arXiv subjects

O. Lahav

Publications and source records attributed to O. Lahav.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Optical Depths from the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect with ACT DR6 and DESI DR1 Spectroscopic Galaxies and Optically-Selected Clusters

We present stacked thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect measurements for three samples of galaxy groups and clusters: those traced by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Intstrument Data Release 1 (DESI DR1) luminous red galaxies (LRG) and the DESI DR1 Bright Galaxy Sample (BGS), and an eROMaPPer optically-selected sample from the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey. We use the latest Atacama Cosmology Telescope DR6 (ACT)+Planck component-separated internal linear combination (ILC) Compton-$y$ maps and ACT+Planck coadded 90, 150, and 220 GHz temperature maps to extract the tSZ signal within a $\sim2'$ disk aperture for sources binned by luminosity, richness, or mass. We measure the average tSZ signal with high statistical significance, with signal-to-noise ratios surpassing 38 for LRG, 27 for BGS, and 39 for the eROMaPPer sample using the 90 GHz ACT DR6+Planck map. We conduct a detailed study of systematics and foregrounds such as dust and cosmic infrared background (CIB) contamination, which remain a core challenge for tSZ analysis. For the LRG and BGS samples, we find that dust and radio source emission dominate the tSZ signal at scales near and below the disk aperture radius. Large-scale ($R>4'$) contamination from the CIB is less significant. We mitigate these contaminants to isolate the tSZ signal and use a combination of simulated and real measurements to develop Compton-$y-$optical depth ($\bar y-\bar \tau$) scaling relations to infer optical depths, which are found to be in agreement with values measured using the pairwise kinematic SZ effect for the same tracer samples. The $\bar y-\bar \tau$ scaling relation for the eROMaPPer sample is the first such relationship to be derived directly from SZ measurements.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Sizing the Universe with DESI Galaxy Sizes: Plain Fundamentals of Fundamental-Plane Lensing

Weak gravitational lensing provides a powerful way to map cosmic structure, but most current measurements rely on galaxy shape distortions from deep imaging surveys and are affected by systematics such as intrinsic alignments, photometric-redshift uncertainties and shape-measurement biases. Here we present a spectroscopic galaxy-galaxy lensing magnification measurement using Fundamental-Plane (FP) size residuals, $\delta_r\equiv\Delta\log_{10}R_\mathrm{e}$, from 3.26 million DESI luminous red galaxy (LRG) sources behind DESI Bright Galaxy Survey lenses. The FP-like relation predicts the intrinsic sizes of LRGs from lensing-invariant quantities, including velocity dispersion $\sigma_0$ and surface brightness $I_\mathrm{e}$, with a scatter of about 0.06-0.07 dex. Lensing magnifies LRG sizes, giving the direct convergence response $\delta_r(\kappa)=\kappa/\ln 10$, but we show that the full lensing response is modified by magnification bias, because fitting $R_\mathrm{e}$ with $I_\mathrm{e}$ inevitably induces a magnitude dependence in $\bar{\delta}_r(m)$. After calibrating this response, we recover surface-density profiles with uncertainties comparable to those from individual Stage-III shear surveys using 5-20 million higher-redshift sources. The corresponding excess surface-density profiles agree with shear-based measurements. We further show that the estimator is robust to size-measurement uncertainties, with a convergence multiplicative bias only $\simeq -0.2$ times the size bias. FP lensing therefore provides a clean, spectroscopic and complementary probe of cosmic structure.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

A Finely-Binned Measurement of the Connected Even-Parity Galaxy 4-Point Correlation Function of DESI Year 1 Luminous Red Galaxies

