arXiv subjects

Julien Lesgourgues

Publications and source records attributed to Julien Lesgourgues.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Review of Hubble tension solutions with new SH0ES and SPT-3G data

We present an updated analysis of eleven cosmological models that may help reduce the Hubble tension, which now reaches the $6σ$ level when considering the latest SH0ES measurement versus recent CMB and BAO data, assuming $Λ$CDM. Specifically, we look at five classical extensions of $Λ$CDM (with massive neutrinos, spatial curvature, free-streaming or self-interacting relativistic relics, or dynamical dark energy) and six elaborate models featuring either a time-varying electron mass, early dark energy or some non-trivial interactions in the neutrino sector triggered by a light Majoron. We improve over previous works in several ways. We include the latest data from the South Pole Telescope as well as the most recent measurement of the Hubble rate by the SH0ES collaboration. We treat the summed neutrino mass as a free parameter in most of our models, which reveals interesting degeneracies and constraints. We define additional metrics to assess the potential of a model to reduce or even solve the Hubble tension. We validate an emulator that uses active learning to train itself during each parameter inference run for any arbitrary model. We find that the time-varying electron mass and the Majoron models are now ruled out at more than $3σ$. Models with a time-varying electron mass and spatial curvature or with early dark energy reduce the tension to $1.0-2.9σ$. Nevertheless, none of the models considered in this work is favored with enough statistical significance to become the next concordance model of Cosmology.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

CLASS-OneLoop: Accurate and Unbiased Inference from Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys

The power spectrum is the most commonly applied summary statistics to extract cosmological information from the observed three-dimensional distribution of galaxies in spectroscopic surveys. We present CLASS-OneLoop, a new numerical tool, fully integrated into the Boltzmann code CLASS, enabling the calculation of the one-loop power spectrum of biased tracers in spectroscopic surveys. Built upon the Eulerian moment expansion framework for redshift-space distortions, the implemented model incorporates a complete set of nonlinear biases, counterterms, and stochastic contributions, and includes the infrared resummation and the Alcock-Paczynski effect. The code features an evaluation of the loops by either direct numerical integration or Fast Fourier Transform, and employs a fast-slow parameter decomposition, which is essential for accelerating MCMC runs. After presenting performance and validation tests, as an illustration of the capabilities of the code, we apply it to fit the measured redshift-space halo power spectrum wedges on a $Λ$CDM subset of the AbacusSummit simulation suite and considering scales up to $k_{\rm max} = 0.3\,h/$Mpc. We find that the one-loop model adeptly recovers the fiducial cosmology of the simulation, while a simplified model commonly used in the literature for sensitivity forecasts yields significantly biased results. Furthermore, we conduct Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) forecasts for a DESI-like survey, considering a model with a dynamical dark energy component. Our results demonstrate the ability to independently constrain cosmological and nuisance parameters, even in the presence of a large parameter space with twenty-nine variables.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

GW_CLASS: Cosmological Gravitational Wave Background in the Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System

The anisotropies of the Cosmological Gravitational Wave Background (CGWB) retain information about the primordial mechanisms that source the gravitational waves and about the geometry and the particle content of the universe at early times. In this work, we discuss in detail the computation of the angular power spectra of CGWB anisotropies and of their cross correlation with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies, assuming different processes for the generation of these primordial signals. We present an efficient implementation of our results in a modified version of CLASS which will be publicly available. By combining our new code GW_CLASS with MontePython, we forecast the combined sensitivity of future gravitational wave interferometers and CMB experiments to the cosmological parameters that characterize the cosmological gravitational wave background.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Dark Matter constraints from Planck observations of the Galactic polarized synchrotron emission

Dark Matter (DM) annihilation in our Galaxy may produce a linearly polarized synchrotron signal. We use, for the first time, synchrotron polarization to constrain the DM annihilation cross section by comparing theoretical predictions with the latest polarization maps obtained by the Planck satellite collaboration. We find that synchrotron polarization is typically more constraining than synchrotron intensity by about one order of magnitude, independently of uncertainties in the modeling of electron and positron propagation, or of the Galactic magnetic field. Our bounds compete with Cosmic Microwave Background limits in the case of leptophilic DM.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

