arXiv subjects

M. Jarvis

Publications and source records attributed to M. Jarvis.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Supernova rates from the SUDARE VST-Omegacam search. I

We describe the observing strategy, data reduction tools and early results of a supernova (SN) search project, named SUDARE, conducted with the ESO VST telescope aimed at measuring the rate of the different types of SNe in the redshift range 0.2<z<0.8. The search was performed in two of the best-studied extragalactic fields, CDFS and COSMOS, for which a wealth of ancillary data are available in the literature or public archives. (abridged) We obtained a final sample of 117 SNe, most of which are SNIa (57%) and the remaining core collapse events of which 44% type II, 22% type IIn and 34% type Ib/c. In order to link the transients, we built a catalog of ~1.3x10^5 galaxies in the redshift range 0<z<1 with a limiting magnitude K_AB=23.5 mag. We measured the SN rate per unit volume for SN Ia and core collapse SNe in different bin of redshifts. The values are consistent with other measurements from the literature. The dispersion of the rate measurements for SNe Ia is comparable with the scatter of the theoretical tracks for single (SD) and double degenerate (DD) binary systems models, therefore the data do not allow to disentangle among the two different progenitor scenarios. However, we may notice that among the three tested models, SD and two flavours of DD, either with a steep (DDC) or a wide (DDW) delay time distribution, the SD gives a better fit across the whole redshift range whereas the DDC better matches the steep rise up to redshift ~1.2. The DDW appears instead less favoured. The core collapse SN rate is fully consistent, unlike recent claims, with the prediction based on recent estimates of the star formation history, and standard progenitor mass range.

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arXiv2017

Galaxy bias from galaxy-galaxy lensing in the DES Science Verification Data

We present a measurement of galaxy-galaxy lensing around a magnitude-limited ($i_{AB} < 22.5$) sample of galaxies from the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification (DES-SV) data. We split these lenses into three photometric-redshift bins from 0.2 to 0.8, and determine the product of the galaxy bias $b$ and cross-correlation coefficient between the galaxy and dark matter overdensity fields $r$ in each bin, using scales above 4 Mpc/$h$ comoving, where we find the linear bias model to be valid given our current uncertainties. We compare our galaxy bias results from galaxy-galaxy lensing with those obtained from galaxy clustering (Crocce et al. 2016) and CMB lensing (Giannantonio et al. 2016) for the same sample of galaxies, and find our measurements to be in good agreement with those in Crocce et al. (2016), while, in the lowest redshift bin ($z\sim0.3$), they show some tension with the findings in Giannantonio et al. (2016). We measure $b\cdot r$ to be $0.87\pm 0.11$, $1.12 \pm 0.16$ and $1.24\pm 0.23$, respectively for the three redshift bins of width $Δz = 0.2$ in the range $0.2<z <0.8$, defined with the photometric-redshift algorithm BPZ. Using a different code to split the lens sample, TPZ, leads to changes in the measured biases at the 10-20\% level, but it does not alter the main conclusion of this work: when comparing with Crocce et al. (2016) we do not find strong evidence for a cross-correlation parameter significantly below one in this galaxy sample, except possibly at the lowest redshift bin ($z\sim 0.3$), where we find $r = 0.71 \pm 0.11$ when using TPZ, and $0.83 \pm 0.12$ with BPZ.

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arXiv2017

Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Cross-Correlation Redshifts - Methods and Systematics Characterization

We use numerical simulations to characterize the performance of a clustering-based method to calibrate photometric redshift biases. In particular, we cross-correlate the weak lensing (WL) source galaxies from the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 (DES Y1) sample with redMaGiC galaxies (luminous red galaxies with secure photometric redshifts) to estimate the redshift distribution of the former sample. The recovered redshift distributions are used to calibrate the photometric redshift bias of standard photo-$z$ methods applied to the same source galaxy sample. We apply the method to three photo-$z$ codes run in our simulated data: Bayesian Photometric Redshift (BPZ), Directional Neighborhood Fitting (DNF), and Random Forest-based photo-$z$ (RF). We characterize the systematic uncertainties of our calibration procedure, and find that these systematic uncertainties dominate our error budget. The dominant systematics are due to our assumption of unevolving bias and clustering across each redshift bin, and to differences between the shapes of the redshift distributions derived by clustering vs photo-$z$'s. The systematic uncertainty in the mean redshift bias of the source galaxy sample is $Δz \lesssim 0.02$, though the precise value depends on the redshift bin under consideration. We discuss possible ways to mitigate the impact of our dominant systematics in future analyses.