We present the connected even-parity galaxy 4-Point Correlation Function (4PCF) of DESI Year 1 (Y1) Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs). This is one of the first measurements of the connected 4PCF on data, and shows a clear detection at $\sim$12 to 17$\sigma$ in the full-sky analysis. We test the robustness of the signal by varying three factors: hemisphere (north vs. south), redshift range (either the full range $0.4 < z < 1.1$ or the higher-number-density interval $0.4 < z < 0.8$), and sample completeness (the full sample vs. only the most complete regions within the number density-motivated cut). Finally, we cross-correlate different patches that are spatially well-separated, and thus should have largely independent noise. This approach, at leading order, is able to remove mismatch between the covariance matrix of the data and that of the mocks; however, in certain cases at the cost of sensitivity. We find $\sim$15$\sigma$ evidence for an even-parity 4PCF in this approach. Overall, the studies of the 4PCF presented here probe sensitively any mismatch between mock catalogs and data, and also open up the prospect of fitting a model, constraining cosmological parameters and galaxy biases, and searching for Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) features.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Extending the Stellar-to-Halo Mass Relation to Dwarf Galaxies with DESI DR1

Constraining the dark matter halos of the smallest galaxies offers fundamental insights into the nature of dark matter and stellar feedback. Using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 1, we infer the stellar-to-halo mass relation (SHMR) down to the dwarf scale ($M_\star < 10^9\,M_\odot$), without extrapolation from the higher mass range. Leveraging the unprecedented depth of the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey at $0.01 < z < 0.2$, we construct 12 samples spanning nearly four orders of magnitude in stellar mass, and measure their projected clustering $w_p$, galaxy-galaxy lensing $\Delta\Sigma$, as well as a novel observable: satellite occupation number $N_{\rm sat}$. The addition of $N_{\rm sat}$ enables robust subtraction of satellite contributions to both $w_p$ and $\Delta\Sigma$ across the 12 individual halo occupation distribution analyses, yielding an average halo-to-stellar mass relation (HSMR) of $\log \langle M_h(M_\star) \rangle = 12.06 + 0.58\log(M_\star/10^{11}) + (M_\star/10^{11})^{0.73}$. Combining this HSMR with an observed stellar mass function, we constrain the SHMR across five orders of magnitude in halo mass, with the power-law slope steepening from $0.32 \pm 0.06$ above the Milky Way mass to $2.08 \pm 0.21$ in the dwarf regime. Interestingly, the scatter about the SHMR grows from $0.17 \pm 0.02$ dex at Milky Way-like scales to $0.68_{-0.33}^{+0.21}$ dex for systems comparable to the Large Magellanic Cloud, suggesting that smaller galaxies follow increasingly diverse evolutionary paths. Our work highlights the power of DESI in probing the galaxy-halo connection within the dwarf regime, offering an exciting avenue to bridge the gap between large-scale and near-field cosmologies in the future.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

A Unified Tracer Analysis of DESI DR2 Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

We improve upon previous efforts to optimally combine overlapping galaxy samples in the DESI baryon acoustic oscillation analysis. By weighting each galaxy by its linear bias, overlapping galaxies are combined into a single, unified catalog, naturally avoiding double counting of cosmic volume and including all auto- and cross- information at the catalog level. Improvements over the previous effort include the addition of QSO out to $z=1.6$ to account for all overlapping DR2 tracers and redshift-dependent bias treatment to improve reconstruction. We report distance measurements using this unified tracer, and find them to be highly consistent with the baseline DR2 BAO analysis. We also test for tracer-dependent systematics within the DESI data, and find no evidence of tracer-dependent systematics within $0.8<z<1.6$. Finally, we take advantage of the unified tracer to rebin the analysis in redshift in order to more finely resolve the redshift-to-distance relation. Dynamical dark energy results on this finer redshift binning indicate that there is no missed feature in the expansion history in the redshifts $0.8<z<1.6$, and reproduces DESI's preference for an evolving dark energy equation of state.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Spatially-Resolved Spectra of Diffuse Galactic Light using 10.8 M DESI Sky Fibers

