arXiv subjects

Rajib Saha

Publications and source records attributed to Rajib Saha.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Dark energy with oscillatory tracking potential: Observational Constraints and Perturbative effects

The cosmological models exhibiting tracker properties have great significance in the context of dark energy as they can reach the present value of dark energy density from a wide range of initial conditions, thereby alleviating both the fine-tuning and the cosmic coincidence problem. The $α$-attractors, which are originally discussed in the context of inflation, can exhibit the properties of dark energy as they can behave like cosmological trackers at early times and show the late time behaviour of a cosmological constant. In the present paper, we study the Oscillatory Tracker Model (OTM), which belongs to the family of $α$-attractor dark energy models. Using the current observational data sets like Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) and type 1a supernova data (Pantheon compilation), we constrain the parameters of the model and estimate both the mean and best-fit values. Although the oscillatory tracker model contains a larger set of parameters than the usual LCDM model, the common set of parameters of both agree within $1\, σ$ error limits. Our observations using both high redshift and low redshift data supports Hubble parameter value $H_0 = 67.4$ Kms$^{-1}$Mpc$^{-1}$. We study the effect of the OTM on the CMB temperature and polarization power spectra, matter power spectrum and $f σ_8$. Our analysis of the CMB power spectrum and matter power spectrum suggests that the oscillatory tracker dark energy model has noticeable differences from usual LCDM predictions. Yet, in most cases, the agreement is very close.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Investigating non-Gaussianity in Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Maps using Spherical Harmonic Phases

In this article, we extend previous studies based on CMB spherical harmonic phases (SHP) to examine the validity of the hypothesis that the temperature field of the CMB is consistent with a Gaussian random field (GRF). The null hypothesis is that the corresponding CMB SHP are independent and identically distributed in terms of a uniform distribution in the interval [0, 2$π$] \citep{1986ApJ...304...15B,2013rossmanith}. We devise a new model-independent method where we use ordered and non-parametric Rao's statistic, based on sample arc-lengths to comprehensively test uniformity and independence of SHP. We performed our analysis on the scales limited by spherical harmonic modes $\le$ 128, to restrict ourselves to signal-dominated regions. To find the non-uniform or dependent sets of SHP, we calculate the statistic for the data and 10000 Monte Carlo simulated uniformly random sets of SHP and use 0.05 and 0.001 $α$ levels to distinguish between statistically significant and highly significant detections. We first establish the performance of our method using simulated Gaussian, non-Gaussian CMB temperature maps, along with observed non-Gaussian 100 and 143 GHz Planck channel maps. We find that our method performs efficiently and accurately in detecting phase correlations generated in all of the non-Gaussian simulations and observed foreground contaminated 100 and 143 GHz Planck channel temperature maps. We apply our method on the Planck satellite mission's final released CMB temperature anisotropy maps- COMMANDER, SMICA, NILC, and SEVEM along with WMAP 9 year released ILC map. We report that SHP corresponding to some of the $m$-modes is non-uniform, some of the $\ell$ mode SHP and neighboring mode pair SHP are correlated in cleaned CMB maps. The detection of non-uniformity or correlation in the SHP indicates the presence of non-Gaussian signals in the foreground minimized CMB maps.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

A Partial-Sky Gibbs ILC Approach for the Estimation of CMB Posterior over Large Angular Scales of the Sky

In this article we present a formalism to incorporate the partial-sky maps to the Gibbs ILC algorithm to estimate the joint posterior density of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) signal and the theoretical CMB angular power spectrum given the observed CMB maps. In order to generate the partial-sky maps we mask all the observed CMB maps provided by WMAP and Planck satellite mission using a Gaussian smoothed mask formed on the basis of thermal dust emissions in Planck 353 GHz map. The central galactic region from all the input maps is removed after the application of the smoothed mask. While implementing the Gibbs ILC method on the partial-sky maps, we convert the partial-sky cleaned angular power spectrum to the full-sky angular power spectrum using the mode-mode coupling matrix estimated from the smoothed mask. The main products of our analysis are partial-sky cleaned best-fit CMB map and an estimate of the underlying full-sky theoretical CMB angular power spectrum along with their error estimates. We validate the methodology by performing detailed Monte Carlo simulations after using realistic models of foregrounds and detector noise consistent with the WMAP and Planck frequency channels used in our analysis. We can estimate the posterior density and full-sky theoretical CMB angular power spectrum, without any need to explicitly model the foreground components, from partial-sky maps using our method. Another important feature of this method is that the power spectrum results along with the error estimates can be directly used for cosmological parameter estimations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