CosmicNet II: Emulating extended cosmologies with efficient and accurate neural networks

In modern analysis pipelines, Einstein-Boltzmann Solvers (EBSs) are an invaluable tool for obtaining CMB and matter power spectra. To accelerate the computation of these observables, the CosmicNet strategy is to replace the bottleneck of an EBS, which is the integration of a system of differential equations for linear cosmological perturbations, by neural networks. This strategy offers advantages compared to the direct emulation of the final observables, including small networks that are easy to train in high-dimensional parameter spaces, and which do not depend by on primordial spectrum parameters nor observation-related quantities such as selection functions. In this second CosmicNet paper, we present a more efficient set of networks that are already trained for extended cosmologies beyond LCDM, with massive neutrinos, extra relativistic degrees of freedom, spatial curvature, and dynamical dark energy. We release a new branch of the CLASS code, called CLASSNET, which automatically uses networks within a region of trusted accuracy. We demonstrate the accuracy and performance of CLASSNET by presenting parameter inference runs from Planck, BAO and supernovae data, performed with CLASSNET and the COBAYA inference package. We have eliminated the perturbation module as a bottleneck of the EBS, with a speedup that is even more remarkable in extended cosmologies, where the usual approach would have been more expensive while the network's performance remains the same. We obtain a speedup factor of order 150 for the emulated perturbation module of CLASS. For the whole code, this translates into an overall speedup factor of order 3 when computing CMB harmonic spectra (now dominated by the highly parallelizable and further optimizable line-of-sight integration), and of order 50 when computing matter power spectra (less than 0.1 seconds even in extended cosmologies).

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

One likelihood to bind them all: Lyman-$α$ constraints on non-standard dark matter

Recent cosmological tensions have rekindled the search for models beyond $Λ$CDM that cause a suppression of the matter power spectrum. Due to the small scales accessible to Lyman-$α$ data they are an excellent additional tool to probe such models. In this work we extend a recently-developed approach for using Lyman-$α$ data to constrain the power spectrum suppression caused by almost any mixture of cold and non-standard dark matter. We highlight the steps involved in the development of a corresponding likelihood that will be publicly released upon publication of this work. We study three examples of models suppressing the power spectrum, namely feebly interacting dark matter, dark matter interacting with baryons, and mixed cold+warm dark matter. The latter two can be well constrained from Lyman-$α$ data, and we derive novel conclusions on the cosmologically allowed parameter spaces, including finding a mild preference for non-zero interactions between dark matter and baryons. The consistency of the constraints obtained on these models highlight the robustness and flexibility of the likelihood developed here.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Unlocking the synergy between CMB spectral distortions and anisotropies

Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral distortions (SDs) will open a new window on the very early universe, providing new information complementary to that gathered from CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies. In this paper, we study their synergy as a function of the characteristics of the considered experiments. In particular, we examine a wide range of sensitivities for possible SD measurements, spanning from FIRAS up to noise levels 1000 times better than PIXIE, and study their constraining power when combined with current or future CMB anisotropy experiments such as Planck or LiteBIRD plus CMB-S4. We consider a number of different cosmological models such as the $Λ$CDM, as well as its extensions with the running of the scalar spectral index, the decay or the annihilation of dark matter (DM) particles. While upcoming CMB anisotropy experiments will be able to decrease the uncertainties on inflationary parameters such as $A_s$ and $n_s$ by about a factor 2 in the $Λ$CDM case, we find that an SD experiment 100 times more sensitive than PIXIE (comparable to the proposed Super-PIXIE satellite) could potentially further contribute to constrain these parameters. This is even more significant in the case of the running of the scalar spectral index. Furthermore, as expected, constraints on DM particles decaying at redshifts probed by SDs will improve by orders of magnitude even with an experiment 10 times worse than PIXIE as compared to CMB anisotropies or Big Bang Nucleosynthesis bounds. On the contrary, DM annihilation constraints will not significantly improve over CMB anisotropy measurements. Finally, we forecast the constraints obtainable with sensitivities achievable either from the ground or from a balloon.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