Using 10.8 million ``blank'' sky spectra from the DESI Year 3 dataset, we measure the diffuse galactic light (DGL) spectrum in the optical at spectral resolution $R \sim 4000$ by correlating with far-infrared emission from IRAS. Subdividing the sky into 54 deg$^2$ pixels (HEALPix, NSIDE = 8), we map the variation of the DGL correlation spectrum and nebular emission lines across the DESI footprint in the high-Galactic-latitude sky. The increased data volume over previous SDSS-based analyses enables several new detections in the DGL, including scattering both onto and out of the line of sight from neutral interstellar sodium and potassium. We further detect direct emission from ro-vibrational transitions of molecular hydrogen in the near-infrared with an absolute radiance of $0.65\substack{+0.13 \\ -0.12}\times10^{-9}~{\rm erg\, cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}\,sr^{-1}}$, roughly consistent with theoretical expectations, but with an apparent ortho-to-para line ratio that is lower by a factor of $0.60\substack{+0.28 \\ -0.27}$. We confirm previous detections of extended red emission (ERE) in the DGL and map its spatial variation. Our spatially resolved DGL maps provide important observational constraints for the radiative transfer efforts that are now possible with recent 3D models of the Milky Way.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

DESI DR2 Results IV: Alcock-Paczy\'nski Measurements from the Lyman Alpha Forest and Cosmological Constraints

We present Alcock-Paczy\'nski (AP) measurements from the full shape of Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) forest correlation functions measured from the second data release (DR2) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Our measurements include information from the Ly$\alpha$ forest auto-correlation and its cross-correlation with quasars. We constrain the AP effect with $1\%$ precision at an effective redshift $z_\mathrm{eff}=2.33$, which is twice as tight as the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) constraint from the same data. When using the joint Ly$\alpha$ AP and BAO results, we measure the ratios $D_\text{H}(z_\mathrm{eff})/r_\text{d}=8.600 \pm 0.066$ and $D_\text{M}(z_\mathrm{eff})/r_\text{d}=39.32 \pm 0.33$, where $D_\text{M}$ is the transverse comoving distance, $D_\text{H}$ is the Hubble distance, and $r_\text{d}$ is the sound horizon at the drag epoch. Assuming $\Lambda$CDM, Ly$\alpha$ forest measurements combined with a nucleosynthesis prior produce a constraint on the Hubble constant $H_0=66.5\pm1.3\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$. The Ly$\alpha$ AP result corresponds to a matter fraction constraint $\Omega_\text{m}=0.325\pm0.018$ in $\Lambda$CDM, which is $1.4\sigma$ higher than DESI BAO. This impacts the DESI results relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), slightly reducing their discrepancy from $2.4\sigma$ to $2.2\sigma$. We present updated constraints on extended models using the joint DESI DR2 BAO and Ly$\alpha$ forest full shape data, together with external data sets. When considering a time-evolving dark energy equation of state parametrized by $w_0$ and $w_a$, we find it is preferred over $\Lambda$CDM at $2.7\sigma$ for the combination of DESI and CMB data, and at $3.2\sigma$ when also including supernovae. With the new Ly$\alpha$ AP measurement, DESI provides its most precise anchor for the expansion history at $z > 1$ in the matter-dominated Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Validation of the DESI DR2 Ly$\alpha$ forest full-shape analysis

We present the validation of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 2 (DR2) Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) forest full-shape analysis. This analysis combines three-dimensional Ly$\alpha$ forest auto-correlations and cross-correlations with quasars to extract information from both the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature and the broadband clustering signal, with primary emphasis on the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) measurement. Compared to the DESI DR1 analysis, the DR2 validation uses substantially larger and more realistic mock datasets, including CoLoRe 2LPT and AbacusSummit Ly$\alpha$ forest simulations. The modeling framework is also improved through analytic marginalization over small scales ($<10$ $h^{-1}$Mpc) and the impact of ultraviolet background fluctuations. The validation program was completed prior to unblinding and defines quantitative requirements for the cosmological parameters of interest, which are evaluated using hundreds of mock realizations. We further test the analysis through independent fits to the auto- and cross-correlations, multiple catalog splits, and a broad suite of analysis and modeling variations applied to both mocks and blinded observational data. We find that the BAO and AP parameters satisfy all validation requirements and remain stable across all tests. In contrast, mock studies reveal a significant bias in the inferred growth-rate parameter $f\sigma_8$, leading us to exclude this measurement from the final analysis. The consistency across mocks, data splits, and robustness tests demonstrates that the DR2 Ly$\alpha$ full-shape analysis provides a reliable and substantially improved broadband AP measurement over previous Ly$\alpha$ forest studies.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Probing the matter-dominated expansion with multi-redshift Lyman-$\alpha$ BAO from DESI DR2

