arXiv subjects

Matthias Bartelmann

Publications and source records attributed to Matthias Bartelmann.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Asymptotic Expansion of Laplace-Fourier-Type Integrals

We study the asymptotic behaviour of integrals of the Laplace-Fourier type $P(k) = \int_Ω\mathrm{e}^{-|k|^sf(x)}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i} kx}\mathrm{d} x\;, $ with $k\in\mathbb{R}^d$ in $d\ge1$ dimensions, with $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^d$ and sufficiently well-behaved functions $f:Ω\to\mathbb{R}$. Our main result is $ P(k) \sim \frac{\mathrm{e}^{-|k|^sf(0)}}{|k|^{sd/2}}\sqrt{\frac{(2π)^d}{\det A}} \exp\left(-\frac{k^\top A^{-1}k}{2|k|^s}\right) $ for $|k|\to\infty$, where $A$ is the Hessian matrix of the function $f$ at its critical point, assumed to be at $x_0 = 0$. In one dimension, the Hessian is replaced by the second derivative, $A = f''(0)$. We also show that the integration domain $Ω$ can be extended to $\mathbb{R}^d$ without changing the asymptotic behaviour.

math.CA↗

arXiv2020

Kinetic field theory: Non-linear cosmic power spectra in the mean-field approximation

We use the recently developed Kinetic Field Theory (KFT) for cosmic structure formation to show how non-linear power spectra for cosmic density fluctuations can be calculated in a mean-field approximation to the particle interactions. Our main result is a simple, closed and analytic, approximate expression for this power spectrum. This expression has two parameters characterising non-linear structure growth which can be calibrated within KFT itself. Using this self-calibration, the non-linear power spectrum agrees with results obtained from numerical simulations to within typically $\lesssim10\,\%$ up to wave numbers $k\lesssim10\,h\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ at redshift $z = 0$. Adjusting the two parameters to optimise agreement with numerical simulations, the relative difference to numerical results shrinks to typically $\lesssim 5\,\%$. As part of the derivation of our mean-field approximation, we show that the effective interaction potential between dark-matter particles relative to Zel'dovich trajectories is sourced by non-linear cosmic density fluctuations only, and is approximately of Yukawa rather than Newtonian shape.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Resummed Kinetic Field Theory: a model of coupled baryonic and dark matter

We present a new analytical description of cosmic structure formation in a mixture of dark and baryonic matter, using the framework of Kinetic Field Theory (KFT) -- a statistical field theory for classical particle dynamics. So far, KFT has only been able to describe a single type of particles, sufficient to consider structure growth due to the gravitational interactions between dark matter. However, the influence of baryonic gas dynamics becomes increasingly relevant when describing smaller scales. In this paper, we thus demonstrate how to extend the KFT formalism as well as a previously presented resummation scheme towards describing such mixtures of two particle species. Thereby, the gas dynamics of baryons are accounted for using the recently developed model of Mesoscopic Particle Hydrodynamics. Assuming a flat $Λ$CDM Universe and a simplified model for the thermal gas evolution, we demonstrate the validity of this approach by computing the linear evolution of the individual and total matter power spectra between the epoch of recombination and today. Our results correctly reproduce the expected behaviour, showing a suppression of both baryonic and dark matter structure growth on scales smaller than the baryonic Jeans length, in good agreement with results from the numerical Boltzmann solver CLASS. Nonlinear corrections within this approach will be investigated in upcoming works.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Model Independent Analysis of Supernova Data, Dark Energy, Trans-Planckian Censorship and the Swampland

In this Letter, we consider the model-independent reconstruction of the expansion and growth functions from the Pantheon supernova data. The method relies on developing the expansion function in terms of shifted Chebyshev polynomials and determining the coefficients of the polynomials by a maximum-likelihood fit to the data. Having obtained the expansion function in a model-independent way, we can then also determine the growth function without assuming a particular model. We then compare the results with the predictions of two classes of Dark Energy models, firstly a class of quintessence scalar field models consistent with the trans-Planckian censorship and swampland conjectures, and secondly a class of generalized Proca vector field models. We determine constraints on the parameters which appear in these models.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Analytic Derivation of the Halo Mass Function from the Non-Linear Cosmic Density Field