An Unbiased Estimator of the Full-sky CMB Angular Power Spectrum at Large Scales using Neural Networks

Accurate estimation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) angular power spectrum is enticing due to the prospect for precision cosmology it presents. Galactic foreground emissions, however, contaminate the CMB signal and need to be subtracted reliably in order to lessen systematic errors on the CMB temperature estimates. Typically bright foregrounds in a region lead to further uncertainty in temperature estimates in the area even after some foreground removal technique is performed and hence determining the underlying full-sky angular power spectrum poses a challenge. We explore the feasibility of utilizing artificial neural networks to predict the angular power spectrum of the full sky CMB temperature maps from the observed angular power spectrum of the partial sky in which CMB temperatures in some bright foreground regions are masked. We present our analysis at large angular scales with two different masks. We produce unbiased predictions of the full-sky angular power spectrum and recover the underlying theoretical power spectrum using neural networks. Our predictions are also uncorrelated to a large extent. We further show that the multipole-space covariances of the predictions of full-sky spectra made by the ANNs are much smaller than those of the estimates obtained using the pseudo-$C_\ell$ method.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Voltage tunable quantum dot array by patterned Ge-nanowire based metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices

Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are being regarded as the primary unit for a wide range of advanced and emerging technologies including electronics, optoelectronics, photovoltaics and biosensing applications as well as the domain of q-bits based quantum information processing. Such QDs are suitable for several novel device applications for their unique property of confining carriers 3-dimensionally creating discrete quantum states. However, the realization of such QDs in practice exhibits serious challenge regarding their fabrication in array with desired scalability and repeatability as well as control over the quantum states at room temperature. In this context, the current work reports the fabrication of an array of highly scaled Ge-nanowire (radius ~25 nm) based vertical metal-oxide-semiconductor devices that can operate as voltage tunable quantum dots at room temperature. The electrons in such nanowire experience a geometrical confinement in the radial direction, whereas, they can be confined axially by tuning the applied bias in order to manipulate the quantum states. Such quantum confinement of electrons has been confirmed from the step-like responses in the room temperature capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics at relatively low frequency (200 kHz). Each of such steps has observed to encompass convolution of the quantized states occupying ~6 electronic charges. The details of such carrier confinement are analyzed in the current work by theoretically modeling the device transport properties based on non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

A Bayesian ILC method for CMB B-mode posterior estimation and reconstruction of primordial gravity wave signal

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation B mode polarization signal contains the unique signature of primordial metric perturbations produced during the inflation. The separation of the weak CMB B-mode signal from strong foreground contamination in observed maps is a complex task, and proposed new generation low noise satellite missions compete with the weak signal level of this gravitational background. In this article, for the first time, we employ a foreground model-independent internal linear combination (ILC) method to reconstruct the CMB B mode signal using simulated observations over large angular scales of the sky of 6 frequency bands of future generation CMB mission Probe of Inflation and Cosmic Origins (PICO). We estimate the joint CMB B mode posterior density following the interleaving Gibbs steps of B mode angular power spectrum and cleaned map samples using the ILC method. We extend and improve the earlier reported Bayesian ILC method to analyze weak CMB B mode reconstruction by introducing noise bias corrections at two stages during the ILC weight estimation. By performing $200$ Monte Carlo simulations of the Bayesian ILC method, we find that our method can reconstruct the CMB signals and the joint posterior density accurately over large angular scales of the sky. We estimate Blackwell-Rao statistics of the marginal density of CMB B mode angular power spectrum and use them to estimate the joint density of scalar to tensor ratio $r$ and a lensing power spectrum amplitude $A^{\textrm{lens}}$. Using $200$ Monte Carlo simulations of the delensing approach, we find that our method can achieve an unbiased detection of the primordial gravitational wave signal $r$ with more than 8$σ$ significance for levels of $r \geqslant 0.01$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

