arXiv subjects

T. Giannantonio

Publications and source records attributed to T. Giannantonio.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Constraints on extensions to $Λ$CDM with weak lensing and galaxy clustering

We constrain extensions to the $Λ$CDM model using measurements from the Dark Energy Survey's first three years of observations and external data. The DES data are the two-point correlation functions of weak gravitational lensing, galaxy clustering, and their cross-correlation. We use simulated data and blind analyses of real data to validate the robustness of our results. In many cases, constraining power is limited by the absence of nonlinear predictions that are reliable at our required precision. The models are: dark energy with a time-dependent equation of state, non-zero spatial curvature, sterile neutrinos, modifications of gravitational physics, and a binned $σ_8(z)$ model which serves as a probe of structure growth. For the time-varying dark energy equation of state evaluated at the pivot redshift we find $(w_{\rm p}, w_a)= (-0.99^{+0.28}_{-0.17},-0.9\pm 1.2)$ at 68% confidence with $z_{\rm p}=0.24$ from the DES measurements alone, and $(w_{\rm p}, w_a)= (-1.03^{+0.04}_{-0.03},-0.4^{+0.4}_{-0.3})$ with $z_{\rm p}=0.21$ for the combination of all data considered. Curvature constraints of $Ω_k=0.0009\pm 0.0017$ and effective relativistic species $N_{\rm eff}=3.10^{+0.15}_{-0.16}$ are dominated by external data. For massive sterile neutrinos, we improve the upper bound on the mass $m_{\rm eff}$ by a factor of three compared to previous analyses, giving 95% limits of $(ΔN_{\rm eff},m_{\rm eff})\leq (0.28, 0.20\, {\rm eV})$. We also constrain changes to the lensing and Poisson equations controlled by functions $Σ(k,z) = Σ_0 Ω_Λ(z)/Ω_{Λ,0}$ and $μ(k,z)=μ_0 Ω_Λ(z)/Ω_{Λ,0}$ respectively to $Σ_0=0.6^{+0.4}_{-0.5}$ from DES alone and $(Σ_0,μ_0)=(0.04\pm 0.05,0.08^{+0.21}_{-0.19})$ for the combination of all data. Overall, we find no significant evidence for physics beyond $Λ$CDM.

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arXiv2023

A measurement of the mean central optical depth of galaxy clusters via the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with SPT-3G and DES

We infer the mean optical depth of a sample of optically-selected galaxy clusters from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) via the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect. The pairwise kSZ signal between pairs of clusters drawn from the DES Year-3 cluster catalog is detected at $4.1 σ$ in cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps from two years of observations with the SPT-3G camera on the South Pole Telescope. After cuts, there are 24,580 clusters in the $\sim 1,400$ deg$^2$ of the southern sky observed by both experiments. We infer the mean optical depth of the cluster sample with two techniques. The optical depth inferred from the pairwise kSZ signal is $\barτ_e = (2.97 \pm 0.73) \times 10^{-3}$, while that inferred from the thermal SZ signal is $\barτ_e = (2.51 \pm 0.55^{\text{stat}} \pm 0.15^{\rm syst}) \times 10^{-3}$. The two measures agree at $0.6 σ$. We perform a suite of systematic checks to test the robustness of the analysis.

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arXiv2022

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Measurement of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations with Three-dimensional Clustering

