arXiv subjects

K. S. McCarthy

Publications and source records attributed to K. S. McCarthy.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Euclid preparation. First investigation of the impact of cross-contamination on spectroscopic redshift measurements with pixel-level simulations

We present a study on simulated data focused on understanding the performance of the spectroscopic redshift measurements with the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) instrument on Euclid. Simulations include scenarios with different levels of cross-contamination arising from overlapping spectra of nearby sources, which represents one of the main drawbacks of slitless spectroscopy. We present a new analysis based on pixel-level simulations of the NISP images, with the data processed using the Euclid spectroscopic pipeline. We first consider an idealised case with non-overlapping spectra to assess the accuracy and reliability of the redshift measurement as a function of the flux of the H-alpha emission line and galaxy size. We then introduce more realistic contamination scenarios, distinguishing between two contributions: contamination from H-alpha emitters, which are the Euclid targets for cosmological analyses, and contamination from all other galaxies. In the second case, we analyse the impact of cross-contamination with an increasing number of contaminants, from the brighter to the fainter galaxies. Given that our results show no clear evidence that sources fainter than magnitude 20 degrade redshift measurements, we conservatively restrict our analysis to galaxies with magnitudes up to 24. In particular, we provide a preliminary estimate that contamination from galaxies within the same redshift range as the target sample contributes to about 4% of the total degradation due to cross-contamination from all galaxies.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Euclid preparation. XCII. Controlling angular systematics in the Euclid spectroscopic galaxy sample

We present the strategy used to identify and mitigate potential sources of angular systematics in the \textit{Euclid} spectroscopic galaxy survey, and we quantify their impact on galaxy clustering measurements and cosmological parameter estimation. We first surveyed the \textit{Euclid} processing pipeline to identify all evident, potential sources of systematics, and classified them into two broad classes: angular systematics, which modulate the galaxy number density across the sky, and catastrophic redshift errors, which lead to interlopers in the galaxy sample. We then used simulated spectroscopic surveys to test our ability to mitigate angular systematics by constructing a random catalogue that represents the `visibility mask' of the survey; this is a dense set of intrinsically unclustered objects, subject to the same selection effects as the data catalogue. The construction of this random catalogue relies on a detection model, which gives the probability of reliably measuring the galaxy redshift as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of its emission lines. We demonstrate that, in the ideal case of a perfect knowledge of the visibility mask, the galaxy power spectrum in the presence of systematics is recovered, to within sub-per cent accuracy, by convolving a theory power spectrum with a window function obtained from the random catalogue itself. In the case of only approximate knowledge of the visibility mask, we test the stability of power spectrum measurements and cosmological parameter posteriors by using perturbed versions of the random catalogue. We find that significant effects are limited to very large scales, and parameter estimation remains robust; the most impacting effects are connected to the calibration of the detection model.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Euclid preparation. Simulating thousands of Euclid spectroscopic skies

We present two extensive sets of 3500+1000 simulations of dark matter haloes on the past light cone, and two corresponding sets of simulated (`mock') galaxy catalogues that represent the Euclid spectroscopic sample. The simulations were produced with the latest version of the PINOCCHIO code, and provide the largest, public set of simulated skies. Mock galaxy catalogues were obtained by populating haloes with galaxies using an halo occupation distribution (HOD) model extracted from the Flagship galaxy catalogue provided by Euclid Collaboration. The Geppetto set of 3500 simulated skies was obtained by tiling a 1.2 Gpc/h box to cover a light-cone whose sky footprint is a circle of 30 deg radius, for an area of 2763 deg$^2$ and a minimum halo mass of $1.5\times10^{11}$ Msun/h. The relatively small box size makes this set unfit for measuring very large scales. The EuclidLargeBox set consists of 1000 simulations of 3.38 Gpc/h, with the same mass resolution and a footprint that covers half of the sky, excluding the Milky Way zone of avoidance. From this we produced a set of 1000 EuclidLargeMocks on the 30 deg radius footprint, whose comoving volume is fully contained in the simulation box. We validated the two sets of catalogues by analysing number densities, power spectra, and 2-point correlation functions, showing that the Flagship spectroscopic catalogue is consistent with being one of the realisations of the simulated sets, although we noticed small deviations limited to the quadrupole at k>0.2 h/Mpc. We show cosmological parameter inference from these catalogues and demonstrate that using one realisation of EuclidLargeMocks in place of the Flagship mock produces the same posteriors, to within the expected shift given by sample variance. These simulated skies will be used for the galaxy clustering analysis of Euclid's Data Release 1 (DR1).

astro-ph.CO↗