A Foreground Model Independent Estimation of Joint Posterior of CMB E mode Polarization over Large Angular Scales

Ever since Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) signal is being measured by various satellites based observations with increasing experimental accuracies there has been a parallel increase in the demand for a CMB reconstruction technique which can provide accurate estimates of CMB signal and the theoretical angular power spectrum along with reliable statistical error estimates associated with them. In this work, we estimate the joint posterior of CMB E mode signal (S) and corresponding theoretical angular power spectrum (C^E_l) over large angular scales given the simulated polarization observations of future generation COrE satellite mission. To generate samples from the joint distribution we employ the ILC technique with prior information of CMB E mode covariance matrix augmented by a Gibbs sampling technique. We estimate the marginalized densities of S and C^E_l using the samples from full-posterior. The best fit cleaned E mode map and the corresponding angular power spectrum agree well with the input E mode map and the sky power spectrum implying accurate reconstruction using COrE like observations. Using the samples C^E_l of all Gibbs chains we estimate the likelihood function P(C^E_l|D) of any arbitrary C^E_l given simulated observed maps (D) of COrE mission following Blackwell-Rao estimator. The likelihood function can be seamlessly integrated to the cosmological parameter estimation method. Apart from producing an accurate estimate of E mode signal over large angular scales our method also builds a connection between the component reconstruction and reliable cosmological parameter estimation using CMB E mode observations over large angular scales. The entire method does not assume any explicit models for E mode foreground components in order to remove them, which is an attractive property since foreground modelling uncertainty does not pose as a challenge in this case.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

An Accurate Reconstruction of CMB E Mode Signal over Large Angular Scales using Prior Information of CMB Covariance Matrix in ILC Algorithm

In the recent years, the internal-linear-combination (ILC) method was investigated extensively in the context of reconstruction of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy signal using observations obtained by WMAP and Planck satellite missions. In this article, we, for the first time, apply the ILC method to reconstruct the large scale CMB E mode polarization signal, which serves as the unique probe of ionization history of the Universe, using simulated observations of 15 frequency CMB polarization maps of future generation COrE satellite mission. We find that usual ILC cleaned E mode map is highly erroneous due to presence of a chance-correlation between CMB and astrophysical foreground components in the empirical covariance matrix which is used to estimate the weight factors. The cleaned angular power spectrum for E mode is strongly biased and erroneous due to these chance correlation factors. In order to address the issues of bias and errors we extend and improve the usual ILC method for CMB E mode reconstruction by incorporating prior information of theoretical E mode angular power spectrum while estimating the weights for linear combination of input maps. Using the E mode covariance matrix effectively suppresses the CMB-foreground chance correlation power leading to an accurate reconstruction of cleaned CMB E mode map and its angular power spectrum. We provide a comparative study of the performance of the usual ILC and the new method over large angular scales of the sky and show that the later produces significantly statistically improved results than the former. The new E mode CMB angular power spectrum contains neither any significant negative bias at the low multipoles nor any positive foreground bias at relatively higher mutlipoles. The error estimates of the cleaned spectrum agree very well with the cosmic variance induced error.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

On the Impact of Random Residual Calibration Error on the Gibbs ILC Estimates over Large Angular Scales