The three-dimensional correlation function offers an effective way to summarize the correlation of the large-scale structure even for imaging galaxy surveys. We have applied the projected three-dimensional correlation function, $ξ_{\rm p}$ to measure the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) scale on the first-three years Dark Energy Survey data. The sample consists of about 7 million galaxies in the redshift range $ 0.6 < z_{\rm p } < 1.1 $ over a footprint of $4108 \, \mathrm{deg}^2 $. Our theory modeling includes the impact of realistic true redshift distributions beyond Gaussian photo-$z$ approximation. To increase the signal-to-noise of the measurements, a Gaussian stacking window function is adopted in place of the commonly used top-hat. Using the full sample, $ D_{\rm M}(z_{\rm eff} ) / r_{\rm s} $, the ratio between the comoving angular diameter distance and the sound horizon, is constrained to be $ 19.00 \pm 0.67 $ (top-hat) and $ 19.15 \pm 0.58 $ (Gaussian) at $z_{\rm eff} = 0.835$. The constraint is weaker than the angular correlation $w$ constraint ($18.84 \pm 0.50$) because the BAO signals are heterogeneous across redshift. When a homogeneous BAO-signal sub-sample in the range $ 0.7 < z_{\rm p } < 1.0 $ ($z_{\rm eff} = 0.845$) is considered, $ξ_{\rm p} $ yields $ 19.80 \pm 0.67 $ (top-hat) and $ 19.84 \pm 0.53 $ (Gaussian). The latter is mildly stronger than the $w$ constraint ($19.86 \pm 0.55 $). We find that the $ξ_{\rm p} $ results are more sensitive to photo-$z$ errors than $w$ because $ξ_{\rm p}$ keeps the three-dimensional clustering information causing it to be more prone to photo-$z$ noise. The Gaussian window gives more robust results than the top-hat as the former is designed to suppress the low signal modes. $ξ_{\rm p}$ and the angular statistics such as $w$ have their own pros and cons, and they serve an important crosscheck with each other.

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arXiv2022

Cross-correlation of DES Y3 lensing and ACT/${\it Planck}$ thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich Effect II: Modeling and constraints on halo pressure profiles

Hot, ionized gas leaves an imprint on the cosmic microwave background via the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. The cross-correlation of gravitational lensing (which traces the projected mass) with the tSZ effect (which traces the projected gas pressure) is a powerful probe of the thermal state of ionized baryons throughout the Universe, and is sensitive to effects such as baryonic feedback. In a companion paper (Gatti et al. 2021), we present tomographic measurements and validation tests of the cross-correlation between galaxy shear measurements from the first three years of observations of the Dark Energy Survey, and tSZ measurements from a combination of Atacama Cosmology Telescope and ${\it Planck}$ observations. In this work, we use the same measurements to constrain models for the pressure profiles of halos across a wide range of halo mass and redshift. We find evidence for reduced pressure in low mass halos, consistent with predictions for the effects of feedback from active galactic nuclei. We infer the hydrostatic mass bias ($B \equiv M_{500c}/M_{\rm SZ}$) from our measurements, finding $B = 1.8\pm0.1$ when adopting the ${\it Planck}$-preferred cosmological parameters. We additionally find that our measurements are consistent with a non-zero redshift evolution of $B$, with the correct sign and sufficient magnitude to explain the mass bias necessary to reconcile cluster count measurements with the ${\it Planck}$-preferred cosmology. Our analysis introduces a model for the impact of intrinsic alignments (IA) of galaxy shapes on the shear-tSZ correlation. We show that IA can have a significant impact on these correlations at current noise levels.

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arXiv2022

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: cosmology with moments of weak lensing mass maps

We present a cosmological analysis using the second and third moments of the weak lensing mass (convergence) maps from the first three years of data (Y3) data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The survey spans an effective area of 4139 square degrees and uses the images of over 100 million galaxies to reconstruct the convergence field. The second moment of the convergence as a function of smoothing scale contains information similar to standard shear 2-point statistics. The third moment, or the skewness, contains additional non-Gaussian information. The data is analysed in the context of the $Λ$CDM model, varying 5 cosmological parameters and 19 nuisance parameters modelling astrophysical and measurement systematics. Our modelling of the observables is completely analytical, and has been tested with simulations in our previous methodology study. We obtain a 1.7\% measurement of the amplitude of fluctuations parameter $S_8\equiv σ_8 (Ω_m/0.3)^{0.5} = 0.784\pm 0.013$. The measurements are shown to be internally consistent across redshift bins, angular scales, and between second and third moments. In particular, the measured third moment is consistent with the expectation of gravitational clustering under the $Λ$CDM model. The addition of the third moment improves the constraints on $S_8$ and $Ω_{\rm m}$ by $\sim$15\% and $\sim$25\% compared to an analysis that only uses second moments. We compare our results with {\it Planck} constraints from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), finding a $2.2$ \textendash $2.8σ$ tension in the full parameter space, depending on the combination of moments considered. The third moment independently is in $2.8σ$ tension with {\it Planck}, and thus provides a cross-check on analyses of 2-point correlations.

