assess the potential scientific value provided by a hypothetical set of measurements. The Fisher information matrix, due to its convenient properties and low computational cost, provides an especially useful forecasting tool. However, the Fisher matrix only provides a reasonable approximation to the true likelihood when data are nearly Gaussian distributed and observables have nearly linear dependence on the parameters of interest. Also, Fisher forecasting techniques alone cannot be used to assess their own validity. Thorough sampling of the exact or mock likelihood can definitively determine whether a Fisher forecast is valid, though such sampling is often prohibitively expensive. We propose a simple test, based on the Derivative Approximation for LIkelihoods (DALI) technique, to determine whether the Fisher matrix provides a good approximation to the exact likelihood. We show that the Fisher matrix becomes a poor approximation to the true likelihood in regions where two-dimensional slices of level surfaces of the DALI approximation to the likelihood differ from two-dimensional slices of level surfaces of the Fisher approximation to the likelihood. We demonstrate that our method accurately predicts situations in which the Fisher approximation deviates from the true likelihood for various cosmological models and several data combinations, with only a modest increase in computational cost compared to standard Fisher forecasts.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Small Correlated Against Large Estimator (SCALE) for Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing

Weak gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) carries imprints of the physics operating at redshifts much lower than that of recombination and serves as an important probe of cosmological structure formation, dark matter physics, and the mass of neutrinos. Reconstruction of the CMB lensing deflection field through use of quadratic estimators has proven successful with existing data but is known to be sub-optimal on small angular scales ($\ell > 3000$) for experiments with low noise levels. Future experiments will provide better observations in this regime, but these techniques will remain statistically limited by their approximations. We show that correlations between fluctuations of the large-scale temperature gradient power of the CMB sourced by $\ell < 2000$, and fluctuations to the local small-scale temperature power reveal a lensing signal which is prominent in even the real-space pixel statistics across a CMB temperature map. We present the development of the Small Correlated Against Large Estimator (SCALE), a novel estimator for the CMB lensing spectrum which offers promising complementary analysis alongside other reconstruction techniques in this regime. The SCALE method computes correlations between both the large/small-scale temperature gradient power in harmonic space, and it is able to quantitatively recover unbiased statistics of the CMB lensing field without the need for map-level reconstruction. SCALE can outperform quadratic estimator signal-to-noise by a factor of up to 1.5 in current and upcoming experiments for CMB lensing power spectra $C_{6000<L<8000}^{ϕϕ}$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Report of the Topical Group on Cosmic Probes of Dark Matter for Snowmass 2021

Cosmological and astrophysical observations currently provide the only robust, positive evidence for dark matter. Cosmic probes of dark matter, which seek to determine the fundamental properties of dark matter through observations of the cosmos, have emerged as a promising means to reveal the nature of dark matter. This report summarizes the current status and future potential of cosmic probes to inform our understanding of the fundamental nature of dark matter in the coming decade.

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