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arXiv2017

The MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS)

Deep galaxy surveys have revealed that the global star formation rate (SFR) density in the Universe peaks at 1 < z < 2 and sharply declines towards z = 0. But a clear picture of the underlying processes, in particular the evolution of cold atomic (~100 K) and molecular gas phases, that drive such a strong evolution is yet to emerge. MALS is designed to use MeerKAT's L- and UHF-band receivers to carry out the most sensitive (N(HI)>10$^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$) dust-unbiased search of intervening HI 21-cm and OH 18-cm absorption lines at 0 < z < 2. This will provide reliable measurements of the evolution of cold atomic and molecular gas cross-sections of galaxies, and unravel the processes driving the steep evolution in the SFR density. The large sample of HI and OH absorbers obtained from the survey will (i) lead to tightest constraints on the fundamental constants of physics, and (ii) be ideally suited to probe the evolution of magnetic fields in disks of galaxies via Zeeman Splitting or Rotation Measure synthesis. The survey will also provide an unbiased census of HI and OH absorbers, i.e. cold gas associated with powerful AGNs (>10$^{24}$ W Hz$^{-1}$) at 0 < z < 2, and will simultaneously deliver a blind HI and OH emission line survey, and radio continuum survey. Here, we describe the MALS survey design, observing plan and the science issues to be addressed under various science themes.

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arXiv2017

Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: The Impact of Galaxy Neighbours on Weak Lensing Cosmology with im3shape

We use a suite of simulated images based on Year 1 of the Dark Energy Survey to explore the impact of galaxy neighbours on shape measurement and shear cosmology. The hoopoe image simulations include realistic blending, galaxy positions, and spatial variations in depth and PSF properties. Using the im3shape maximum-likelihood shape measurement code, we identify four mechanisms by which neighbours can have a non-negligible influence on shear estimation. These effects, if ignored, would contribute a net multiplicative bias of $m \sim 0.03 - 0.09$ in the DES Y1 im3shape catalogue, though the precise impact will be dependent on both the measurement code and the selection cuts applied. This can be reduced to percentage level or less by removing objects with close neighbours, at a cost to the effective number density of galaxies $n_\mathrm{eff}$ of 30%. We use the cosmological inference pipeline of DES Y1 to explore the cosmological implications of neighbour bias and show that omitting blending from the calibration simulation for DES Y1 would bias the inferred clustering amplitude $S_8\equiv σ_8 (Ω_\mathrm{m} /0.3)^{0.5}$ by $2 σ$ towards low values. Finally, we use the hoopoe simulations to test the effect of neighbour-induced spatial correlations in the multiplicative bias. We find the impact on the recovered $S_8$ of ignoring such correlations to be subdominant to statistical error at the current level of precision.

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arXiv2017

The XXL survey: first results and future

The XXL survey currently covers two 25 sq. deg. patches with XMM observations of ~10ks. We summarise the scientific results associated with the first release of the XXL data set, that occurred mid 2016. We review several arguments for increasing the survey depth to 40 ks during the next decade of XMM operations. X-ray (z<2) cluster, (z<4) AGN and cosmic background survey science will then benefit from an extraordinary data reservoir. This, combined with deep multi-$λ$ observations, will lead to solid standalone cosmological constraints and provide a wealth of information on the formation and evolution of AGN, clusters and the X-ray background. In particular, it will offer a unique opportunity to pinpoint the z>1 cluster density. It will eventually constitute a reference study and an ideal calibration field for the upcoming eROSITA and Euclid missions.