We present a multi-redshift Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) analysis of the DESI Data Release 2 (DR2) Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) forest, splitting the forest auto-correlation and its cross-correlation with quasars into three redshift bins. We obtain BAO measurements at effective redshifts $z_{\rm eff} = 2.13$, $2.40$, and $2.81$ with $\sim2.0$--$2.5\%$ precision per bin in the radial and transverse directions, corresponding to $\sim1.1$--$1.2\%$ precision for the isotropic BAO measurement. Using the same data products and modeling framework as the DESI DR2 Ly$\alpha$ BAO analysis, we validate the pipeline on $400$ synthetic datasets and find unbiased BAO recovery with well-calibrated uncertainties. The measurements show an increase in the isotropic dilation parameter $D_V/r_d$ from $30.26\pm0.39$ to $32.22\pm0.47$ and in the Alcock-Paczy\'nski parameter $D_M/D_H$ from $3.96\pm0.15$ to $5.63^{+0.22}_{-0.24}$. The Hubble distance $D_H/r_d$ decreases from $9.40\pm0.20$ to $7.22\pm0.17$, providing a direct measurement of the expansion history consistent with $\Lambda$CDM and the expected matter-dominated scaling, with $H(z)\propto(1+z)^n$ giving $n=1.34\pm0.16$. The redshift split also provides a self-consistent measurement of clustering evolution: the Ly$\alpha$ forest bias evolves as $(1+z)^\gamma$ with $\gamma_\alpha=3.05\pm0.16$, the RSD parameter has a redshift evolution described by $\gamma_\beta=-0.97\pm0.26$, and the quasar bias evolves with $\gamma_Q=1.56\pm0.23$, consistent with independent quasar clustering measurements. Combining these three-bin BAO measurements with DESI DR2 galaxy and quasar BAO measurements yields cosmological constraints consistent with the single-bin Ly$\alpha$ BAO analysis in flat $\Lambda$CDM and $w_0w_a$CDM and improves curvature constraints by $\sim12\%$ in $\Lambda$CDM$+\Omega_\mathrm{K}$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Beyond traditional emission-line diagnostics: using autoencoders to uncover active galactic nuclei in DESI spectra

The growing volume of spectroscopic data in modern surveys motivates data-driven approaches that complement traditional emission-line diagnostics for active galactic nuclei (AGN) identification. We present a machine learning framework that exploits the full optical spectrum using unsupervised representation learning within a semi-supervised classification scheme. We use the SPENDER autoencoder to compress DESI galaxy spectra into a low-dimensional latent space and classify sources through a k-d tree nearest-neighbor search. The model is trained on 50,222 DESI Main Survey spectra from the Guadalupe dataset and released as part of Data Release 1 (DR1), restricted to z <= 0.5. We validate the performance using labels derived from FastSpecFit's emission line measurements defining seven galaxy classes: AGN, broad-line (BL), composite, star-forming, passive, retired, and Other. The method achieves high accuracies for AGN (0.952) and broad-line AGN (0.965), reliably identifying these sources even in low signal-to-noise spectra and recovering AGN missed by standard single-diagnostic methods. Our classification metrics are benchmarked against traditional diagnostics, and we show they represent lower limits of the model's true performance. We also find that the learned latent space correlates with key galaxy properties such as stellar mass and star-formation rate, demonstrating that it captures physically meaningful information. These results show that unsupervised spectral representation learning, implemented within a semi-supervised classification framework, provides a scalable and effective approach for constructing more complete AGN catalogues for current and future spectroscopic surveys.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

