arXiv subjects

Nastassia Grimm

Publications and source records attributed to Nastassia Grimm.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Comparing the motion of dark matter and standard model particles on cosmological scales

Since dark matter particles have never been directly detected, we do not know how they move, and in particular we do not know how they fall inside gravitational potential wells. Usually it is assumed that dark matter only interacts gravitationally with itself and with particles of the standard model, and therefore that its motion is governed by Euler's equation. In this paper, we do test this assumption directly at cosmological scales, by combining measurements of galaxy velocities with measurements of gravitational potential wells, encoded in the Weyl potential. We find that current data are consistent with Euler's equation at redshifts $z\in [0.3,0.8]$, and we place constraints on the strength of a potential fifth force, which would alter the way dark matter particles fall. We find that a positive fifth force cannot exceed 7% of the gravitational interaction strength, while a negative fifth force is limited to 21%. The coming generation of surveys, including the Legacy Survey of Space and Time of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument will drastically improve the constraints, allowing to constrain a departure from pure gravitational interaction at the level of 2%.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

cloelib: A Flexible Python Library for Computing Cosmological Observables in the Euclid Era

cloelib is a Python library developed to compute cosmological observables within the Cosmology Likelihood for Observables in Euclid (CLOE) ecosystem (cloe-org). As cosmology enters a precision era driven by galaxy survey missions such as Euclid, there is a growing need for flexible, efficient, and differentiable software capable of supporting next-generation inference pipelines. cloelib addresses these demands through a modular architecture that interfaces seamlessly with established Boltzmann solvers whilst incorporating JAX-based automatic differentiation to enable gradient-based methods. The library defines consistent protocols for background evolution, perturbations, and non-linear structure formation, and supports a wide range of observables, including photometric and spectroscopic large-scale structure probes, as well as cross-correlations with the Cosmic Microwave Background and galaxy clusters. In its finalised form, cloelib is intended to serve as the reference theory computation infrastructure for Euclid's first cosmological release, bridging traditional numerical cosmology with modern optimisation techniques and emerging machine learning approaches to inference.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

cloelike: A Python Library for Cosmological Likelihood Inference in the Euclid Era

cloelike is a Python package providing modular, composable Gaussian likelihood classes for the main cosmological large-scale structure observables targeted by the ESA Euclid space mission. It is a core component of the CLOE (Cosmology Likelihood for Observables in Euclid) ecosystem and interfaces directly with cloelib for theoretical predictions and euclidlib for reading official Euclid data products. The package implements Gaussian likelihoods covering harmonic angular power spectra and real-space two-point correlation functions for weak lensing (WL), photometric galaxy clustering (GCph), and Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing (GGL) in all joint probe combinations (3x2pt, 2x2pt), as well as spectroscopic full-shape power spectrum multipoles, and baryonic Acoustic oscillations (BAO). cloelike is actively used in internal Euclid Consortium analyses and is openly released to support community validation and reproducibility.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

The impact of evolving dark energy on the Weyl potential measured from the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 data

Measurements from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data have shown that the Weyl potential -- the sum of the spatial and temporal distortions of the geometry -- evolves more slowly than predicted by General Relativity, assuming a $Λ$CDM background evolution. An evolving dark energy with a phantom crossing, as preferred by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), is expected to decrease the depth of the gravitational potentials through a stronger acceleration than in $Λ$CDM, potentially solving the tension with General Relativity. In this paper, we show that $w_0w_a$CDM models indeed reduce the tension with respect to $Λ$CDM, down to a level of $1.6-2.2σ$, depending on the treatment of CMB lensing. This reduction is not due to an increase in the Weyl potential's uncertainties, but truly to the impact of the evolving background on the theoretical predictions in General Relativity. More data are needed to robustly determine if evolving dark energy fully explains the low value of the Weyl potential at intermediate redshifts, or if modifications of gravity or interactions in the dark sector are needed, which could simultaneously stabilize the phantom crossing indicated by DESI.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Measurement of the Weyl potential evolution from the first three years of Dark Energy Survey data

The Weyl potential, which is the sum of the spatial and temporal distortions of the Universe's geometry, provides a direct way of testing the theory of gravity and the validity of the $Λ$CDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter) model. Here we present measurement of the Weyl potential at four redshifts bins using data from the first three years of observations of the Dark Energy Survey. We find that the measured Weyl potential is 2$σ$, respectively 2.8$σ$, below the $Λ$CDM predictions in the two lowest redshift bins. We show that these low values of the Weyl potential are at the origin of the tension between Cosmic Microwave Background measurements and weak lensing measurements, regarding the parameter $σ_8$ which quantifies the clustering of matter. Interestingly, we find that the tension remains if no information from the Cosmic Microwave Background is used. Dark Energy Survey data on their own prefer a high value of the primordial fluctuations, together with a slow evolution of the Weyl potential. An important feature of our method is that the measurements of the Weyl potential are model-independent and can therefore be confronted with any theory of gravity, allowing efficient tests of models beyond General Relativity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

A novel test of gravity: Does spacetime geometry track matter density?