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arXiv2017

Cosmology from Cosmic Shear with DES Science Verification Data

We present the first constraints on cosmology from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), using weak lensing measurements from the preliminary Science Verification (SV) data. We use 139 square degrees of SV data, which is less than 3\% of the full DES survey area. Using cosmic shear 2-point measurements over three redshift bins we find $σ_8 (Ω_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.5} = 0.81 \pm 0.06$ (68\% confidence), after marginalising over 7 systematics parameters and 3 other cosmological parameters. We examine the robustness of our results to the choice of data vector and systematics assumed, and find them to be stable. About $20$\% of our error bar comes from marginalising over shear and photometric redshift calibration uncertainties. The current state-of-the-art cosmic shear measurements from CFHTLenS are mildly discrepant with the cosmological constraints from Planck CMB data; our results are consistent with both datasets. Our uncertainties are $\sim$30\% larger than those from CFHTLenS when we carry out a comparable analysis of the two datasets, which we attribute largely to the lower number density of our shear catalogue. We investigate constraints on dark energy and find that, with this small fraction of the full survey, the DES SV constraints make negligible impact on the Planck constraints. The moderate disagreement between the CFHTLenS and Planck values of $σ_8 (Ω_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.5}$ is present regardless of the value of $w$.

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arXiv2017

Weak-lensing mass calibration of redMaPPer galaxy clusters in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data

We use weak-lensing shear measurements to determine the mean mass of optically selected galaxy clusters in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data. In a blinded analysis, we split the sample of more than 8,000 redMaPPer clusters into 15 subsets, spanning ranges in the richness parameter $5 \leq λ\leq 180$ and redshift $0.2 \leq z \leq 0.8$, and fit the averaged mass density contrast profiles with a model that accounts for seven distinct sources of systematic uncertainty: shear measurement and photometric redshift errors; cluster-member contamination; miscentering; deviations from the NFW halo profile; halo triaxiality; and line-of-sight projections. We combine the inferred cluster masses to estimate the joint scaling relation between mass, richness and redshift, $\mathcal{M}(λ,z) \varpropto M_0 λ^{F} (1+z)^{G}$. We find $M_0 \equiv \langle M_{200\mathrm{m}}\,|\,λ=30,z=0.5\rangle=\left[ 2.35 \pm 0.22\ \rm{(stat)} \pm 0.12\ \rm{(sys)} \right] \cdot 10^{14}\ M_\odot$, with $F = 1.12\,\pm\,0.20\ \rm{(stat)}\, \pm\, 0.06\ \rm{(sys)}$ and $G = 0.18\,\pm\, 0.75\ \rm{(stat)}\, \pm\, 0.24\ \rm{(sys)}$. The amplitude of the mass-richness relation is in excellent agreement with the weak-lensing calibration of redMaPPer clusters in SDSS by Simet et al. (2016) and with the Saro et al. (2015) calibration based on abundance matching of SPT-detected clusters. Our results extend the redshift range over which the mass-richness relation of redMaPPer clusters has been calibrated with weak lensing from $z\leq 0.3$ to $z\leq0.8$. Calibration uncertainties of shear measurements and photometric redshift estimates dominate our systematic error budget and require substantial improvements for forthcoming studies.

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arXiv2017

Galaxy And Mass Assembly: The 1.4GHz SFR indicator, SFR-M* relation and predictions for ASKAP-GAMA

We present a robust calibration of the 1.4GHz radio continuum star formation rate (SFR) using a combination of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey and the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST) survey. We identify individually detected 1.4GHz GAMA-FIRST sources and use a late-type, non-AGN, volume-limited sample from GAMA to produce stellar mass-selected samples. The latter are then combined to produce FIRST-stacked images. This extends the robust parametrisation of the 1.4GHz-SFR relation to faint luminosities. For both the individually detected galaxies and our stacked samples, we compare 1.4GHz luminosity to SFRs derived from GAMA to determine a new 1.4GHz luminosity-to-SFR relation with well constrained slope and normalisation. For the first time, we produce the radio SFR-M* relation over 2 decades in stellar mass, and find that our new calibration is robust, and produces a SFR-M* relation which is consistent with all other GAMA SFR methods. Finally, using our new 1.4GHz luminosity-to-SFR calibration we make predictions for the number of star-forming GAMA sources which are likely to be detected in the upcoming ASKAP surveys, EMU and DINGO.