Residual error in calibration coefficients corresponding to observed CMB maps is an important issue while estimating a pure CMB signal. A component separation method, if these errors in the input foreground contaminated CMB maps are not properly taken into account, may lead to bias in the cleaned CMB map and estimated CMB angular power spectrum. But the inability to exactly determine the calibration coefficients corresponding to each observed CMB map from any CMB experiment makes it very difficult to incorporate their exact and actual values in a component separation analysis. Hence the effect of any random and residual calibration error on the cleaned CMB map and its angular power spectrum of a component separation problem can only be understood by performing detailed Monte Carlo simulations. In this paper, we investigate the impact of using input foreground contaminated CMB maps with random calibration errors on posterior density of cleaned CMB map and theoretical CMB angular power spectrum over large angular scales of the sky following the Gibbs ILC method proposed by \cite{Sudevan:2018qyj}. By performing detailed Monte Carlo simulations of WMAP and Planck temperature anisotropy observations with calibration errors compatible with them we show that the best-fit map corresponding to posterior maximum is minimally biased in Gibbs ILC method by a CMB normalization bias and residual foreground bias. The bias in best-fit CMB angular power spectrum with respect to the case where no calibration error is present are $\sim 28 μK^2$ and $-4.7 μK^2$ respectively between $2 \le \ell \le 15$ and $16 \le \ell \le 32$. The calibration error induced error in best-fit power spectrum causes an overall $6\%$ increase of the net error when added in quadrature with the cosmic variance induced error.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

An Application of Global ILC Algorithm over Large Angular Scales to Estimate CMB Posterior Using Gibbs Sampling

In this work, we formalize a new technique to investigate joint posterior density of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) signal and its theoretical angular power spectrum given the observed data, using the global internal-linear-combination (ILC) method first proposed by Sudevan & Saha (2017). We implement the method on low resolution CMB maps observed by WMAP and Planck satellite missions, using Gibbs sampling, assuming that the detector noise is negligible on large angular scales of the sky. The main products of our analysis are best fit CMB cleaned map and its theoretical angular power spectrum along with their error estimates. We validate the methodology by performing Monte Carlo simulations that includes realistic foreground models and noise levels consistent with WMAP and Planck observations. Our method has an unique advantage that the posterior density is obtained without any need to explicitly model foreground components. Secondly, the power spectrum results with the error estimates can be directly used for cosmological parameter estimations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

A Global ILC Approach in Pixel Space over Large Angular Scales of the Sky using CMB Covariance Matrix

We propose a new internal linear combination (ILC) method in the pixel space, applicable on large angular scales of the sky, to estimate a foreground minimized Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy map by incorporating prior knowledge about the theoretical CMB covariance matrix. Usual ILC method in pixel space, on the contrary, does not use any information about the underlying CMB covariance matrix. The new approach complements the usual pixel space ILC technique specifically at low multipole region, using global information available from theoretical CMB covariance matrix as well as from the data. Since we apply our method over the large scale on the sky containing low multipoles we perform foreground minimization globally. We apply our methods on low resolution Planck and WMAP foreground contaminated CMB maps and validate the methodology by performing detailed Monte-Carlo simulations. Our cleaned CMB map and its power spectrum have significantly less error than those obtained following usual ILC technique at low resolution that does not use CMB covariance information. Another very important advantage of our method is that the cleaned power spectrum does not have any negative bias at the low multipoles because of effective suppression of CMB-foreground chance correlations on large angular scales of the sky. Our cleaned CMB map and its power spectrum match well with those estimated by other research groups.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Separating CMB Stokes Q and U polarization signals from Non-Gaussian Emissions

In this paper we estimate diffuse foreground minimized Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Stokes Q and U polarization maps based upon the fundamental concept of Gaussian nature of CMB and strong non-Gaussian nature of astrophysical polarized foregrounds using WMAP nine year published polarization maps. We excise regions of the sky that define position of the known point sources, regions that are strongly contaminated by either the detector noise or by the diffuse foregrounds or both, and then perform foreground minimizations over the surviving sky regions that constitute approximately $50\%$ of the full sky area. We critically evaluate performance of foreground minimizations in several ways and show that our foreground minimization method removes significant foregrounds from input maps. The cleaned Stokes \{Q, U\} polarization maps have less EE and BB power from relevant sky region compared to WMAP foreground-reduced Stokes \{Q, U\} polarization maps at different multipole ranges. We validate our methodology by performing detailed Monte Carlo simulations. The main driving machinery of our method is an internal-linear-combination (ILC) approach, however, unlike simple variance minimization performed in usual ILC method, the core of the method being dependent on the theoretically well motivated concept of Gaussianity of CMB polarization a direct connection is established between observations and models of inflation. Additionally, the method, like the usual ILC method, is independent on modeling uncertainties of polarized foregrounds. It will be useful to apply our method in future generation low-noise CMB polarization experiments.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

