arXiv subjects

Nicholas Battaglia

Publications and source records attributed to Nicholas Battaglia.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Non-Gaussianity of secondary anisotropies from ACTPol and Planck

Most secondary sources of cosmic microwave background anisotropy (radio sources, dusty galaxies -DSFGs-, thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich -tSZ- distortions from hot gas, and gravitational lensing) are highly non-Gaussian. Statistics beyond the power spectrum are therefore potentially important sources of information about the physics of these processes. We combine data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and with data from the Planck satellite (only using Planck data in the overlapping region) to constrain the amplitudes of a set of theoretical bispectrum templates from the tSZ effect, DSFGs, gravitational lensing, and radio galaxies. We make a strong detection of radio galaxies (>5$σ$) and have hints of non-Gaussianity arising from the tSZ effect, DSFGs, from cross-correlations between the tSZ effect and DSFGs and from cross-correlations among the tSZ effect, DSFGs and radio galaxies. These results suggest that the same halos host radio sources, DSFGs, and have tSZ signal. We present a new method to calculate the non-Gaussian contributions to the template covariances. Using this method we find significant non-Gaussian contributions to the variance and covariance of our templates, with templates involving the tSZ effect most effected. Strong degeneracies exist between the various sources at the current noise levels. In light of these degeneracies, combined with theoretical uncertainty in the templates, these results are a demonstration of this technique. With these caveats, we demonstrate the utility of future bispectrum measurements by using the tSZ bispectrum measurement to constrain a combination of the amplitude of matter fluctuations and the matter density to be $σ_8 Ω_m^{0.17}=0.65^{+0.05}_{-0.06}$. Improvements in signal to noise from upcoming observations will enable the separation of bispectrum components and robust constraints on cosmological parameters.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

PICO - the probe of inflation and cosmic origins

The Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO) is a NASA-funded study of a Probe-class mission concept. The top-level science objectives are to probe the physics of the Big Bang by measuring or constraining the energy scale of inflation, probe fundamental physics by measuring the number of light particles in the Universe and the sum of neutrino masses, to measure the reionization history of the Universe, and to understand the mechanisms driving the cosmic star formation history, and the physics of the galactic magnetic field. PICO would have multiple frequency bands between 21 and 799 GHz, and would survey the entire sky, producing maps of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation, of galactic dust, of synchrotron radiation, and of various populations of point sources. Several instrument configurations, optical systems, cooling architectures, and detector and readout technologies have been and continue to be considered in the development of the mission concept. We will present a snapshot of the baseline mission concept currently under development.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Optical Design of PICO, a Concept for a Space Mission to Probe Inflation and Cosmic Origins

The Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO) is a probe-class mission concept currently under study by NASA. PICO will probe the physics of the Big Bang and the energy scale of inflation, constrain the sum of neutrino masses, measure the growth of structures in the universe, and constrain its reionization history by making full sky maps of the cosmic microwave background with sensitivity 80 times higher than the Planck space mission. With bands at 21-799 GHz and arcmin resolution at the highest frequencies, PICO will make polarization maps of Galactic synchrotron and dust emission to observe the role of magnetic fields in Milky Way's evolution and star formation. We discuss PICO's optical system, focal plane, and give current best case noise estimates. The optical design is a two-reflector optimized open-Dragone design with a cold aperture stop. It gives a diffraction limited field of view (DLFOV) with throughput of 910 square cm sr at 21 GHz. The large 82 square degree DLFOV hosts 12,996 transition edge sensor bolometers distributed in 21 frequency bands and maintained at 0.1 K. We use focal plane technologies that are currently implemented on operating CMB instruments including three-color multi-chroic pixels and multiplexed readouts. To our knowledge, this is the first use of an open-Dragone design for mm-wave astrophysical observations, and the only monolithic CMB instrument to have such a broad frequency coverage. With current best case estimate polarization depth of 0.65 microK(CMB}-arcmin over the entire sky, PICO is the most sensitive CMB instrument designed to date.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Prime-Cam: A first-light instrument for the CCAT-prime telescope