We propose a novel test of gravity that combines galaxy clustering with gravitational lensing. In general relativity, the evolution of matter density fluctuations and of the Weyl potential -- the sum of spatial and temporal distortions of the geometry -- are governed by the same growth function. In contrast, alternative theories of gravity that modify the relation between geometry and matter content can lead to differences in these two growths. Exploiting a recent method to directly measure the Weyl potential, we construct a null test that deviates from zero if and only if there is a mismatch between the growth rate of density and that of geometry distortions. We show that changes in the background expansion due to alternative dark energy models and additional forces in the dark matter sector induce no deviations in this test, making it a robust probe for detecting departures from general relativity. Applying the test to current data, we find no evidence of deviation. From an initial $z_*=10$ to $z\sim 0.5$, we constrain the evolution of the Weyl potential to track that of the density to within 33\%. Combining stage-IV surveys will improve the precision across a broad redshift range, limiting differences between the two evolutions to below $2-4\%$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

The impact of large-scale galaxy clustering on the variance of the Hellings-Downs correlation: numerical results

Pulsar timing array experiments have recently found evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background, which induces correlations among pulsar timing residuals described by the Hellings and Downs (HD) curve. Standard calculations of the HD correlation and its variance assume an isotropic background. However, for a background of astrophysical origin, we expect a higher GW spectral density in directions with higher galaxy number densities. In a companion paper, we have developed a theoretical formalism to account for the anisotropies arising from large-scale galaxy clustering, leading to a new contribution to the variance of the HD correlation. In this subsequent work, we provide numerical results for this novel effect. We consider a GW background resulting from mergers of supermassive black hole binaries, and relate the merger number density to the overdensity of galaxies. We find that anisotropies due to large-scale galaxy clustering lead to a standard deviation of the HD correlation at most at percent level, remaining well below the standard contributions to the HD variance. Hence, this kind of anisotropies in the GW source distribution does not represent a substantial contamination to the correlations of timing residuals in present and future PTA surveys. Suitable statistical methods to extract the galaxy clustering signal from PTA data will be investigated in the future.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

The impact of large-scale galaxy clustering on the variance of the Hellings-Downs correlation: theoretical framework

While pulsar timing array experiments have recently found evidence for the existence of a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background, its origin is still unclear. If this background is of astrophysical origin, we expect the distribution of GW sources to follow the one of galaxies. Since galaxies are not perfectly isotropically distributed at large scales, but follow the cosmological large-scale structure, this would lead to an intrinsic anisotropy in the distribution of GW sources. In this work, we develop a formalism to account for this anisotropy, by considering a Gaussian ensemble of sources in each realization of the universe and then taking ensemble averages over all such realizations. We find that large-scale galaxy clustering has no impact on the expectation value of pulsar timing residual correlations, described by the Hellings-Downs curve. However, it introduces a new contribution to the variance of the Hellings-Downs correlation. Hence, the anisotropic distribution of sources contributes to the amount by which the measurements of pulsar timing residual correlations, in our single realization of the universe, may differ from the Hellings-Downs curve.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Testing General Relativity through the $E_G$ Statistic Using the Weyl Potential and Galaxy Velocities

We combine measurements of galaxy velocities from galaxy surveys with measurements of the Weyl potential from the Dark Energy Survey to test the consistency of General Relativity at cosmological scales. Taking the ratio of two model-independent observables - the growth rate of structure and the Weyl potential - we obtain new measurements of the $E_G$ statistic with precision of $6.0-11.3\%$ at four different redshifts. These measurements provide a considerable improvement to past measurements of $E_G$. They confirm the validity of General Relativity at four redshifts, with a deviation of at most $1.6σ$ from the predicted values. Contrary to conventional methods that rely on a common galaxy sample with spectroscopic resolution to measure two types of correlations, we directly combine two observables that are independent of the galaxy bias. This provides a novel approach to testing the relation between the geometry of our Universe and the motion of galaxies with improved precision.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Gravitational Redshift Constraints on the Effective Theory of Interacting Dark Energy