An Improved Diffuse Foreground Subtraction by ILC method: CMB Map and Angular Power Spectrum using Planck and WMAP Observations

We report an improved technique for diffuse foreground minimization from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps using a new multi-phase iterative internal-linear-combination (ILC) approach in harmonic space. The new procedure consists of two phases. In phase 1, a diffuse foreground cleaned map is obtained by performing a usual ILC operation in the harmonic space in a single iteration over the desired portion of the sky. In phase 2, we obtain the final foreground cleaned map using an iterative ILC approach also in the harmonic space, however, now, during each iteration of foreground minimization, some of the regions of the sky that are not being cleaned in the current iteration, are replaced by the corresponding cleaned portions of the phase 1 cleaned map. The new ILC method nullifies a foreground leakage signal that is otherwise inevitably present in the old and usual harmonic space iterative ILC method. The new method is flexible to handle input frequency maps, irrespective of whether or not they initially have the same instrumental and pixel resolution, by bringing them to a common and maximum possible beam and pixel resolution at the beginning of the analysis. This dramatically reduces data redundancy and hence memory usage and computational cost. During the ILC weight calculation it avoids any need to deconvolve partial sky spherical harmonic coefficients by the beam and pixel window functions, which in strict mathematical sense, is not well-defined for azimuthally symmetric window functions. Using WMAP 9-year and Planck-2015 published frequency maps we obtain a pair of foreground cleaned CMB maps and CMB angular power spectrum. Our power spectrum match well with Planck-2015 results, with some difference. Finally, we show that the weights for ILC foreground minimization have an intrinsic characteristic that it tends to produce a statistically isotropic CMB map as well.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

A Perturbative Analysis of Synchrotron Spectral Index Variation over Microwave Sky

In this paper, we implement a perturbative approach, first proposed by Bouchet & Gispert (1999), to estimate variation of spectral index of galactic polarized synchrotron emission, using linear combination of simulated Stokes Q polarization maps of selected frequency bands from WMAP and Planck observations on a region of sky dominated by the synchrotron Stokes Q signal. We find that, a first order perturbative analysis recovers input spectral index map well. Along with the spectral index variation map our method provides a fixed reference index, \hat β_{0s}, over the sky portion being analyzed. Using Monte Carlo simulations we find that, <\hat β_{0s}> = -2.84 \pm 0.01, which matches very closely with position of a peak at β_s(p) = -2.85, of empirical probability density function of input synchrotron indices, obtained from the same sky region. For thermal dust, mean recovered spectral index, <\hat β_d> = 2.00 \pm 0.004, from simulations, matches very well with spatially fixed input thermal dust spectral index β_d = 2.00. As accompanying results of the method we also reconstruct CMB, thermal dust and a synchrotron template component with fixed spectral indices over the {\it entire} sky region. We use full pixel-pixel noise covariance matrices of all frequency bands, estimated from the sky region being analyzed, to obtain reference spectral indices for synchrotron and thermal dust, spectral index variation map, CMB map, thermal dust and synchrotron template components. The perturbative technique as implemented in this work has the interesting property that it can build a model to describe the data with an arbitrary but enough degree of accuracy (and precession) as allowed by the data. We argue that, our method of reference spectral index determination, CMB map, thermal dust and synchrotron template component reconstruction is a maximum likelihood method.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Analysis of WMAP 7-year Temperature Data: Astrophysics of the Galactic Haze