Alcock-Paczynski Blinding Scheme for the Ly-$\alpha$ Forest Analysis

We present and validate a blinding method for the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) forest analysis based on a modification of the Alcock-Paczynski test. In order to hide the background expansion history, the method employs a geometrical shift of each quasar (QSO) forest in wavelength space, once the quasar continuum has been fitted and the fluctuation field is extracted. The redshift positions for the QSO sample are also changed in a consistent manner. We show that the method remains effective when applied to real data, where contamination from metals and Lyman-$\beta$ is intrinsically mixed with the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest. This limitation is primarily visible in the 1D correlation function, where other blinding strategies can mitigate the effect. To assess its effectiveness, the prescription is tested against a series of datasets of increasing complexity: from idealized low-noise mocks, to realistic DESI year one synthetic datasets, and finally to data from DESI first data release (DR1), using both the auto (Ly$\alpha\times$Ly$\alpha$) and cross (Ly$\alpha\times$ QSO) correlations. We find that the method robustly shifts the BAO peak position from the 3D correlation functions to the expected value for cosmology changes of around 5\% in the matter content, without altering the shape of the posteriors in the model parameters. In conclusion, this catalog-level blinding strategy is a viable method for cosmological inference with the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest, particularly if a cross-analysis with other tracers using the same blinding strategy is pursued.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Weak Evolution of Cosmic Atomic Hydrogen over the Past 4.5 Billion Years

The cosmic star formation rate density (CSFRD) has declined sharply toward the present day, but the roles of the atomic and molecular gas reservoirs remain uncertain. We measure the cosmic HI density, $\Omega_{\mathrm{HI}}$, over $0<z<0.41$ by combining HI spectra from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope with optical spectroscopy from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument for $\sim2.5$ million galaxies across $\sim12,000\,{\rm deg}^2$. We measure a raw decrease in $\Omega_{\mathrm{HI}}$ by a factor of $1.35\pm0.10$ over the past 4.5 Gyr. Even after applying the conservative systematic corrections from our forward model, the inferred decline is only $1.12\pm0.10$ -- still far weaker than the CSFRD decline (a factor of 2.46). The molecular gas density, in contrast, is known to evolve more closely with star formation. At fixed stellar mass, the average HI gas fraction evolves by less than 0.2 dex, showing that the weak evolution is present across the galaxy population. These quantitative differences rule out rapid depletion of galaxy HI as the primary driver of the late-time CSFRD decline, and provide a stringent benchmark for models of gas accretion, phase conversion and star-formation regulation.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

Galaxy Clusters Selected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in 5 year data from the SPT-3G Main Survey

We report a new galaxy cluster catalog, selected using the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, from 5 years of observations of the SPT-3G Main field. Drawn from arcminute-resolution data with white noise levels of 3.2, 2.5, and 8.9 $\mu$K-arcmin at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, respectively, the sample consists of 8,892 cluster candidates detected above significance $\xi=4$, with an expected purity of $>82\%$ (4,480 at $\xi\ge5$ with purity $>99\%$). Using optical and infrared data we have confirmed 7,190 candidates as clusters. The sample spans a mass range $7.9 \times 10^{13}$ $M_\odot/h_{70}$ \ $< M_\textrm{500c} < $ $1.6 \times 10^{15}$ $M_\odot/h_{70}$ with a median mass of $1.65 \times 10^{14}$ $M_\odot/h_{70}$, and a redshift range of $0.037 1$ and 271 at $z>1.5$. Compared to previous SZ cluster samples from South Pole Telescope and Atacama Cosmology Telescope data, the SPT-3G sample is highly consistent in mass and redshift but is significantly deeper, with per-cluster detection signal-to-noise 2-4 times higher and a cluster density of 4.5 confirmed clusters/deg$^2$. We cross match with eRASS1 cluster and point source catalogs, finding 1,279 and 1,319 matches, respectively. The SPT and eROSITA cluster mass estimates are in relatively good agreement. We perform a series of validation checks using both internal data splits and comparisons to external samples. These tests show increasing correlated (dusty) emission with redshift, with a $\sim17\times$ larger 220 GHz temperature increment for clusters at $z\sim1.5$ than $z\sim0.25$, but only weak evidence for correlated synchrotron emission. Finally, a number of clusters are flagged as candidate strong gravitational lenses.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Cosmological constraints from the DESI DR1 Bispectrum Full-Shape and DR2 BAO