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arXiv2022

Superclustering with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and Dark Energy Survey: I. Evidence for thermal energy anisotropy using oriented stacking

The cosmic web contains filamentary structure on a wide range of scales. On the largest scales, superclustering aligns multiple galaxy clusters along inter-cluster bridges, visible through their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signal in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We demonstrate a new, flexible method to analyze the hot gas signal from multi-scale extended structures. We use a Compton-$y$ map from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) stacked on redMaPPer cluster positions from the optical Dark Energy Survey (DES). Cutout images from the $y$ map are oriented with large-scale structure information from DES galaxy data such that the superclustering signal is aligned before being overlaid. We find evidence for an extended quadrupole moment of the stacked $y$ signal at the 3.5$σ$ level, demonstrating that the large-scale thermal energy surrounding galaxy clusters is anisotropically distributed. We compare our ACT$\times$DES results with the Buzzard simulations, finding broad agreement. Using simulations, we highlight the promise of this novel technique for constraining the evolution of anisotropic, non-Gaussian structure using future combinations of microwave and optical surveys.

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arXiv2022

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: imprints of cosmic voids and superclusters in the Planck CMB lensing map

The CMB lensing signal from cosmic voids and superclusters probes the growth of structure in the low-redshift cosmic web. In this analysis, we cross-correlated the Planck CMB lensing map with voids detected in the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 (Y3) data set ($\sim$5,000 deg$^{2}$), expanding on previous measurements that used Y1 catalogues ($\sim$1,300 deg$^{2}$). Given the increased statistical power compared to Y1 data, we report a $6.6σ$ detection of negative CMB convergence ($κ$) imprints using approximately 3,600 voids detected from a redMaGiC luminous red galaxy sample. However, the measured signal is lower than expected from the MICE N-body simulation that is based on the $Λ$CDM model (parameters $Ω_{\rm m} = 0.25$, $σ_8 = 0.8$), and the discrepancy is associated mostly with the void centre region. Considering the full void lensing profile, we fit an amplitude $A_κ=κ_{\rm DES}/κ_{\rm MICE}$ to a simulation-based template with fixed shape and found a moderate $2σ$ deviation in the signal with $A_κ\approx0.79\pm0.12$. We also examined the WebSky simulation that is based on a Planck 2018 $Λ$CDM cosmology, but the results were even less consistent given the slightly higher matter density fluctuations than in MICE. We then identified superclusters in the DES and the MICE catalogues, and detected their imprints at the $8.4σ$ level; again with a lower-than-expected $A_κ=0.84\pm0.10$ amplitude. The combination of voids and superclusters yields a $10.3σ$ detection with an $A_κ=0.82\pm0.08$ constraint on the CMB lensing amplitude, thus the overall signal is $2.3σ$ weaker than expected from MICE.

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arXiv2022

Joint analysis of DES Year 3 data and CMB lensing from SPT and Planck III: Combined cosmological constraints

We present cosmological constraints from the analysis of two-point correlation functions between galaxy positions and galaxy lensing measured in Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data and measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Planck. When jointly analyzing the DES-only two-point functions and the DES cross-correlations with SPT+Planck CMB lensing, we find $Ω_{\rm m} = 0.344\pm 0.030$ and $S_8 \equiv σ_8 (Ω_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.5} = 0.773\pm 0.016$, assuming $Λ$CDM. When additionally combining with measurements of the CMB lensing autospectrum, we find $Ω_{\rm m} = 0.306^{+0.018}_{-0.021}$ and $S_8 = 0.792\pm 0.012$. The high signal-to-noise of the CMB lensing cross-correlations enables several powerful consistency tests of these results, including comparisons with constraints derived from cross-correlations only, and comparisons designed to test the robustness of the galaxy lensing and clustering measurements from DES. Applying these tests to our measurements, we find no evidence of significant biases in the baseline cosmological constraints from the DES-only analyses or from the joint analyses with CMB lensing cross-correlations. However, the CMB lensing cross-correlations suggest possible problems with the correlation function measurements using alternative lens galaxy samples, in particular the redMaGiC galaxies and high-redshift MagLim galaxies, consistent with the findings of previous studies. We use the CMB lensing cross-correlations to identify directions for further investigating these problems.