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arXiv2016

Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing in the DES Science Verification Data

We present galaxy-galaxy lensing results from 139 square degrees of Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data. Our lens sample consists of red galaxies, known as redMaGiC, which are specifically selected to have a low photometric redshift error and outlier rate. The lensing measurement has a total signal-to-noise of 29 over scales $0.09 < R < 15$ Mpc/$h$, including all lenses over a wide redshift range $0.2 < z < 0.8$. Dividing the lenses into three redshift bins for this constant moving number density sample, we find no evidence for evolution in the halo mass with redshift. We obtain consistent results for the lensing measurement with two independent shear pipelines, ngmix and im3shape. We perform a number of null tests on the shear and photometric redshift catalogs and quantify resulting systematic uncertainties. Covariances from jackknife subsamples of the data are validated with a suite of 50 mock surveys. The results and systematics checks in this work provide a critical input for future cosmological and galaxy evolution studies with the DES data and redMaGiC galaxy samples. We fit a Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) model, and demonstrate that our data constrains the mean halo mass of the lens galaxies, despite strong degeneracies between individual HOD parameters.

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arXiv2016

Cosmic Voids and Void Lensing in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification Data

Galaxies and their dark matter halos populate a complicated filamentary network around large, nearly empty regions known as cosmic voids. Cosmic voids are usually identified in spectroscopic galaxy surveys, where 3D information about the large-scale structure of the Universe is available. Although an increasing amount of photometric data is being produced, its potential for void studies is limited since photometric redshifts induce line-of-sight position errors of $\sim50$ Mpc/$h$ or more that can render many voids undetectable. In this paper we present a new void finder designed for photometric surveys, validate it using simulations, and apply it to the high-quality photo-$z$ redMaGiC galaxy sample of the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification (DES-SV) data. The algorithm works by projecting galaxies into 2D slices and finding voids in the smoothed 2D galaxy density field of the slice. Fixing the line-of-sight size of the slices to be at least twice the photo-$z$ scatter, the number of voids found in these projected slices of simulated spectroscopic and photometric galaxy catalogs is within 20% for all transverse void sizes, and indistinguishable for the largest voids of radius $\sim 70$ Mpc/$h$ and larger. The positions, radii, and projected galaxy profiles of photometric voids also accurately match the spectroscopic void sample. Applying the algorithm to the DES-SV data in the redshift range $0.2<z<0.8$, we identify 87 voids with comoving radii spanning the range 18-120 Mpc/$h$, and carry out a stacked weak lensing measurement. With a significance of $4.4σ$, the lensing measurement confirms the voids are truly underdense in the matter field and hence not a product of Poisson noise, tracer density effects or systematics in the data. It also demonstrates, for the first time in real data, the viability of void lensing studies in photometric surveys.

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arXiv2016

Supernova rates from the SUDARE VST-Omegacam search II. Rates in a galaxy sample

This is the second paper of a series in which we present measurements of the Supernova (SN) rates from the SUDARE survey. In this paper, we study the trend of the SN rates with the intrinsic colours, the star formation activity and the mass of the parent galaxies. We have considered a sample of about 130000 galaxies and a SN sample of about 50 events. We found that the SN Ia rate per unit mass is higher by a factor of six in the star-forming galaxies with respect to the passive galaxies. The SN Ia rate per unit mass is also higher in the less massive galaxies that are also younger. These results suggest a distribution of the delay times (DTD) less populated at long delay times than at short delays. The CC SN rate per unit mass is proportional to both the sSFR and the galaxy mass. The trends of the Type Ia and CC SN rates as a function of the sSFR and the galaxy mass that we observed from SUDARE data are in agreement with literature results at different redshifts. The expected number of SNe Ia is in agreement with the observed one for all four DTD models considered both in passive and star-forming galaxies so we can not discriminate between different progenitor scenarios. The expected number of CC SNe is higher than the observed one, suggesting a higher limit for the minimum progenitor mass. We also compare the expected and observed trends of the SN Ia rate with the intrinsic U - J colour of the parent galaxy, assumed as a tracer of the age distribution. While the slope of the relation between the SN Ia rate and the U - J color in star-forming galaxies can be reproduced well by all four DTD models considered, only the steepest of them is able to account for the rates and colour in star-forming and passive galaxies with the same value of the SN Ia production efficiency.