Upcoming galaxy surveys provide the necessary sensitivity to measure gravitational redshift, a general relativistic effect that generates a dipole in galaxy clustering data when correlating two distinct populations of galaxies. Here, we study the constraining power of gravitational redshift within the framework of the effective theory of interacting dark energy. This formalism describes linear cosmological perturbations in scalar-tensor theories of gravity with a limited number of free functions, and allows each particle species to be coupled differently to the gravitational sector. In this work, we focus on Horndeski theories with a non-minimal coupling of dark matter to the scalar degree of freedom, yielding a breaking of the weak equivalence principle for this cosmic component, a scenario that is yet untested. We show that the dipole generated by gravitational redshift significantly breaks degeneracies and tightens the constraints on the parameters of the effective theory compared to the standard redshift-space distortion analysis solely based on the even multipoles in the galaxy correlation function, with an improvement of up to $\sim 50\%$ for populations with a galaxy bias difference equal to 1. We make the Python package EF-TIGRE (Effective Field Theory of Interacting dark energy with Gravitational REdshift) developed for this work publicly available.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Rescuing constraints on modified gravity using gravitational redshift in large-scale structure

The distribution of galaxies provides an ideal laboratory to test for deviations from General Relativity. In particular, redshift-space distortions are commonly used to constrain modifications to the Poisson equation, which governs the strength of dark matter clustering. Here, we show that these constraints rely on the validity of the weak equivalence principle, which has never been tested for the dark matter component. Relaxing this restrictive assumption leads to modifications in the growth of structure that are fully degenerate with modifications induced by the Poisson equation. This in turns strongly degrades the constraining power of redshift-space distortions. Such degeneracies can however be broken and tight constraints on modified gravity can be recovered by measuring gravitational redshift from the galaxy distribution, an effect that will be detectable by the coming generation of large-scale structure surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Non-Gaussianity in the Squeezed Three-Point Correlation from the Relativistic Effects

Assuming a LCDM universe in a single-field inflationary scenario, we compute the three-point correlation function of the observed matter density fluctuation in the squeezed triangular configuration, accounting for all the relativistic effects at the second order in perturbations. This squeezed three-point correlation function characterizes the local-type primordial non-Gaussianity, and it has been extensively debated in literature whether there exists a prominent feature in galaxy clustering on large scales in a single-field inflationary scenario either from the primordial origin or the intrinsic nonlinearity in general relativity. First, we show that theoretical descriptions of galaxy bias are incomplete in general relativity due to ambiguities in spatial gauge choice, while those of cosmological observables are independent of spatial gauge choice. Hence a proper relativistic description of galaxy bias is needed to reach a definitive conclusion in galaxy clustering. Second, we demonstrate that the gauge-invariant calculations of the cosmological observables remain unaffected by extra coordinate transformations like CFC or large diffeomorphism like dilatation. Finally, we show that the relativistic effects associated with light propagation in observations cancel each other, and hence there exists NO non-Gaussian contribution from the so-called projection effects.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

General Relativistic Effects in Weak Lensing Angular Power Spectra

Advances in upcoming weak lensing surveys pose new challenges for an accurate modeling of the lensing observables. The wide sky coverage of Euclid makes angular scales down to $l_\mathrm{min}=10$ accessible. At such large angular scales, general relativistic effects manifest themselves, and the lensing magnification cannot be correctly described by the standard lensing convergence only. The impact of line-of-sight velocities on the magnification angular power spectrum, referred to as the Doppler magnification, is already well recognized in literature. In particular, it was suggested that the Doppler magnification could be extracted by measurements of both cosmic shear and magnification. In this work, we point out two previously neglected aspects with respect to this method. Firstly, the impact of the Doppler magnification is reduced through non-vanishing cross terms with the standard lensing convergence. This is particularly relevant when the sources are averaged over a bin of width $Δz\approx 0.1$, such as in Euclid's tomographic weak lensing survey. Secondly, general relativistic potential terms slightly enhance the signal. We present numerical calculations of all relativistic effects in the weak lensing angular power spectra on large scales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Cutting out the cosmological middle man: General Relativity in the light-cone coordinates

Analytical computations in relativistic cosmology can be split into two sets: time evolution relating the initial conditions to the observer's light-cone and light propagation to obtain observables. Cosmological perturbation theory in the FLRW coordinates constitutes an efficient tool for the former task, but the latter is dramatically simpler in light-cone-adapted coordinates that trivialize the light rays towards the observer world-line. Here we point out that time evolution and observable reconstruction can be combined into a single computation that relates directly initial conditions to observables. This is possible if one works uniquely in such light-cone coordinates, thus completely bypassing the FLRW "middle-man" coordinates. We first present in detail these light-cone coordinates, extending and generalizing the presently available material in the literature, and construct a particularly convenient subset for cosmological perturbation theory. We then express the Einstein and energy-momentum conservation equations in these coordinates at the fully non-linear level. This is achieved through a careful 2+1+1 decomposition which leads to relatively compact expressions and provides good control over the geometrical interpretation of the involved quantities. Finally, we consider cosmological perturbation theory to linear order, paying attention to the remaining gauge symmetries and consistently obtaining gauge-invariant equations. Moreover, we show that it is possible to implement statistical homogeneity on stochastic fluctuations, despite the fact that the coordinate system privileges the observer world-line.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Galaxy Power Spectrum in General Relativity