The $H_0$ Olympics: A fair ranking of proposed models

Despite the remarkable success of the $Λ$Cold Dark Matter ($Λ$CDM) cosmological model, a growing discrepancy has emerged (currently measured at the level of $\sim 4-6 σ$) between the value of the Hubble constant $H_0$ measured using the local distance ladder and the value inferred using the cosmic microwave background and galaxy surveys. While a vast array of $Λ$CDM extensions have been proposed to explain these discordant observations, understanding the (relative) success of these models in resolving the tension has proven difficult -- this is a direct consequence of the fact that each model has been subjected to differing, and typically incomplete, compilations of cosmological data. In this review, we attempt to make a systematic comparison of sixteen different models which have been proposed to resolve the $H_0$ tension (spanning both early- and late-Universe solutions), and quantify the relative success of each using a series of metrics and a vast array of data combinations. Owing to the timely appearance of this article, we refer to this contest as the ''$H_0$ Olympics''; the goal being to identify which of the proposed solutions, and more broadly which underlying mechanisms, are most likely to be responsible for explaining the observed discrepancy (should unaccounted for systematics not be the culprit). This work also establishes a foundation of tests which will allow the success of novel proposals to be meaningful ''benchmarked''.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Gravitation And the Universe from large Scale-Structures: The GAUSS mission concept

Today, thanks in particular to the results of the ESA Planck mission, the concordance cosmological model appears to be the most robust to describe the evolution and content of the Universe from its early to late times. It summarizes the evolution of matter, made mainly of dark matter, from the primordial fluctuations generated by inflation around $10^{-30}$ second after the Big-Bang to galaxies and clusters of galaxies, 13.8 billion years later, and the evolution of the expansion of space, with a relative slowdown in the matter-dominated era and, since a few billion years, an acceleration powered by dark energy. But we are far from knowing the pillars of this model which are inflation, dark matter and dark energy. Comprehending these fundamental questions requires a detailed mapping of our observable Universe over the whole of cosmic time. The relic radiation provides the starting point and galaxies draw the cosmic web. JAXA's LiteBIRD mission will map the beginning of our Universe with a crucial test for inflation (its primordial gravity waves), and the ESA Euclid mission will map the most recent half part, crucial for dark energy. The mission concept, described in this White Paper, GAUSS, aims at being a mission to fully map the cosmic web up to the reionization era, linking early and late evolution, to tackle and disentangle the crucial degeneracies persisting after the Euclid era between dark matter and inflation properties, dark energy, structure growth and gravitation at large scale.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Cosmological constraints on multi-interacting dark matter

The increasingly significant tensions within $Λ$CDM, combined with the lack of detection of dark matter (DM) in laboratory experiments, have boosted interest in non-minimal dark sectors, which are theoretically well-motivated and inspire new search strategies for DM. Here we consider, for the first time, the possibility of DM having simultaneous interactions with photons, baryons, and dark radiation (DR). We have developed a new and efficient version of the Boltzmann code CLASS that allows for one DM species to have multiple interaction channels. With this framework we reassess existing cosmological bounds on the various interaction coefficients in multi-interacting DM scenarios. We find no clear degeneracies between these different interactions and show that their cosmological effects are largely additive. We further investigate the possibility of these models to alleviate the cosmological tensions, and find that the combination of DM-photon and DM-DR interactions can at the same time reduce the $S_8$ tension (from $2.3σ$ to $1.2σ$) and the $H_0$ tension (from $4.3σ$ to $3.1σ$). The public release of our code will pave the way for the study of various rich dark sectors.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Including massive neutrinos in thermal Sunyaev Zeldovich power spectrum and cluster counts analyses