We analyse WMAP 7-year temperature data, jointly modeling the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Galactic foreground emission. We use the Commander code based on Gibbs sampling. Thus, from the WMAP7 data, we derive simultaneously the CMB and Galactic components on scales larger than 1deg with sensitivity improved relative to previous work. We conduct a detailed study of the low-frequency foreground with particular focus on the "microwave haze" emission around the Galactic center. We demonstrate improved performance in quantifying the diffuse galactic emission when Haslam 408MHz data are included together with WMAP7, and the spinning and thermal dust emission is modeled jointly. We also address the question of whether the hypothetical galactic haze can be explained by a spatial variation of the synchrotron spectral index. The excess of emission around the Galactic center appears stable with respect to variations of the foreground model that we study. Our results demonstrate that the new galactic foreground component - the microwave haze - is indeed present.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2011

A Foreground Cleaned CMB Map from Non-Gaussianity Measurement

In this paper we present a new method to estimate a foreground cleaned Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) map at a resolution of $1^\circ$ by minimizing the non-Gaussian properties of the cleaned map which arise dominantly due to diffuse foreground emission components from the Milky Way. We employ simple kurtosis statistic as the measure of non-Gaussian properties and perform a linear combination of 5 frequency maps provided by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in its 7 year data release in such a way that the cleaned map has a minimum kurtosis which leads to a non-Gaussianity minimized, foreground cleaned CMB map. We validate the method by performing Monte-Carlo simulations. To minimize any residual foreground contamination from the cleaned map we flag out region near the galactic plane based upon results from simulations. Outside the masked region our new estimate of CMB map matches well with the WMAP's ILC map. A simple pseudo-$C_l$ based CMB TT power spectrum derived from the non-gaussianity minimized map reproduces the earlier results of WMAP's power spectrum. {\it An important advantage of the method is that it does not introduce any negative bias in angular power spectrum in low multipole regime, unlike usual ILC method.} Comparing our results with the previously published results we argue that CMB results are robust with respect to specific foreground removal algorithms employed.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

CMB Polarization and Temperature Power Spectra Estimation using Linear Combination of WMAP 5-year Maps

We estimate CMB polarization and temperature power spectra using WMAP 5-year foreground contaminated maps. The power spectrum is estimated by using a model independent method, which does not utilize directly the diffuse foreground templates nor the detector noise model. The method essentially consists of two steps, (i) removal of diffuse foregrounds contamination by making linear combination of individual maps in harmonic space and (ii) cross-correlation of foreground cleaned maps to minimize detector noise bias. For temperature power spectrum we also estimate and subtract residual unresolved point source contamination in the cross-power spectrum using the point source model provided by the WMAP science team. Our $TT$, $TE$ and $EE$ power spectra are in good agreement with the published results of the WMAP science team. The error bars on the polarization power spectra, however, turn out to be smaller in comparison to what is obtained by the WMAP science team. We perform detailed numerical simulations to test for bias in our procedure. We find that the bias is small in all cases. A negative bias at low $l$ in $TT$ power spectrum has been pointed in an earlier publication. We find that the bias corrected quadrupole power ($l(l+1)C_l/2π)$ is 532 $μK^2$, approximately 2.5 times the estimate (213.4 $μK^2$) made by the WMAP team.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

Model Independent Foreground Power Spectrum Estimation using WMAP 5-year Data

In this paper, we propose & implement on WMAP 5-year data, a model independent approach of foreground power spectrum estimation for multifrequency observations of CMB experiments. Recently a model independent approach of CMB power spectrum estimation was proposed by Saha et al. 2006. This methodology demonstrates that CMB power spectrum can be reliably estimated solely from WMAP data without assuming any template models for the foreground components. In the current paper, we extend this work to estimate the galactic foreground power spectrum using the WMAP 5 year maps following a self contained analysis. We apply the model independent method in harmonic basis to estimate the foreground power spectrum and frequency dependence of combined foregrounds. We also study the behaviour of synchrotron spectral index variation over different regions of the sky. We compare our results with those obtained from MEM foreground maps which are formed in pixel space. We find that relative to our model independent estimates MEM maps overestimates the foreground power close to galactic plane and underestimates it at high latitudes.

astro-ph.CO↗