arXiv subjects

P. M. Sutter

Publications and source records attributed to P. M. Sutter.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

A measurement of the Alcock-Paczynski effect using cosmic voids in the SDSS

We perform an Alcock-Paczynski test using stacked cosmic voids identified in the SDSS Data Release 7 main sample and Data Release 10 LOWZ and CMASS samples. We find ~1,500 voids out to redshift $0.6$ using a heavily modified and extended version of the watershed algorithm ZOBOV, which we call VIDE (Void IDentification and Examination). To assess the impact of peculiar velocities we use the mock void catalogs presented in Sutter et al. (2013). We find a constant uniform flattening of 14% along the line of sight when peculiar velocities are included. This flattening appears universal for all void sizes at all redshifts and for all tracer densities. We also use these mocks to identify an optimal stacking strategy. After correcting for systematic effects we find that our Alcock-Paczynski measurement leads to a preference of our best-fit value of $Ω_{\rm M}\sim 0.15$ over $Ω_{\rm M} = 1.0$ by a likelihood ratio of 10. Likewise, we find a factor of $4.5$ preference of the likelihood ratio for a $Λ$CDM $Ω_{\rm M} = 0.3$ model and a null measurement. Taken together, we find substantial evidence for the Alcock-Paczynski signal in our sample of cosmic voids. Our assessment using realistic mocks suggests that measurements with future SDSS releases and other surveys will provide tighter cosmological parameter constraints. The void-finding algorithm and catalogs used in this work will be made publicly available at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

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arXiv2014

Dark Sky Simulations: Early Data Release

The Dark Sky Simulations are an ongoing series of cosmological N-body simulations designed to provide a quantitative and accessible model of the evolution of the large-scale Universe. Such models are essential for many aspects of the study of dark matter and dark energy, since we lack a sufficiently accurate analytic model of non-linear gravitational clustering. In July 2014, we made available to the general community our early data release, consisting of over 55 Terabytes of simulation data products, including our largest simulation to date, which used $1.07 \times 10^{12}~(10240^3)$ particles in a volume $8h^{-1}\mathrm{Gpc}$ across. Our simulations were performed with 2HOT, a purely tree-based adaptive N-body method, running on 200,000 processors of the Titan supercomputer, with data analysis enabled by yt. We provide an overview of the derived halo catalogs, mass function, power spectra and light cone data. We show self-consistency in the mass function and mass power spectrum at the 1% level over a range of more than 1000 in particle mass. We also present a novel method to distribute and access very large datasets, based on an abstraction of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a file system, remote memory-mapped file access semantics, and a space-filling curve index. This method has been implemented for our data release, and provides a means to not only query stored results such as halo catalogs, but also to design and deploy new analysis techniques on large distributed datasets.

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arXiv2014

Universal Density Profile for Cosmic Voids

We present a simple empirical function for the average density profile of cosmic voids, identified via the watershed technique in $Λ$CDM N-body simulations. This function is universal across void size and redshift, accurately describing a large radial range of scales around void centers with only two free parameters. In analogy to halo density profiles, these parameters describe the scale radius and the central density of voids. While we initially start with a more general four-parameter model, we find two of its parameters to be redundant, as they follow linear trends with the scale radius in two distinct regimes of the void sample, separated by its compensation scale. Assuming linear theory, we derive an analytic formula for the velocity profile of voids and find an excellent agreement with the numerical data as well. In our companion paper [Sutter et al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 442, 462 (2014)] the presented density profile is shown to be universal even across tracer type, properly describing voids defined in halo and galaxy distributions of varying sparsity, allowing us to relate various void populations by simple rescalings. This provides a powerful framework to match theory and simulations with observational data, opening up promising perspectives to constrain competing models of cosmology and gravity.

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arXiv2014

Voids in the SDSS DR9: observations, simulations, and the impact of the survey mask

We present and study cosmic voids identified using the watershed void finder VIDE in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9, compare these voids to ones identified in mock catalogs, and assess the impact of the survey mask on void statistics such as number functions, ellipticity distributions, and radial density profiles. The nearly 1,000 identified voids span three nearly volume-limited samples from redshift z = 0.43 to 0.7. For comparison we use 98 of the publicly available 2LPT-based mock galaxy catalogs of Manera et al., and also generate our own mock catalogs by applying a Halo Occupation Distribution model to an N-body simulation. We find that the mask reduces the number density of voids at all scales by a factor of three and slightly skews the relative size distributions. This engenders an increase in the mean ellipticity by roughly 30%. However, we find that radial density profiles are largely robust to the effects of the mask. We see excellent agreement between the data and both mock catalogs, and find no tension between the observed void properties and the properties derived from ΛCDM simulations. We have added the void catalogs from both data and mock galaxy populations discussed in this work to the Public Cosmic Void Catalog at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