We estimate the halo mass function (HMF) by applying the excursion set approach to the non-linear cosmic density field. Thereby, we account for the non-Gaussianity of today's density distribution and constrain the HMF independent of the linear collapse threshold $δ_{\textrm{crit}}$. We consider a spherical region as a halo, if its density today exceeds the virial overdensity threshold $Δ$. We model the probability distribution of the non-linear density field by a superposition of a Gaussian and a lognormal distribution, which we constrain with the bispectrum of density fluctuations, predicted by the kinetic field theory description of cosmic structure formation. Two different excursion set approaches are compared. The first treats the density $δ$ as an uncorrelated random walk of the smoothing scale $R$. The second assumes $δ(R)$ to be correlated. We find that the resulting HMFs correspond well to the HMF found in numerical simulations if the correlation of $δ(R)$ is taken into account. Furthermore, the HMF depends only weakly on the choice of the density threshold $Δ$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Model-Independent Determination of the Cosmic Growth Factor

Since the discovery of the accelerated cosmic expansion, one of the most important tasks in observational cosmology is to determine the nature of the dark energy. We should build our understanding on a minimum of assumptions in order to avoid biases from assumed cosmological models. The two most important functions describing the evolution of the universe and its structures are the expansion function E(a) and the linear growth factor D_+(a). The expansion function has been determined in previous papers in a model-independent way using distance moduli to type-Ia supernovae and assuming only a metric theory of gravity, spatial isotropy and homogeneity. Here, we extend this analysis in three ways: (1) We extend the data sample by combining the Pantheon measurements of type-Ia supernovae with measurements of baryonic acoustic oscillations; (2) we substantially simplify and generalise our method for reconstructing the expansion function; and (3) we use the reconstructed expansion function to determine the linear growth factor of cosmic structures, equally independent of specific assumptions on an underlying cosmological model other than the usual spatial symmetries. We show that the result is quite insensitive to the initial conditions for solving the growth equation, leaving the present-day matter-density parameter Ω_m0 as the only relevant parameter for an otherwise purely empirical and accurate determination of the growth factor.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Kinetic Field Theory applied to Vector-Tensor Gravity

The formation of cosmic structures is an important diagnostic for both the dynamics of the cosmological model and the underlying theory of gravity. At the linear level of these structures, certain degeneracies remain between different cosmological models and alternative gravity theories. It is thus indispensable to study the non-linear, late-time evolution of cosmic structures to try and disentangle their fundamental properties caused by the cosmological model or gravity theory itself. Conventionally, non-linear cosmic structure formation is studied by means of computationally expensive numerical simulations. Since these inevitably suffer from shot noise and are too time consuming to systematically scrutinize large parameter spaces of cosmological models or fundamental theories, analytical methods are needed to overcome the limitations of numerical simulations. Recently, a new analytic approach to non-linear cosmic structure formation has been proposed based on kinetic field theory for classical particle ensembles. Within this theory, a closed, analytic, non-perturbative and parameter-free equation could be derived for the non-linear power spectrum of cosmic density perturbations which agrees very well with numerically simulated results to wave numbers $k\lesssim10\,h\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ at redshift $z = 0$. In this Letter, we study for the first time the implications of alternative gravity theories for non-linear cosmic structure formation applying this promising new analytic framework. As an illustrative example, we consider vector-tensor theories, which support very interesting isotropic cosmological solutions.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Horndeski in the Swampland

We investigate the implications of string Swampland criteria for alternative theories of gravity. Even though this has not rigorously been proven, there is some evidence that exact de-Sitter solutions with a positive cosmological constant cannot be successfully embedded into string theory, and that the low energy effective field theories containing a scalar field $π$ with a potential $V$ in the habitable landscape should satisfy the Swampland criteria $|V'|/V\ge c\sim\mathcal{O}(1)$. As a paradigmatic class of modified gravity theories for inflation and dark energy, we consider the extensively studied family of Horndeski Lagrangians in view of cosmological observations. Apart from a possible potential term, they contain derivative self-interactions as the Galileon and non-minimal couplings to the gravity sector. Hence, our conclusions on the Galileon sector can be also applied to many other alternative theories with scalar helicity modes containing derivative interactions such as massive gravity and generalized Proca. In the presence of such derivative terms, the dynamics of the scalar mode is substantially modified, and imposing the cosmological evolution constrained by observations places tight constraints on $c$ within the Swampland conjecture.