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arXiv2022

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing

We present the first cosmology results from large-scale structure in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) spanning 5000 deg$^2$. We perform an analysis combining three two-point correlation functions (3$\times$2pt): (i) cosmic shear using 100 million source galaxies, (ii) galaxy clustering, and (iii) the cross-correlation of source galaxy shear with lens galaxy positions. The analysis was designed to mitigate confirmation or observer bias; we describe specific changes made to the lens galaxy sample following unblinding of the results. We model the data within the flat $Λ$CDM and $w$CDM cosmological models. We find consistent cosmological results between the three two-point correlation functions; their combination yields clustering amplitude $S_8=0.776^{+0.017}_{-0.017}$ and matter density $Ω_{\mathrm{m}} = 0.339^{+0.032}_{-0.031}$ in $Λ$CDM, mean with 68% confidence limits; $S_8=0.775^{+0.026}_{-0.024}$, $Ω_{\mathrm{m}} = 0.352^{+0.035}_{-0.041}$, and dark energy equation-of-state parameter $w=-0.98^{+0.32}_{-0.20}$ in $w$CDM. This combination of DES data is consistent with the prediction of the model favored by the Planck 2018 cosmic microwave background (CMB) primary anisotropy data, which is quantified with a probability-to-exceed $p=0.13$ to $0.48$. When combining DES 3$\times$2pt data with available baryon acoustic oscillation, redshift-space distortion, and type Ia supernovae data, we find $p=0.34$. Combining all of these data sets with Planck CMB lensing yields joint parameter constraints of $S_8 = 0.812^{+0.008}_{-0.008}$, $Ω_{\mathrm{m}} = 0.306^{+0.004}_{-0.005}$, $h=0.680^{+0.004}_{-0.003}$, and $\sum m_ν<0.13 \;\mathrm{eV\; (95\% \;CL)}$ in $Λ$CDM; $S_8 = 0.812^{+0.008}_{-0.008}$, $Ω_{\mathrm{m}} = 0.302^{+0.006}_{-0.006}$, $h=0.687^{+0.006}_{-0.007}$, and $w=-1.031^{+0.030}_{-0.027}$ in $w$CDM. (abridged)

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arXiv2022

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: A 2.7% measurement of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation distance scale at redshift 0.835

We present angular diameter measurements obtained by measuring the position of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in an optimised sample of galaxies from the first three years of Dark Energy Survey data (DES Y3). The sample consists of 7 million galaxies distributed over a footprint of 4100 deg$^2$ with $0.6 < z_{\rm photo} < 1.1$ and a typical redshift uncertainty of $0.03(1+z)$. The sample selection is the same as in the BAO measurement with the first year of DES data, but the analysis presented here uses three times the area, extends to higher redshift and makes a number of improvements, including a fully analytical BAO template, the use of covariances from both theory and simulations, and an extensive pre-unblinding protocol. We used two different statistics: angular correlation function and power spectrum, and validate our pipeline with an ensemble of over 1500 realistic simulations. Both statistics yield compatible results. We combine the likelihoods derived from angular correlations and spherical harmonics to constrain the ratio of comoving angular diameter distance $D_M$ at the effective redshift of our sample to the sound horizon scale at the drag epoch. We obtain $D_M(z_{\rm eff}=0.835)/r_{\rm d} = 18.92 \pm 0.51$, which is consistent with, but smaller than, the Planck prediction assuming flat \lcdm, at the level of $2.3 σ$. The analysis was performed blind and is robust to changes in a number of analysis choices. It represents the most precise BAO distance measurement from imaging data to date, and is competitive with the latest transverse ones from spectroscopic samples at $z>0.75$. When combined with DES 3x2pt + SNIa, they lead to improvements in $H_0$ and $Ω_m$ constraints by $\sim 20\%$