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arXiv2014

Sparse sampling, galaxy bias, and voids

To study the impact of sparsity and galaxy bias on void statistics, we use a single large-volume, high-resolution N-body simulation to compare voids in multiple levels of subsampled dark matter, halo populations, and mock galaxies from a Halo Occupation Distribution model tuned to different galaxy survey densities. We focus our comparison on three key observational statistics: number functions, ellipticity distributions, and radial density profiles. We use the hierarchical tree structure of voids to interpret the impacts of sampling density and galaxy bias, and theoretical and empirical functions to describe the statistics in all our sample populations. We are able to make simple adjustments to theoretical expectations to offer prescriptions for translating from analytics to the void properties measured in realistic observations. We find that sampling density has a much larger effect on void sizes than galaxy bias. At lower tracer density, small voids disappear and the remaining voids are larger, more spherical, and have slightly steeper profiles. When a proper lower mass threshold is chosen, voids in halo distributions largely mimic those found in galaxy populations, except for ellipticities, where galaxy bias leads to higher values. We use the void density profile of Hamaus et al. (2014) to show that voids follow a self-similar and universal trend, allowing simple translations between voids studied in dark matter and voids identified in galaxy surveys. We have added the mock void catalogs used in this work to the Public Cosmic Void Catalog at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

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arXiv2014

First measurement of gravitational lensing by cosmic voids in SDSS

We report the first measurement of the diminutive lensing signal arising from matter underdensities associated with cosmic voids. While undetectable individually, by stacking the weak gravitational shear estimates around 901 voids detected in SDSS DR7 by Sutter et al. (2012a), we find substantial evidence for a depression of the lensing signal compared to the cosmic mean. This depression is most pronounced at the void radius, in agreement with analytical models of void matter profiles. Even with the largest void sample and imaging survey available today, we cannot put useful constraints on the radial dark-matter void profile. We invite independent investigations of our findings by releasing data and analysis code to the public at https://github.com/pmelchior/void-lensing

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arXiv2014

Cosmology with Void-Galaxy Correlations

Galaxy bias, the unknown relationship between the clustering of galaxies and the underlying dark matter density field is a major hurdle for cosmological inference from large-scale structure. While traditional analyses focus on the absolute clustering amplitude of high-density regions mapped out by galaxy surveys, we propose a relative measurement that compares those to the underdense regions, cosmic voids. On the basis of realistic mock catalogs we demonstrate that cross correlating galaxies and voids opens up the possibility to calibrate galaxy bias and to define a static ruler thanks to the observable geometric nature of voids. We illustrate how the clustering of voids is related to mass compensation and show that volume-exclusion significantly reduces the degree of stochasticity in their spatial distribution. Extracting the spherically averaged distribution of galaxies inside voids from their cross correlations reveals a remarkable concordance with the mass-density profile of voids.

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arXiv2014

The dark matter of galaxy voids

How do observed voids relate to the underlying dark matter distribution? To examine the spatial distribution of dark matter contained within voids identified in galaxy surveys, we apply Halo Occupation Distribution models representing sparsely and densely sampled galaxy surveys to a high-resolution N-body simulation. We compare these galaxy voids to voids found in the halo distribution, low-resolution dark matter, and high-resolution dark matter. We find that voids at all scales in densely sampled surveys - and medium- to large-scale voids in sparse surveys - trace the same underdensities as dark matter, but they are larger in radius by ~20%, they have somewhat shallower density profiles, and they have centers offset by ~0.4Rv rms. However, in void-to-void comparison we find that shape estimators are less robust to sampling, and the largest voids in sparsely sampled surveys suffer fragmentation at their edges. We find that voids in galaxy surveys always correspond to underdensities in the dark matter, though the centers may be offset. When this offset is taken into account, we recover almost identical radial density profiles between galaxies and dark matter. All mock catalogs used in this work are available at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

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arXiv2013

Probabilistic image reconstruction for radio interferometers

We present a novel, general-purpose method for deconvolving and denoising images from gridded radio interferometric visibilities using Bayesian inference based on a Gaussian process model. The method automatically takes into account incomplete coverage of the uv-plane, signal mode coupling due to the primary beam, and noise mode coupling due to uv sampling. Our method uses Gibbs sampling to efficiently explore the full posterior distribution of the underlying signal image given the data. We use a set of widely diverse mock images with a realistic interferometer setup and level of noise to assess the method. Compared to results from a proxy for point source- based CLEAN method we find that in terms of RMS error and signal-to-noise ratio our approach performs better than traditional deconvolution techniques, regardless of the structure of the source image in our test suite. Our implementation scales as O(np log np), provides full statistical and uncertainty information of the reconstructed image, requires no supervision, and provides a robust, consistent framework for incorporating noise and parameter marginalizations and foreground removal.