hep-th↗

arXiv2019

Joint cluster reconstructions: Combining free-form lensing and X-rays

Galaxy clusters provide a multitude of observational data across wavelengths and their structure and morphology are of considerable interest in cosmology as well as astrophysics. We develop a framework that allows the combination of lensing and non-lensing observations in a free-form and mesh-free approach to infer the projected mass distribution of individual galaxy clusters. This method can be used to test common assumptions on the morphology of clusters in parametric models. We make use of the lensing reconstruction code SaWLens2 and expand its capabilities by incorporating an estimate of the projected gravitational potential based on X-ray data that are deprojected using the local Richardson-Lucy method and used to infer the Newtonian potential of the cluster and we discuss how potentially arising numerical artefacts can be treated. We demonstrate the feasibility of our method on a simplified mock NFW halo and on a cluster from a realistic hydrodynamical simulation and show how the combination of X-ray and weak lensing data can affect a free-form reconstruction, improving the accuracy in the central region in some cases by a factor of two.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Resummed Kinetic Field Theory: Using Mesoscopic Particle Hydrodynamics to Describe Baryonic Matter in a Cosmological Framework

Recently, Bartelmann et al. presented a 'Kinetic Field Theory' (KFT) formalism to tackle the difficulties of large scale structure formation. In this approach, the dynamics of a non-equilibrium ensemble of classical particles are examined based on methods of statistical field theory. So far, only contributions coming from dark matter were considered, which is assumed to pose an accurate description of our universe on very large scales. Nevertheless, going to smaller scales, also baryonic contributions have to be taken into account. Building on the ideas of Viermann et al. we present an effective particle model of hydrodynamics to describe baryonic matter in a cosmological framework. Using this model, the baryonic density contrast power spectrum is computed to lowest perturbative order within the resummed KFT framework of Lilow et al. We discuss the qualitative differences to the dark matter case and perform a quantitative comparison to the baryonic spectrum obtained from Eulerian perturbation theory. A subsequent paper will resolve the problem of coupling both theories describing dark and baryonic matter, respectively, to gain a full model of cosmic matter. Even though our focus is on cosmological systems only, we want to emphasize that all methods presented here are of a quite general fashion, making it applicable also to other fields.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Cosmic Structure Formation with Kinetic Field Theory

Kinetic Field Theory (KFT) is a statistical field theory for an ensemble of point-like classical particles in or out of equilibrium. We review its application to cosmological structure formation. Beginning with the construction of the generating functional of the theory, we describe in detail how the theory needs to be adapted to reflect the expanding spatial background and the homogeneous and isotropic, correlated initial conditions for cosmic structures. Based on the generating functional, we develop three main approaches to non-linear, late-time cosmic structures, which rest either on the Taylor expansion of an interaction operator, suitable averaging procedures for the interaction term, or a resummation of perturbation terms. We show how an analytic, parameter-free equation for the non-linear cosmic power spectrum can be derived. We explain how the theory can be used to derive the density profile of gravitationally bound structures and use it to derive power spectra of cosmic velocity densities. We further clarify how KFT relates to the BBGKY hierarchy. We then proceed to apply kinetic field theory to fluids, introduce a reformulation of KFT in terms of macroscopic quantities which leads to a resummation scheme, and use this to describe mixtures of gas and dark matter. We discuss how KFT can be applied to study cosmic structure formation with modified theories of gravity. As an example for an application to a non-cosmological particle ensemble, we show results on the spatial correlation function of cold Rydberg atoms derived from KFT.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Resummed Kinetic Field Theory: general formalism and linear structure growth from Newtonian particle dynamics

In earlier work, we have developed a nonequilibrium statistical field theory description of cosmic structure formation, dubbed Kinetic Field Theory (KFT), which is based on the Hamiltonian phase-space dynamics of classical particles and thus remains valid beyond shell-crossing. Here, we present an exact reformulation of the KFT framework that allows to resum an infinite subset of terms appearing in the original perturbative expansion of KFT. We develop the general formalism of this resummed KFT, including a diagrammatic language for the resummed perturbation theory, and compute the lowest-order results for the power spectra of the dark matter density contrast and momentum density. This allows us to derive analytically how the linear growth of the largest structures emerges from Newtonian particle dynamics alone, which, to our knowledge, is the first time this has been achieved.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Long Range Effects in Gravity Theories with Vainshtein Screening

In this paper we study long range modifications of gravity in the consistent framework of bigravity, which introduces a second massive spin-2 field and allows to continuously interpolate between the regime of General Relativity (mediated by a massless spin-2 field) and massive gravity (mediated by a massive spin-2 field). In particular we derive for the first time the equations for light deflection in this framework and study the effect on the lensing potential of galaxy clusters. By comparison of kinematic and lensing mass reconstructions, stringent bounds can be set on the parameter space of the new spin-2 fields. Furthermore, we investigate galactic rotation curves and the effect on the observable dark matter abundance within this framework.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Dark Energy in the Swampland II

In this recent Letter [1], we studied the implications of string Swampland conjectures for quintessence models of dark energy. A couple of days ago, a paper appeared [2] which refers to our work but misrepresents what we have done. Here, we set the record straight.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Dark Energy in the Swampland