CCAT-prime will be a 6-meter aperture telescope operating from sub-mm to mm wavelengths, located at 5600 meters elevation on Cerro Chajnantor in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Its novel crossed-Dragone optical design will deliver a high throughput, wide field of view capable of illuminating much larger arrays of sub-mm and mm detectors than can existing telescopes. We present an overview of the motivation and design of Prime-Cam, a first-light instrument for CCAT-prime. Prime-Cam will house seven instrument modules in a 1.8 meter diameter cryostat, cooled by a dilution refrigerator. The optical elements will consist of silicon lenses, and the instrument modules can be individually optimized for particular science goals. The current design enables both broadband, dual-polarization measurements and narrow-band, Fabry-Perot spectroscopic imaging using multichroic transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers operating between 190 and 450 GHz. It also includes broadband kinetic induction detectors (KIDs) operating at 860 GHz. This wide range of frequencies will allow excellent characterization and removal of galactic foregrounds, which will enable precision measurements of the sub-mm and mm sky. Prime-Cam will be used to constrain cosmology via the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effects, map the intensity of [CII] 158 $μ$m emission from the Epoch of Reionization, measure Cosmic Microwave Background polarization and foregrounds, and characterize the star formation history over a wide range of redshifts. More information about CCAT-prime can be found at www.ccatobservatory.org.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Statistical properties of paired fixed fields

The initial conditions of cosmological simulations are commonly drawn from a Gaussian ensemble. The limited number of modes inside a simulation volume gives rise to statistical fluctuations known as \textit{sample variance}, limiting the accuracy of simulation predictions. Fixed fields offer an alternative initialization strategy; they have the same power spectrum as standard Gaussian fields but without intrinsic amplitude scatter at linear order. Paired fixed fields consists of two fixed fields with opposite phases that cancel phase correlations which otherwise induce second-order scatter in the non-linear power spectrum. We study the statistical properties of those fields for 19 different quantities at different redshifts through a large set of 600 N-body and 506 state-of-the-art magneto-hydrodynamic simulations covering a wide range of scales, mass and spatial resolutions. We find that paired fixed simulations do not introduce a bias on any of the examined quantities. We quantify the statistical improvement brought by these simulations, over standard ones, on different power spectra such as matter, halos, CDM, gas, stars, black-holes and magnetic fields, finding that they can reduce their variance by factors as large as $10^6$. We quantify the improvement achieved by fixing and by pairing, showing that sample variance in some quantities can be highly suppressed by pairing after fixing. Paired fixed simulations do not change the scatter in quantities such as the probability distribution function of matter density, or the halo, void or stellar mass functions. We argue that procedures aiming at reducing the sample variance of those quantities are unlikely to work. Our results show that paired fixed simulations do not affect either mean relations or scatter of galaxy properties, and suggest that the information embedded in 1-pt statistics is highly complementary to that in clustering.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Beyond CMB cosmic variance limits on reionization with the polarized SZ effect

Upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys will soon make the first detection of the polarized Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, the linear polarization generated by the scattering of CMB photons on the free electrons present in collapsed objects. Measurement of this polarization along with knowledge of the electron density of the objects allows a determination of the quadrupolar temperature anisotropy of the CMB as viewed from the space-time location of the objects. Maps of these remote temperature quadrupoles have several cosmological applications. Here we propose a new application: reconstruction of the cosmological reionization history. We show that with quadrupole measurements out to redshift 3, constraints on the mean optical depth can be improved by an order of magnitude beyond the CMB cosmic variance limit.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Weak-Lensing Mass Calibration of ACTPol Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Clusters with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey

We present weak-lensing measurements using the first-year data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Strategic Survey Program on the Subaru telescope for eight galaxy clusters selected through their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signal measured at 148 GHz with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter experiment. The overlap between the two surveys in this work is 33.8 square degrees, before masking bright stars. The signal-to-noise ratio of individual cluster lensing measurements ranges from 2.2 to 8.7, with a total of 11.1 for the stacked cluster weak-lensing signal. We fit for an average weak-lensing mass distribution using three different profiles, a Navarro-Frenk-White profile, a dark-matter-only emulated profile, and a full cosmological hydrodynamic emulated profile. We interpret the differences among the masses inferred by these models as a systematic error of 10\%, which is currently smaller than the statistical error. We obtain the ratio of the SZ-estimated mass to the lensing-estimated mass (the so-called hydrostatic mass bias $1-b$) of $0.74^{+0.13}_{-0.12}$, which is comparable to previous SZ-selected clusters from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and from the {\sl Planck} Satellite. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for cosmological parameters inferred from cluster abundances compared to cosmic microwave background primary anisotropy measurements.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Planck Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Cluster Mass Calibration using Hyper Suprime-Cam Weak Lensing

Using $\sim$140 deg$^2$ Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey data, we stack the weak lensing (WL) signal around five Planck clusters found within the footprint. This yields a 15$σ$ detection of the mean Planck cluster mass density profile. The five Planck clusters span a relatively wide mass range, $M_{\rm WL,500c} = (2-30)\times10^{14}\,M_\odot/h$ with a mean mass of $M_{\rm WL,500c} = (4.15\pm0.61)\times10^{14}\,M_\odot/h$. The ratio of the stacked Planck Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) mass to the stacked WL mass is $ \langle M_{\rm SZ}\rangle/\langle M_{\rm WL}\rangle = 1-b = 0.80\pm0.14$. This mass bias is consistent with previous WL mass calibrations of Planck clusters within the errors. We discuss the implications of our findings for the calibration of SZ cluster counts and the much discussed tension between Planck SZ cluster counts and Planck $Λ$CDM cosmology.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The Two-Season ACTPol Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Selected Cluster Catalog

We present a catalog of 182 galaxy clusters detected through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in a contiguous 987.5 deg$^{2}$ field. The clusters were detected as SZ decrements by applying a matched filter to 148 GHz maps that combine the original ACT equatorial survey with data from the first two observing seasons using the ACTPol receiver. Optical/IR confirmation and redshift measurements come from a combination of large public surveys and our own follow-up observations. Where necessary, we measured photometric redshifts for clusters using a pipeline that achieves accuracy $Δz/(1 + z)=0.015$ when tested on SDSS data. Under the assumption that clusters can be described by the so-called Universal Pressure Profile and its associated mass-scaling law, the full signal-to-noise > 4 sample spans the mass range $1.6 < M^{\rm UPP}_{\rm 500c}/10^{14}{\rm M}_{\odot}<9.1$, with median $M^{\rm UPP}_{\rm 500c}=3.1 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$. The sample covers the redshift range $0.1 < z < 1.4$ (median $z = 0.49$) and 28 clusters are new discoveries (median $z = 0.80$). We compare our catalog with other overlapping cluster samples selected using the SZ, optical,and X-ray wavelengths. We find the ratio of the UPP-based SZ mass to richness-based weak-lensing mass is $\langle M^{\rm UPP}_{\rm 500c} \rangle / \langle M^{\rm λWL}_{\rm 500c} \rangle = 0.68 \pm 0.11$. After applying this calibration, the mass distribution for clusters with $M_{\rm 500c} > 4 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$ is consistent with the number of such clusters found in the South Pole Telescope SZ survey.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Fundamental Physics from Future Weak-Lensing Calibrated Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Galaxy Cluster Counts

Future high-resolution measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will produce catalogs of tens of thousands of galaxy clusters through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. We forecast how well different configurations of a CMB Stage-4 experiment can constrain cosmological parameters, in particular the amplitude of structure as a function of redshift $σ_8(z)$, the sum of neutrino masses $Σm_ν$, and the dark energy equation of state $w(z)$. A key element of this effort is calibrating the tSZ scaling relation by measuring the lensing signal around clusters. We examine how the mass calibration from future optical surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey (LSST) compares with a purely internal calibration using lensing of the CMB itself. We find that, due to its high-redshift leverage, internal calibration gives constraints on cosmological parameters comparable to the optical calibration, and can be used as a cross-check of systematics in the optical measurement. We also show that in contrast to the constraints using the CMB lensing power spectrum, lensing-calibrated tSZ cluster counts can detect a minimal $Σm_ν$ at the 3-5$σ$ level even when the dark energy equation of state is freed up.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Future constraints on halo thermodynamics from combined Sunyaev-Zel'dovich measurements