We consistently include the effect of massive neutrinos in the thermal Sunyaev Zeldovich (SZ) power spectrum and cluster counts analyses, highlighting subtle dependencies on the total neutrino mass and data combination. In particular, we find that using the transfer functions for Cold Dark Matter (CDM) + baryons in the computation of the halo mass function, instead of the transfer functions including neutrino perturbations, as prescribed in recent work, yields a $\approx$ 0.25\% downward shift of the $σ_8$ constraint from tSZ power spectrum data, with a fiducial neutrino mass $Σm_ν=0.06$ eV. In $Λ$CDM, with an X-ray mass bias corresponding to the expected hydrostatic mass bias, i.e., $(1-b)\simeq0.8$, our constraints from Planck SZ data are consistent with the latest results from SPT, DES-Y1 and KiDS+VIKING-450. In $νΛ$CDM, our joint analyses of Planck SZ with Planck 2015 primary CMB yield a small improvement on the total neutrino mass bound compared to the Planck 2015 primary CMB constraint, as well as $(1-b)=0.64\pm0.04$~(68\%~CL). For forecasts, we find that competitive neutrino mass measurements using cosmic variance limited SZ power spectrum require masking the heaviest clusters and probing the small-scale SZ power spectrum up to $\ell_\mathrm{max}\approx10^4$. Although this is challenging, we find that SZ power spectrum can realistically be used to tightly constrain intra-cluster medium properties: we forecast a 2\% determination of the X-ray mass bias by combining CMB-S4 and our mock SZ power spectrum with $\ell_\mathrm{max}=10^3$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Cosmology Intertwined III: $f σ_8$ and $S_8$

The standard $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter cosmological model provides a wonderful fit to current cosmological data, but a few tensions and anomalies became statistically significant with the latest data analyses. While these anomalies could be due to the presence of systematic errors in the experiments, they could also indicate the need for new physics beyond the standard model. In this Letter of Interest we focus on the tension of the Planck data with weak lensing measurements and redshift surveys, about the value of the matter energy density $Ω_m$, and the amplitude or rate of the growth of structure ($σ_8,fσ_8$). We list a few interesting models for solving this tension, and we discuss the importance of trying to fit with a single model a full array of data and not just one parameter at a time.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Cosmology Intertwined II: The Hubble Constant Tension

The current cosmological probes have provided a fantastic confirmation of the standard $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter cosmological model, that has been constrained with unprecedented accuracy. However, with the increase of the experimental sensitivity a few statistically significant tensions between different independent cosmological datasets emerged. While these tensions can be in portion the result of systematic errors, the persistence after several years of accurate analysis strongly hints at cracks in the standard cosmological scenario and the need for new physics. In this Letter of Interest we will focus on the $4.4σ$ tension between the Planck estimate of the Hubble constant $H_0$ and the SH0ES collaboration measurements. After showing the $H_0$ evaluations made from different teams using different methods and geometric calibrations, we will list a few interesting new physics models that could solve this tension and discuss how the next decade experiments will be crucial.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Cosmology Intertwined I: Perspectives for the Next Decade

The standard $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter cosmological model provides an amazing description of a wide range of astrophysical and astronomical data. However, there are a few big open questions, that make the standard model look like a first-order approximation to a more realistic scenario that still needs to be fully understood. In this Letter of Interest we will list a few important goals that need to be addressed in the next decade, also taking into account the current discordances present between the different cosmological probes, as the Hubble constant $H_0$ value, the $σ_8 - S_8$ tension, and the anomalies present in the Planck results. Finally, we will give an overview of upgraded experiments and next-generation space-missions and facilities on Earth, that will be of crucial importance to address all these questions.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Cosmology Intertwined IV: The Age of the Universe and its Curvature

A precise measurement of the curvature of the Universe is of primeval importance for cosmology since it could not only confirm the paradigm of primordial inflation but also help in discriminating between different early Universe scenarios. The recent observations, while broadly consistent with a spatially flat standard $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter ($Λ$CDM) model, are showing tensions that still allow (and, in some cases, even suggest) a few percent deviations from a flat universe. In particular, the Planck Cosmic Microwave Background power spectra, assuming the nominal likelihood, prefer a closed universe at more than 99\% confidence level. While new physics could be in action, this anomaly may be the result of an unresolved systematic error or just a statistical fluctuation. However, since a positive curvature allows a larger age of the Universe, an accurate determination of the age of the oldest objects provides a smoking gun in confirming or falsifying the current flat $Λ$CDM model.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

What will it take to measure individual neutrino mass states using cosmology?