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arXiv2016

Cosmology with AGN dust time lags -- Simulating the new VEILS survey

The time lag between optical and near-infrared continuum emission in active galactic nuclei (AGN) shows a tight correlation with luminosity and has been proposed as a standardisable candle for cosmology. In this paper, we explore the use of these AGN hot-dust time lags for cosmological model fitting under the constraints of the new VISTA Extragalactic Infrared Legacy Survey VEILS. This new survey will target a 9 deg^2 field observed in J- and Ks-band with a 14-day cadence and will run for three years. The same area will be covered simultaneously in the optical griz bands by the Dark Energy Survey, providing complementary time-domain optical data. We perform realistic simulations of the survey setup, showing that we expect to recover dust time lags for about 450 objects out of a total of 1350 optical type 1 AGN, spanning a redshift range of 0.1 < z < 1.2. We use the lags recovered from our simulations to calculate precise distance moduli, establish a Hubble diagram, and fit cosmological models. Assuming realistic scatter in the distribution of the dust around the AGN as well as in the normalisation of the lag-luminosity relation, we are able to constrain Ω_Λ in ΛCDM with similar accuracy as current supernova samples. We discuss the benefits of combining AGN and supernovae for cosmology and connect the present work to future attempts to reach out to redshifts of z > 4.

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arXiv2016

Inference from the small scales of cosmic shear with current and future Dark Energy Survey data

Cosmic shear is sensitive to fluctuations in the cosmological matter density field, including on small physical scales, where matter clustering is affected by baryonic physics in galaxies and galaxy clusters, such as star formation, supernovae feedback and AGN feedback. While muddying any cosmological information that is contained in small scale cosmic shear measurements, this does mean that cosmic shear has the potential to constrain baryonic physics and galaxy formation. We perform an analysis of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) cosmic shear measurements, now extended to smaller scales, and using the Mead et al. 2015 halo model to account for baryonic feedback. While the SV data has limited statistical power, we demonstrate using a simulated likelihood analysis that the final DES data will have the statistical power to differentiate among baryonic feedback scenarios. We also explore some of the difficulties in interpreting the small scales in cosmic shear measurements, presenting estimates of the size of several other systematic effects that make inference from small scales difficult, including uncertainty in the modelling of intrinsic alignment on nonlinear scales, `lensing bias', and shape measurement selection effects. For the latter two, we make use of novel image simulations. While future cosmic shear datasets have the statistical power to constrain baryonic feedback scenarios, there are several systematic effects that require improved treatments, in order to make robust conclusions about baryonic feedback.

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arXiv2016

Cosmic Shear Measurements with DES Science Verification Data

We present measurements of weak gravitational lensing cosmic shear two-point statistics using Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data. We demonstrate that our results are robust to the choice of shear measurement pipeline, either ngmix or im3shape, and robust to the choice of two-point statistic, including both real and Fourier-space statistics. Our results pass a suite of null tests including tests for B-mode contamination and direct tests for any dependence of the two-point functions on a set of 16 observing conditions and galaxy properties, such as seeing, airmass, galaxy color, galaxy magnitude, etc. We furthermore use a large suite of simulations to compute the covariance matrix of the cosmic shear measurements and assign statistical significance to our null tests. We find that our covariance matrix is consistent with the halo model prediction, indicating that it has the appropriate level of halo sample variance. We compare the same jackknife procedure applied to the data and the simulations in order to search for additional sources of noise not captured by the simulations. We find no statistically significant extra sources of noise in the data. The overall detection significance with tomography for our highest source density catalog is 9.7sigma. Cosmological constraints from the measurements in this work are presented in a companion paper (DES et al. 2015).