In this Letter, we study the implications of string Swampland criteria for dark energy in view of ongoing and future cosmological observations. If string theory should be the ultimate quantum gravity theory, there is evidence that exact de Sitter solutions with a positive cosmological constant cannot describe the fate of the late-time universe. Even though cosmological models with dark energy given by a scalar field $π$ evolving in time are not in direct tension with string theory, they have to satisfy the Swampland criteria $|Δπ| c\sim\mathcal{O}(1)$, where $V$ is the scalar field potential. In view of the restrictive implications that the Swampland criteria have on dark energy, we investigate the accuracy needed for future observations to tightly constrain standard dark-energy models. We find that current 3-$σ$ constraints with $c \lesssim 1.35$ are still well in agreement with the string Swampland criteria. However, Stage-4 surveys such as Euclid, LSST and DESI, tightly constraining the equation of state $w(z)$, will start putting surviving quintessence models into tensions with the string Swampland criteria by demanding $c<0.4$. We further investigate whether any idealised futuristic survey will ever be able to give a decisive answer to the question whether the cosmological constant would be preferred over a time-evolving dark-energy model within the Swampland criteria. Hypothetical surveys with a reduction in the uncertainties by a factor of $\sim20$ compared to Euclid would be necessary to reveal strong tension between quintessence models obeying the string Swampland criteria and observations by pushing the allowed values down to $c<0.1$. In view of such perspectives, there will be fundamental observational limitations with future surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Kinetic Field Theory: Cosmic Structure Formation and Fluctuation-Dissipation Relations

Building upon the recently developed formalism of Kinetic Field Theory (KFT) for cosmic structure formation by Bartelmann et al., we investigate a kinematic relationship between diffusion and gravitational interactions in cosmic structure formation. In the first part of this work we explain how the process of structure formation in KFT can be separated into three processes, particle diffusion, the accumulation of structure due to initial momentum correlations and interactions relative to the inertial motion of particles. We study these processes by examining the time derivative of the non-linear density power spectrum in the Born approximation. We observe that diffusion and accumulation are delicately balanced because of the Gaussian form of the initial conditions, and that the net diffusion, resulting from adding these two counteracting contributions, approaches the contributions from the interactions in amplitude over time. This hints at a kinematic relation between diffusion and interactions in KFT. Indeed, in the second part, we show that the response of the system to arbitrary gradient forces is directly related to the evolution of particle diffusion in the form of kinematic fluctuation-dissipation relations (FDRs). This result is independent of the interaction potential. We show that this relationship roots in a time-reversal symmetry of the underlying generating functional. Furthermore, our studies demonstrate how FDRs originating from purely kinematic arguments can be used in theories far from equilibrium.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

On the implementation of the spherical collapse model for dark energy models

In this work we review the theory of the spherical collapse model and critically analyse the aspects of the numerical implementation of its fundamental equations. By extending a recent work by Herrera et al. 2017, we show how different aspects, such as the initial integration time, the definition of constant infinity and the criterion for the extrapolation method (how close the inverse of the overdensity has to be to zero at the collapse time) can lead to an erroneous estimation (a few per mill error which translates to a few percent in the mass function) of the key quantity in the spherical collapse model: the linear critical overdensity $δ_{\rm c}$, which plays a crucial role for the mass function of halos. We provide a better recipe to adopt in designing a code suitable to a generic smooth dark energy model and we compare our numerical results with analytic predictions for the EdS and the $Λ$CDM models. We further discuss the evolution of $δ_{\rm c}$ for selected classes of dark energy models as a general test of the robustness of our implementation. We finally outline which modifications need to be taken into account to extend the code to more general classes of models, such as clustering dark energy models and non-minimally coupled models.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Analytic calculation of the non-linear cosmic density-fluctuation power spectrum in the Born approximation

We derive a non-perturbative, closed, analytic equation for the non-linear power spectrum of cosmic density fluctuations. This result is based on our kinetic field theory (KFT) of cosmic structure formation and on evaluating particle interactions in the Born approximation. At redshift zero, relative deviations between our analytic result and typical numerical results are ~ 15 % on average up to wave numbers of k <= 10 h/Mpc. The theory underlying our analytic equation is fully specified once the statistical properties of the initial density and momentum fluctuations are set. It has no further adjustable parameters. Apart from this equation, our main result is that the characteristic non-linear deformations of the power spectrum at late cosmic times are determined by the initial momentum correlations and a partial compensation between diffusion damping and particle interactions.

astro-ph.CO↗