The improving sensitivity of measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect opens a new window into the thermodynamic properties of the baryons in halos. We propose a methodology to constrain these thermodynamic properties by combining the kinetic SZ, which is an unbiased probe of the free electron density, and the thermal SZ, which probes their thermal pressure. We forecast that our method constrains the average thermodynamic processes that govern the energetics of galaxy evolution like energetic feedback across all redshift ranges where viable halos sample are available. Current Stage-3 cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments like AdvACT and SPT-3G can measure the kSZ and tSZ to greater than 100$σ$ if combined with a DESI-like spectroscopic survey. Such measurements translate into percent-level constraints on the baryonic density and pressure profiles and on the feedback and non-thermal pressure support parameters for a given ICM model. This in turn will provide critical thermodynamic tests for sub-grid models of feedback in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. The high fidelity measurements promised by the next generation CMB experiment, CMB-S4, allow one to further sub-divide these constraints beyond redshift into other classifications, like stellar mass or galaxy type.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Weak lensing calibration of mass bias in the REFLEX+BCS X-ray galaxy cluster catalogue

The use of large, X-ray selected galaxy cluster catalogues for cosmological analyses requires a thorough understanding of the X-ray mass estimates. Weak gravitational lensing is an ideal method to shed light on such issues, due to its insensitivity to the cluster dynamical state. We perform a weak lensing calibration of 166 galaxy clusters from the REFLEX and BCS cluster catalogue and compare our results to the X-ray masses based on scaled luminosities from that catalogue. To interpret the weak lensing signal in terms of cluster masses, we compare the lensing signal to simple theoretical Navarro-Frenk-White models and to simulated cluster lensing profiles, including complications such as cluster substructure, projected large-scale structure, and Eddington bias. We find evidence of underestimation in the X-ray masses, as expected, with $\langle M_{\mathrm{X}}/M_{\mathrm{WL}}\rangle = 0.75 \pm 0.07$ stat. $\pm 0.05$ sys. for our best-fit model. The biases in cosmological parameters in a typical cluster abundance measurement that ignores this mass bias will typically exceed the statistical errors.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Testing the Large-Scale Environments of Cool-core and Noncool-core Clusters with Clustering Bias

There are well-observed differences between cool-core (CC) and non-cool-core (NCC) clusters, but the origin of this distinction is still largely unknown. Competing theories can be divided into internal (inside-out), in which internal physical processes transform or maintain the NCC phase, and external (outside-in), in which the cluster type is determined by its initial conditions, which in turn lead to different formation histories (i.e., assembly bias). We propose a new method that uses the relative assembly bias of CC to NCC clusters, as determined via the two-point cluster-galaxy cross-correlation function (CCF), to test whether formation history plays a role in determining their nature. We apply our method to 48 ACCEPT clusters, which have well resolved central entropies, and cross-correlate with the SDSS-III/BOSS LOWZ galaxy catalog. We find that the relative bias of NCC over CC clusters is $b = 1.42 \pm 0.35$ ($1.6σ$ different from unity). Our measurement is limited by the small number of clusters with core entropy information within the BOSS footprint, 14 CC and 34 NCC. Future compilations of X-ray cluster samples, combined with deep all-sky redshift surveys, will be able to better constrain the relative assembly bias of CC and NCC clusters and determine the origin of the bimodality.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