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arXiv2022

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Weak Lensing Shape Catalogue

We present and characterise the galaxy shape catalogue from the first 3 years of Dark Energy Survey (DES) observations, over an effective area of ~4143 deg$^2$ of the southern sky. We describe our data analysis process and our self-calibrating shear measurement pipeline METACALIBRATION, which builds and improves upon the pipeline used in the DES Year 1 analysis in several aspects. The DES Year 3 weak-lensing shape catalogue consists of 100,204,026 galaxies, measured in the $riz$ bands, resulting in a weighted source number density of $n_{\rm eff} = 5.59$ gal/arcmin$ ^{2}$ and corresponding shape noise $σ_e = 0.261$. We perform a battery of internal null tests on the catalogue, including tests on systematics related to the point-spread function (PSF) modelling, spurious catalogue B-mode signals, catalogue contamination, and galaxy properties.

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arXiv2022

Cosmological Constraints from DES Y1 Cluster Abundances and SPT Multi-wavelength data

We perform a joint analysis of the counts of redMaPPer clusters selected from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Y1 data and multi-wavelength follow-up data collected within the 2500 deg$^2$ South Pole Telescope (SPT) SZ survey. The SPT follow-up data, calibrating the richness--mass relation of the optically selected redMaPPer catalog, enable the cosmological exploitation of the DES cluster abundance data. To explore possible systematics related to the modeling of projection effects, we consider two calibrations of the observational scatter on richness estimates: a simple Gaussian model which account only for the background contamination (BKG), and a model which further includes contamination and incompleteness due to projection effects (PRJ). Assuming either a $Λ$CDM+$\sum m_ν$ or $w$CDM+$\sum m_ν$ cosmology, and for both scatter models, we derive cosmological constraints consistent with multiple cosmological probes of the low and high redshift Universe, and in particular with the SPT cluster abundance data. This result demonstrates that the DES Y1 and SPT cluster counts provide consistent cosmological constraints, if the same mass calibration data set is adopted. It thus supports the conclusion of the DES Y1 cluster cosmology analysis which interprets the tension observed with other cosmological probes in terms of systematics affecting the stacked weak lensing analysis of optically--selected low--richness clusters. Finally, we analyse the first combined optically-SZ selected cluster catalogue obtained by including the SPT sample above the maximum redshift probed by the DES Y1 redMaPPer sample. Besides providing a mild improvement of the cosmological constraints, this data combination serves as a stricter test of our scatter models: the PRJ model, providing scaling relations consistent between the two abundance and multi-wavelength follow-up data, is favored over the BKG model.

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arXiv2022

DES Y3 results: Blending shear and redshift biases in image simulations

As the statistical power of galaxy weak lensing reaches percent level precision, large, realistic and robust simulations are required to calibrate observational systematics, especially given the increased importance of object blending as survey depths increase. To capture the coupled effects of blending in both shear and photometric redshift calibration, we define the effective redshift distribution for lensing, $n_γ(z)$, and describe how to estimate it using image simulations. We use an extensive suite of tailored image simulations to characterize the performance of the shear estimation pipeline applied to the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 dataset. We describe the multi-band, multi-epoch simulations, and demonstrate their high level of realism through comparisons to the real DES data. We isolate the effects that generate shear calibration biases by running variations on our fiducial simulation, and find that blending-related effects are the dominant contribution to the mean multiplicative bias of approximately $-2\%$. By generating simulations with input shear signals that vary with redshift, we calibrate biases in our estimation of the effective redshfit distribution, and demonstrate the importance of this approach when blending is present. We provide corrected effective redshift distributions that incorporate statistical and systematic uncertainties, ready for use in DES Year 3 weak lensing analyses.