We present cosmological constraints from the combination of DESI DR1 full-shape measurements, including for the LRG bispectrum, and DESI DR2 BAO data. The joint analysis accounts for cross-covariance using mocks, while ShapeFit compression mitigates prior volume effects that hinder beyond-$\Lambda$CDM analyses. In $\Lambda$CDM, the bispectrum (P+B) shifts $\sigma_8$ up by $1.1\sigma$ and $S_8$ by $1.2\sigma$, reducing their uncertainties by $26\%$ and $28\%$, respectively. For $w_0w_a$CDM, DESI-only analyses with the bispectrum shift dark energy parameters toward $\Lambda$CDM, staying consistent with a cosmological constant within $1\sigma$. Adding CMB creates a preference for evolving dark energy: DESI+CMB (P+B) shows a $2.8\sigma$ deviation from $\Lambda$CDM. Including DES-Dovekie supernovae alone reduces this to $1.6\sigma$, while the full combination DESI+CMB+DES-Dovekie gives $3.1\sigma$, driven primarily by the CMB. The bispectrum consistently weakens evidence for time-varying dark energy relative to power-spectrum-only analyses. The bispectrum also enhances sensitivity to massive neutrinos: in DESI-only analysis, the power-spectrum-only posterior for $\sum m_\nu$ is consistent with zero, whereas adding the bispectrum yields a mean of $0.26\pm0.17$~eV and a $95\%$ upper limit of $0.57$~eV, shifting the peak into the positive region and agreeing with oscillation lower bounds. For modified gravity, the bispectrum further constrains $\mu_0 = 0.12\pm0.49$ from DESI-only data, consistent with general relativity. Our analysis shows that accounting for cross-dataset covariances and avoiding prior volume effects yields robust constraints, with the bispectrum raising amplitude parameters and tightening their uncertainties.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Quality Assessment of Spectroscopic Data Reduction Pipelines Using Artificial Intelligence: Scrutinizing Data Release 2 from the DESI Survey

Large spectroscopic surveys now collect data at a scale that makes traditional visual inspection impractical. We present an unsupervised pipeline for spectroscopic quality assessment that requires no labeled training data. The method combines Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for dimensionality reduction with Friends-of-Friends clustering to isolate anomalous spectra for targeted review. We apply this pipeline to 58,291,334 spectra across 14,199 tiles from DESI Data Release 2, processing each tile independently to produce a tile-level outlier catalog. In each tile, the pipeline separates a dense core of typical spectra from small, isolated components and singletons, yielding a total of 1,095,816 outlier candidates. The mean tile-level outlier fraction is about 1.96 percent overall, with values of 0.76 percent and 2.36 percent for the dark and bright main-survey programs, respectively. From the visual inspection of 391 outlier candidates from the dark and bright programs of the main survey, we find that 66.8 percent exhibit identifiable spectral anomalies consistent with known reduction and calibration effects. By contrast, only 4.1 percent carry a non-zero quality flag from the standard reduction pipeline. This shows that the method provides a complementary quality-assessment layer to existing pipeline diagnostics and recovers a substantial population of problematic spectra that standard diagnostics miss. Extrapolating to the main-survey catalog, we estimate that approximately 218,000 candidate outliers are free of identifiable reduction artifacts and may correspond to genuine atypical spectra in the context of DESI. The pipeline is scalable, reproducible, and directly comparable across successive data releases, making it a practical quality-assurance monitor for DESI and future multi-object spectroscopic surveys.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