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arXiv2013

A response to arXiv:1310.2791: A self-consistent public catalogue of voids and superclusters in the SDSS Data Release 7 galaxy surveys

Recently, Nadathur & Hotchkiss (2013) submitted a paper discussing a new cosmic void catalog. This paper includes claims about the void catalog described in Sutter et al. (2012). In this note, we respond to those claims, clarify some discrepancies between the text of Sutter et al. (2012) and the most recent version of the catalog, and provide some comments on the differences between our catalog and that of Nadathur & Hotchkiss (2013). All updates and documentation for our catalog are available at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.

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arXiv2013

Structure Finding in Cosmological Simulations: The State of Affairs

The ever increasing size and complexity of data coming from simulations of cosmic structure formation demands equally sophisticated tools for their analysis. During the past decade, the art of object finding in these simulations has hence developed into an important discipline itself. A multitude of codes based upon a huge variety of methods and techniques have been spawned yet the question remained as to whether or not they will provide the same (physical) information about the structures of interest. Here we summarize and extent previous work of the "halo finder comparison project": we investigate in detail the (possible) origin of any deviations across finders. To this extent we decipher and discuss differences in halo finding methods, clearly separating them from the disparity in definitions of halo properties. We observe that different codes not only find different numbers of objects leading to a scatter of up to 20 per cent in the halo mass and Vmax function, but also that the particulars of those objects that are identified by all finders differ. The strength of the variation, however, depends on the property studied, e.g. the scatter in position, bulk velocity, mass, and the peak value of the rotation curve is practically below a few per cent, whereas derived quantities such as spin and shape show larger deviations. Our study indicates that the prime contribution to differences in halo properties across codes stems from the distinct particle collection methods and -- to a minor extent -- the particular aspects of how the procedure for removing unbound particles is implemented. We close with a discussion of the relevance and implications of the scatter across different codes for other fields such as semi-analytical galaxy formation models, gravitational lensing, and observables in general.

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arXiv2013

Systematic Effects in Interferometric Observations of the CMB Polarization

The detection of the primordial $B$-mode spectrum of the polarized cosmic microwave background (CMB) signal may provide a probe of inflation. However, observation of such a faint signal requires excellent control of systematic errors. Interferometry proves to be a promising approach for overcoming such a challenge. In this paper we present a complete simulation pipeline of interferometric observations of CMB polarization, including systematic errors. We employ two different methods for obtaining the power spectra from mock data produced by simulated observations: the maximum likelihood method and the method of Gibbs sampling. We show that the results from both methods are consistent with each other, as well as, within a factor of 6, with analytical estimates. Several categories of systematic errors are considered: instrumental errors, consisting of antenna gain and antenna coupling errors, and beam errors, consisting of antenna pointing errors, beam cross-polarization and beam shape (and size) errors. In order to recover the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, within a 10% tolerance level, which ensures the experiment is sensitive enough to detect the $B$-signal at $r=0.01$ in the multipole range $28 < \ell < 384$, we find that, for a QUBIC-like experiment, Gaussian-distributed systematic errors must be controlled with precisions of $|g_{rms}| = 0.1$ for antenna gain, $|ε_{rms}| = 5 \times 10^{-4}$ for antenna coupling, $δ_{rms} \approx 0.7^\circ$ for pointing, $ζ_{rms} \approx 0.7^\circ$ for beam shape, and $μ_{rms} = 5 \times 10^{-4}$ for beam cross-polarization.

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arXiv2013

Bayesian Inference of Polarized CMB Power Spectra from Interferometric Data

Detection of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is one of the frontiers of observational cosmology. Because they are an order of magnitude fainter than E-modes, it is quite a challenge to detect B-modes. Having more manageable systematics, interferometers prove to have a substantial advantage over imagers in detecting such faint signals. Here, we present a method for Bayesian inference of power spectra and signal reconstruction from interferometric data of the CMB polarization signal by using the technique of Gibbs sampling. We demonstrate the validity of the method in the flat-sky approximation for a simulation of an interferometric observation on a finite patch with incomplete uv-plane coverage, a finite beam size and a realistic noise model. With a computational complexity of O(n^{3/2}), n being the data size, Gibbs sampling provides an efficient method for analyzing upcoming cosmology observations.