We present the galaxy power spectrum in general relativity. Using a novel approach, we derive the galaxy power spectrum taking into account all the relativistic effects in observations. In particular, we show independently of survey geometry that relativistic effects yield no divergent terms (proportional to $k^{-4}P_m(k)$ or $k^{-2}P_m(k)$ on all scales) that would mimic the signal of primordial non-Gaussianity. This cancellation of such divergent terms is indeed expected from the equivalence principle, meaning that any perturbation acting as a uniform gravity on the scale of the experiment cannot be measured. We find that the unphysical infrared divergence obtained in previous calculations occurred only due to not considering all general relativistic contributions consistently. Despite the absence of divergent terms, general relativistic effects represented by non-divergent terms alter the galaxy power spectrum at large scales (smaller than the horizon scale). In our numerical computation of the full galaxy power spectrum, we show the deviations from the standard redshift-space power spectrum due to these non-divergent corrections. We conclude that, as relativistic effects significantly alter the galaxy power spectrum at $k\lesssim k_{eq}$, they need to be taken into account in the analysis of large-scale data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Cosmological Information Contents on the Light-Cone

We develop a theoretical framework to describe the cosmological observables on the past light cone such as the luminosity distance, weak lensing, galaxy clustering, and the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We consider that all the cosmological observables include not only the background quantity, but also the perturbation quantity, and they are subject to cosmic variance, which sets the fundamental limits on the cosmological information that can be derived from such observables, even in an idealized survey with an infinite number of observations. To quantify the maximum cosmological information content, we apply the Fisher information matrix formalism and spherical harmonic analysis to cosmological observations, in which the angular and the radial positions of the observables on the light cone carry different information. We discuss the maximum cosmological information that can be derived from five different observables: (1) type Ia supernovae, (2) cosmic microwave background anisotropies, (3) weak gravitational lensing, (4) local baryon density, and (5) galaxy clustering. We compare our results with the cosmic variance obtained in the standard approaches, which treat the light cone volume as a cubic box of simultaneity. We discuss implications of our formalism and ways to overcome the fundamental limit.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Jacobi Mapping Approach for a Precise Cosmological Weak Lensing Formalism

Cosmological weak lensing has been a highly successful and rapidly developing research field since the first detection of cosmic shear in 2000. However, it has recently been pointed out in Yoo et al. that the standard weak lensing formalism yields gauge-dependent results and, hence, does not meet the level of accuracy demanded by the next generation of weak lensing surveys. Here, we show that the Jacobi mapping formalism provides a solid alternative to the standard formalism, as it accurately describes all the relativistic effects contributing to the weak lensing observables. We calculate gauge-invariant expressions for the distortion in the luminosity distance, the cosmic shear components and the lensing rotation to linear order including scalar, vector and tensor perturbations. In particular, the Jacobi mapping formalism proves that the rotation is fully vanishing to linear order. Furthermore, the cosmic shear components contain an additional term in tensor modes which is absent in the results obtained with the standard formalism. Our work provides further support and confirmation of the gauge-invariant lensing formalism needed in the era of precision cosmology.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Gauge-Invariant Formalism of Cosmological Weak Lensing

We present the gauge-invariant formalism of cosmological weak lensing, accounting for all the relativistic effects due to the scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations at the linear order. While the light propagation is fully described by the geodesic equation, the relation of the photon wavevector to the physical quantities requires the specification of the frames, where they are defined. By constructing the local tetrad bases at the observer and the source positions, we clarify the relation of the weak lensing observables such as the convergence, the shear, and the rotation to the physical size and shape defined in the source rest-frame and the observed angle and redshift measured in the observer rest-frame. Compared to the standard lensing formalism, additional relativistic effects contribute to all the lensing observables. We explicitly verify the gauge-invariance of the lensing observables and compare our results to previous work. In particular, we demonstrate that even in the presence of the vector and tensor perturbations, the physical rotation of the lensing observables vanishes at the linear order, while the tetrad basis rotates along the light propagation compared to a FRW coordinate. Though the latter is often used as a probe of primordial gravitational waves, the rotation of the tetrad basis is indeed not a physical observable. We further clarify its relation to the E-B decomposition in weak lensing. Our formalism provides a transparent and comprehensive perspective of cosmological weak lensing.

astro-ph.CO↗