DESI Data Release 2 ELGs: Property-dependent subsamples, imaging systematics, and clustering

Using emission-line galaxies (ELGs) from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 2, we evaluate a property-dependent correction to imaging systematics. We derive systematic weights following the same linear regression method used for other DESI tracers, but do so separately on ELG subsamples to provide a physically-informed alternative to the fiducial, neural-network-based approach. In doing so, we show that the deeper imaging in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) footprint leads to a higher overall number density but a lack of targets with extreme $g-r$ and $r-z$ colors. ELGs in the DES region also show a distinct redshift distribution when subsampled by position in the $g-r$ vs. $r-z$ plane. To address these effects, we implement a separate treatment of the DES footprint within the DESI catalog production pipeline, which is generally well-motivated and, in some cases, imperative for accurate clustering measurements. With DES treated separately, we find that property-dependent systematic weights further mitigate spurious clustering signal in $\sim$10% of subsamples, while the fiducial scheme remains optimal for the full sample.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Tomography of the gamma-ray sky from cross-correlation with DESI DR2 and unWISE galaxies

We study the origin of extragalactic gamma-ray emission observed by Fermi-LAT, using the cross-correlation of the gamma-ray sky with maps of large-scale structure provided by the DESI and unWISE surveys. Tomographic cross-correlation reveals the bias-weighted redshift distributions of gamma-ray sources. We first illustrate this method by cross-correlating detected gamma-ray point sources with large-scale structure. We find a significant cross-correlation and infer a point source redshift distribution broadly consistent with the distribution of identified optical counterparts previously reported in the literature, as well as a similar linear bias ($b \approx 2$) to massive galaxies that host bright active galactic nuclei. We then study the clustering of the Fermi unresolved gamma-ray background (UGRB), both in auto-correlation and in cross-correlation with large-scale structure. We detect the cross-correlation of the UGRB and LSS at $\sim 10\sigma$ in total, with highly significant detections from both DESI and unWISE. Our measurements suggest that the redshift distribution of the UGRB is broadly consistent with the redshift distribution of detected point sources. Additionally, we find a relatively weak amplitude for the cross-correlation with large-scale structure at z < 2, suggesting a significant fraction of the UGRB does not come from z < 2 large-scale structure. A natural candidate is contamination of from residual Galactic emission, and our best estimate of the contamination level derived from the UGRB auto-spectrum suggests that the mean bias of UGRB sources is indeed quite similar to the bias of detected Fermi point sources. However, we cannot exclude additional emission from gamma-ray sources at high redshift, z > 2, and we suggest that cross-correlation with tracers at z > 2, including CMB lensing, would be the ideal way to determine the fraction of z > 2 emission.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Joint Modeling of GD-1 and C-19 as Old Streams

DESI observational data for the GD-1 and C-19 streams are compared to stream simulations in an evolving multi-halo potential of a Milky Way-like galaxy based on a cosmological Milky Way-like simulation. The number of subhalos decreases with time and the subhalo-stream encounter velocities rise as the Galaxy and its disk build up their mass. The streams develop from star clusters inserted at $\simeq$1 Gyr after the Big Bang and evolved for 13 Gyr to their current orbital positions. The measured velocity widths of the streams are compared to the matched simulations. Streams in a CDM subhalo population provide the best match to the velocity width, on the average, with considerable scatter. Streams younger than $\simeq$12 Gyr in CDM subhalos are insufficiently hot. Streams in the same potentials but with populations of WDM 5.5 keV subhalos are not, on the average, heated to the observed velocity widths, although some of the realizations do reach the observed levels. The stream density power spectrum measured along the length of the DESI GD-1 sample agrees with the CDM stream simulations, with 1.3 to 2.3 times more power than WDM 7 keV and 5.5 keV simulations. The simulations show that modeling specific streams from the time of the formation of their progenitor clusters is both feasible and necessary to reproduce their stream averaged kinematic properties.

astro-ph.GA↗