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arXiv2016

The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: 850um maps, catalogues and number counts

We present a catalogue of nearly 3,000 submillimetre sources detected at 850um over ~5 square degrees surveyed as part of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey (S2CLS). This is the largest survey of its kind at 850um, probing a meaningful cosmic volume at the peak of star formation activity and increasing the sample size of submillimetre galaxies selected at 850um by an order of magnitude. We describe the wide 850um survey component of S2CLS, which covers the key extragalactic survey fields: UKIDSS-UDS, COSMOS, Akari-NEP, Extended Groth Strip, Lockman Hole North, SSA22 and GOODS-North. The average 1-sigma depth of S2CLS is 1.2 mJy/beam, approaching the SCUBA-2 850um confusion limit, which we determine to be ~0.8 mJy/beam. We measure the single dish 850um number counts to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the Poisson errors on the differential counts to approximately 4% at S_850~3mJy. With several independent fields, we investigate field-to-field variance, finding that the number counts on 0.5-1 degree scales are generally within 50% of the S2CLS mean for S_850>3mJy, with scatter consistent with the Poisson and estimated cosmic variance uncertainties, although there is a marginal (2-sigma) density enhancement in the GOODS-North field. The observed number counts are in reasonable agreement with recent phenomenological and semi-analytic models. Finally, the large solid angle of S2CLS allows us to measure the bright-end counts: at S_850>10mJy there are approximately ten sources per square degree, and we detect the distinctive up-turn in the number counts indicative of the detection of local sources of 850um emission and strongly lensed high-redshift galaxies. Here we describe the data collection and reduction procedures and present calibrated maps and a catalogue of sources; these are made publicly available.

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arXiv2016

HELP: star formation as function of galaxy environmentwith Herschel

The Herschel Extragalactic Legacy Project (HELP) brings together a vast range of data from many astronomical observatories. Its main focus is on the Herschel data, which maps dust obscured star formation over 1300 deg$^2$. With this unprecedented combination of data sets, it is possible to investigate how the star formation vs stellar mass relation (main-sequence) of star-forming galaxies depends on environment. In this pilot study we explore this question between 0.1 < z < 3.2 using data in the COSMOS field. We estimate the local environment from a smoothed galaxy density field using the full photometric redshift probability distribution. We estimate star formation rates by stacking the SPIRE data from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES). Our analysis rules out the hypothesis that the main-sequence for star-forming systems is independent of environment at 1.5 < z < 2, while a simple model in which the mean specific star formation rate declines with increasing environmental density gives a better description. However, we cannot exclude a simple hypothesis in which the main-sequence for star-forming systems is independent of environment at z < 1.5 and z > 2. We also estimate the evolution of the star formation rate density in the COSMOS field and our results are consistent with previous measurements at z < 1.5 and z > 2 but we find a $1.4^{+0.3}_{-0.2}$ times higher peak value of the star formation rate density at $z \sim 1.9$.

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arXiv2016

Crowdsourcing quality control for Dark Energy Survey images

We have developed a crowdsourcing web application for image quality control employed by the Dark Energy Survey. Dubbed the "DES exposure checker", it renders science-grade images directly to a web browser and allows users to mark problematic features from a set of predefined classes. Users can also generate custom labels and thus help identify previously unknown problem classes. User reports are fed back to hardware and software experts to help mitigate and eliminate recognized issues. We report on the implementation of the application and our experience with its over 100 users, the majority of which are professional or prospective astronomers but not data management experts. We discuss aspects of user training and engagement, and demonstrate how problem reports have been pivotal to rapidly correct artifacts which would likely have been too subtle or infrequent to be recognized otherwise. We conclude with a number of important lessons learned, suggest possible improvements, and recommend this collective exploratory approach for future astronomical surveys or other extensive data sets with a sufficiently large user base. We also release open-source code of the web application and host an online demo version at http://des-exp-checker.pmelchior.net

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