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arXiv2012

A first application of the Alcock-Paczynski test to stacked cosmic voids

We report on the first application of the Alcock-Paczynski test to stacked voids in spectroscopic galaxy redshift surveys.We use voids from the Sutter et al. (2012) void catalog, which was derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 main sample and luminous red galaxy catalogs. The construction of that void catalog removes potential shape measurement bias by using a modified version of the ZOBOV algorithm and by removing voids near survey boundaries and masks. We apply the shape-fitting procedure presented in Lavaux & Wandelt (2012) to ten void stacks out to redshift z=0.36. Combining these measurements, we determine the mean cosmologically induced "stretch" of voids in three redshift bins, with 1-sigma errors of 5-15%. The mean stretch is consistent with unity, providing no indication of a distortion induced by peculiar velocities. While the statistical errors are too large to detect the Alcock-Paczynski effect over our limited redshift range, this proof-of-concept analysis defines procedures that can be applied to larger spectroscopic galaxy surveys at higher redshifts to constrain dark energy using the expected statistical isotropy of structures that are minimally affected by uncertainties in galaxy velocity bias.

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arXiv2012

Accelerating convolutions on the sphere with hybrid GPU/CPU kernel splitting

We present a general method for accelerating by more than an order of magnitude the convolution of pixelated function on the sphere with a radially-symmetric kernel. Our method splits the kernel into a compact real-space, and a compact spherical harmonic space component that can then be convolved in parallel using an inexpensive commodity GPU and a CPU, respectively. We provide models for the computational cost of both real-space and Fourier space convolutions and an estimate for the approximation error. Using these models we can determine the optimum split that minimizes the wall clock time for the convolution while satisfying the desired error bounds. We apply this technique to the problem of simulating a cosmic microwave background sky map at the resolution typical of the high resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies produced by the Planck space craft. For the main Planck CMB science channels we achieve a speedup of over a factor of ten, assuming an acceptable fractional rms error of order 10^-5 in the (power spectrum of the) output map.

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arXiv2012

A public void catalog from the SDSS DR7 Galaxy Redshift Surveys based on the watershed transform

We produce the most comprehensive public void catalog to date using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 main sample out to redshift z=0.2 and the luminous red galaxy sample out to z=0.44. Using a modified version of the parameter-free void finder ZOBOV, we fully take into account the presence of the survey boundary and masks. Our strategy for finding voids is thus appropriate for any survey configuration. We produce two distinct catalogs: a complete catalog including voids near any masks, which would be appropriate for void galaxy surveys, and a bias-free catalog of voids away from any masks, which is necessary for analyses that require a fair sampling of void shapes and alignments. Our discovered voids have effective radii from 5 to 135 h^-1 Mpc. We discuss basic catalog statistics such as number counts and redshift distributions and describe some additional data products derived from our catalog, such as radial density profiles and projected density maps. We find that radial profiles of stacked voids show a qualitatively similar behavior across nearly two decades of void radii and throughout the full redshift range.

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arXiv2012

A first estimate of radio halo statistics from large-scale cosmological simulation

We present a first estimate based on a cosmological gasdynamics simulation of galaxy cluster radio halo counts to be expected in forthcoming low-frequency radio surveys. Our estimate is based on a FLASH simulation of the LCDM model for which we have assigned radio power to clusters via a model that relates radio emissivity to cluster magnetic field strength, intracluster turbulence, and density. We vary several free parameters of this model and find that radio halo number counts vary by up to a factor of two for average magnetic fields ranging from 0.2 to 3.1 uG. However, we predict significantly fewer low-frequency radio halos than expected from previous semi-analytic estimates, although this discrepancy could be explained by frequency-dependent radio halo probabilities as predicted in reacceleration models. We find that upcoming surveys will have difficulty in distinguishing models because of large uncertainties and low number counts. Additionally, according to our modeling we find that expected number counts can be degenerate with both reacceleration and hadronic secondary models of cosmic ray generation. We find that relations between radio power and mass and X-ray luminosity may be used to distinguish models, and by building mock radio sky maps we demonstrate that surveys such as LOFAR may have sufficient resolution and sensitivity to break this model degeneracy by imaging many individual clusters.

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arXiv2012

Bayesian angular power spectrum analysis of interferometric data

We present a Bayesian angular power spectrum and signal map inference engine which can be adapted to interferometric observations of anisotropies inthe cosmic microwave background, 21 cm emission line mapping of galactic brightness fluctuations, or 21 cm absorption line mapping of neutral hydrogen in the dark ages. The method uses Gibbs sampling to generate a sampled representation of the angular power spectrum posterior and the posterior of signal maps given a set of measured visibilities in the uv-plane. We use a mock interferometric CMB observation to demonstrate the validity of this method in the flat-sky approximation when adapted to take into account arbitrary coverage of the uv-plane, mode-mode correlations due to observations on a finite patch, and heteroschedastic visibility errors. The computational requirements scale as O(n_p log n_p) where n_p measures the ratio of the size of the detector array to the inter-detector spacing, meaning that Gibbs sampling is a promising technique for meeting the data analysis requirements of future cosmology missions.

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