We study the impact of assumptions made about the neutrino mass ordering on cosmological parameter estimation with the purpose of understanding whether in the future it will be possible to infer the specific neutrino mass distribution from cosmological data. We find that although the commonly used assumption of a degenerate neutrino hierarchy is manifestly wrong and leads to changes in cosmological observables such as the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure compared to the correct (normal or inverted) neutrino hierarchy, the induced changes are so small that even with extremely optimistic assumptions about future data they will remain undetectable. We are thus able to conclude that while cosmology can probe the neutrino contribution to the cosmic energy density extremely precisely (and hence provide a detection of a non-zero total neutrino mass at high significance), it will not be possible to directly measure the individual neutrino masses.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Cannibalism hinders growth: Cannibal Dark Matter and the $S_8$ tension

Many models of dark matter have been proposed in attempt to ease the $S_8$ tension between weak lensing and CMB experiments. One such exciting possibility is cannibalistic dark matter (CanDM), which has exothermal number-changing interactions allowing it to stay warm far into its non-relativistic regime. Here we investigate the cosmological implications of CanDM and how it impacts CMB anisotropies and the matter power spectrum, by implementing the model within a linear Einstein-Boltzmann solver. We show that CanDM suppresses the small scale matter power spectrum in a way very similar to light Warm Dark Matter or Hot Dark Matter. However, unlike in those models, the suppression may happen while the CanDM model still remains compatible with CMB constraints. We put strong constraints on the interaction strength of CanDM as a function of its abundance for both constant and temperature-dependent thermally-averaged cross sections. We find that the CanDM model can easily solve the $S_8$ tension (but has no impact on the Hubble tension). Indeed, it can accommodate values of $S_8$ of the order of 0.76 while being compatible with CMB+BAO data. However, as long as the $S_8$ tension remains moderate, the overall $χ^2$ improvement is relatively small given the number of extra free parameters, and the CanDM model is not significantly preferred.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

H0 tension or T0 tension?

We study if the discrepancy between the local and cosmological measurements of the Hubble constant $H_0$ can be reformulated as a tension in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) monopole temperature $T_0$. The latter is customarily fixed to the FIRAS best-fit value in CMB data analyses. Although this value was confirmed by several independent experiments, it is interesting to see how much parameter constraints depend on this prior. We first provide a detailed pedagogical description of the $T_0$ effects on cosmological observables. We show that the recombination history and transfer functions do not depend on $T_0$, provided they are parametrized by the energy scale rather than redshift, and at fixed dark matter and baryon densities per CMB photon. Thus, $T_0$ is only a property of the observer, quantifying the amount of expansion between key cosmological events and today. As a consequence, the sole effect of $T_0$ on small-scale primary CMB anisotropies is through the angular diameter distance to the epoch of last scattering, resulting in a near-perfect degeneracy between $T_0$ and $H_0$. This geometric degeneracy is partially lifted by the late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect and CMB lensing. Still, Planck data alone is consistent with a broad region in the $H_0-T_0$ plane, implying that removing the FIRAS prior on $T_0$ can make Planck and SH0ES less discrepant, without introducing new physics beyond $Λ$CDM. One may break the degeneracy by combining Planck with SH0ES, yielding an independent measurement of $T_0$, which happens to be in $3σ$ tension with FIRAS. Therefore, the Hubble tension indeed can be recast into the $T_0$ tension. The agreement with FIRAS is restored when combining Planck with the baryon acoustic oscillation data instead of SH0ES. Thus, the tension between SH0ES and cosmological measurements of $H_0$ persists even if we discard the FIRAS $T_0$ prior.

astro-ph.CO↗