The Tau of Galaxy Clusters

The recent emergence of detections of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect through cross-correlation techniques is encouraging for the prospects of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Extracting information on the large-scale velocity fields and constraining cosmological parameters from such kSZ measurements requires an understanding of the optical depth to CMB photons through halos. Using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations we find that there exists a low-scatter relation between the optical depth and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) signal of halos within a physical aperture. We propose that such a relation can be used to break the degeneracy between optical depth and line-of-sight velocity in kSZ measurements. The limiting factors in our proposal are systematic uncertainties associated with the sub-grid physics models in the simulations, which we calculate to be less than 10 percent. We discuss future observational measurements that could potentially be used to mitigate the systematic uncertainties in this scaling relation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Lensing Power Spectrum

We report a measurement of the power spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing from two seasons of Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) CMB data. The CMB lensing power spectrum is extracted from both temperature and polarization data using quadratic estimators. We obtain results that are consistent with the expectation from the best-fit Planck LCDM model over a range of multipoles L=80-2100, with an amplitude of lensing A_lens = 1.06 +/- 0.15 (stat.) +/- 0.06 (sys.) relative to Planck. Our measurement of the CMB lensing power spectrum gives sigma_8 Omega_m^0.25 = 0.643 +/- 0.054; including baryon acoustic oscillation scale data, we constrain the amplitude of density fluctuations to be sigma_8 = 0.831 +/- 0.053. We also update constraints on the neutrino mass sum. We verify our lensing measurement with a number of null tests and systematic checks, finding no evidence of significant systematic errors. This measurement relies on a small fraction of the ACTPol data already taken; more precise lensing results can therefore be expected from the full ACTPol dataset.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

CMB-S4 Science Book, First Edition

This book lays out the scientific goals to be addressed by the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, CMB-S4, envisioned to consist of dedicated telescopes at the South Pole, the high Chilean Atacama plateau and possibly a northern hemisphere site, all equipped with new superconducting cameras. CMB-S4 will dramatically advance cosmological studies by crossing critical thresholds in the search for the B-mode polarization signature of primordial gravitational waves, in the determination of the number and masses of the neutrinos, in the search for evidence of new light relics, in constraining the nature of dark energy, and in testing general relativity on large scales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Spectra and Parameters

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol). We analyze night-time data collected during 2013-14 using two detector arrays at 149 GHz, from 548 deg$^2$ of sky on the celestial equator. We use these spectra, and the spectra measured with the MBAC camera on ACT from 2008-10, in combination with Planck and WMAP data to estimate cosmological parameters from the temperature, polarization, and temperature-polarization cross-correlations. We find the new ACTPol data to be consistent with the LCDM model. The ACTPol temperature-polarization cross-spectrum now provides stronger constraints on multiple parameters than the ACTPol temperature spectrum, including the baryon density, the acoustic peak angular scale, and the derived Hubble constant. Adding the new data to planck temperature data tightens the limits on damping tail parameters, for example reducing the joint uncertainty on the number of neutrino species and the primordial helium fraction by 20%.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Testing Gravity with Gravitational Wave Source Counts

We show that the gravitational wave source counts distribution can test how gravitational radiation propagates on cosmological scales. This test does not require obtaining redshifts for the sources. If the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR, $ρ$) from a gravitational wave source is proportional to the strain then it falls as $R^{-1}$, thus we expect the source counts to follow $dN/dρ\propto ρ^{-4}$. However, if gravitational waves decay as they propagate or propagate into other dimensions, then there can be deviations from this generic prediction. We consider the possibility that the strain falls as $R^{-γ}$, where $γ=1$ recovers the expected predictions in a Euclidean uniformly-filled universe, and forecast the sensitivity of future observations to deviations from standard General Relativity. We first consider the case of few objects, 7 sources, with a signal-to-noise from 8 to 24, and impose a lower limit on $γ$, finding $γ>0.33$ at $95\%$ confidence level. The distribution of our simulated sample is very consistent with the distribution of the trigger events reported by Advanced LIGO. Future measurements will improve these constraints: with 100 events, we estimate that $γ$ can be measured with an uncertainty of $15\%$. We generalize the formalism to account for a range of chirp masses and the possibility that the signal falls as $\exp(-R/R_0)/R^γ$.

gr-qc↗