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arXiv2021

The DES view of the Eridanus supervoid and the CMB Cold Spot

The Cold Spot is a puzzling large-scale feature in the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature maps and its origin has been subject to active debate. As an important foreground structure at low redshift, the Eridanus supervoid was recently detected, but it was subsequently determined that, assuming the standard $Λ$CDM model, only about 10-20$\%$ of the observed temperature depression can be accounted for via its Integrated Sachs-Wolfe imprint. However, $R\gtrsim100~h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$ supervoids elsewhere in the sky have shown ISW imprints $A_{\mathrm{ISW}}\approx5.2\pm1.6$ times stronger than expected from $Λ$CDM ($A_{\mathrm{ISW}}=1$), which warrants further inspection. Using the Year-3 redMaGiC catalogue of luminous red galaxies from the Dark Energy Survey, here we confirm the detection of the Eridanus supervoid as a significant under-density in the Cold Spot's direction at $z<0.2$. We also show, with $\mathrm{S/N}\gtrsim5$ significance, that the Eridanus supervoid appears as the most prominent large-scale under-density in the dark matter mass maps that we reconstructed from DES Year-3 gravitational lensing data. While we report no significant anomalies, an interesting aspect is that the amplitude of the lensing signal from the Eridanus supervoid at the Cold Spot centre is about $30\%$ lower than expected from similar peaks found in N-body simulations based on the standard $Λ$CDM model with parameters $Ω_{\rm m} = 0.279$ and $σ_8 = 0.82$. Overall, our results confirm the causal relation between these individually rare structures in the cosmic web and in the CMB, motivating more detailed future surveys in the Cold Spot region.

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arXiv2021

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: curved-sky weak lensing mass map reconstruction

We present reconstructed convergence maps, \textit{mass maps}, from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) third year (Y3) weak gravitational lensing data set. The mass maps are weighted projections of the density field (primarily dark matter) in the foreground of the observed galaxies. We use four reconstruction methods, each is a \textit{maximum a posteriori} estimate with a different model for the prior probability of the map: Kaiser-Squires, null B-mode prior, Gaussian prior, and a sparsity prior. All methods are implemented on the celestial sphere to accommodate the large sky coverage of the DES Y3 data. We compare the methods using realistic $Λ$CDM simulations with mock data that are closely matched to the DES Y3 data. We quantify the performance of the methods at the map level and then apply the reconstruction methods to the DES Y3 data, performing tests for systematic error effects. The maps are compared with optical foreground cosmic-web structures and are used to evaluate the lensing signal from cosmic-void profiles. The recovered dark matter map covers the largest sky fraction of any galaxy weak lensing map to date.

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arXiv2021

Probing gravity with the DES-CMASS sample and BOSS spectroscopy

The DES-CMASS sample (DMASS) is designed to optimally combine the weak lensing measurements from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and redshift-space distortions (RSD) probed by the CMASS galaxy sample from the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of adopting DMASS as the equivalent of BOSS CMASS for a joint analysis of DES and BOSS in the framework of modified gravity. We utilize the angular clustering of the DMASS galaxies, cosmic shear of the DES METACALIBRATION sources, and cross-correlation of the two as data vectors. By jointly fitting the combination of the data with the RSD measurements from the BOSS CMASS sample and Planck data, we obtain the constraints on modified gravity parameters $μ_0 = -0.37^{+0.47}_{-0.45}$ and $Σ_0 = 0.078^{+0.078}_{-0.082}$. We do not detect any significant deviation from General Relativity. Our constraints of modified gravity measured with DMASS are tighter than those with the DES Year 1 redMaGiC galaxy sample with the same external data sets by $29\%$ for $μ_0$ and $21\%$ for $Σ_0$, and comparable to the published results of the DES Year 1 modified gravity analysis despite this work using fewer external data sets. This improvement is mainly because the galaxy bias parameter is shared and more tightly constrained by both CMASS and DMASS, effectively breaking the degeneracy between the galaxy bias and other cosmological parameters. Such an approach to optimally combine photometric and spectroscopic surveys using a photometric sample equivalent to a spectroscopic sample can be applied to combining future surveys having a limited overlap such as DESI and LSST.

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arXiv2021

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Galaxy Sample for BAO Measurement

In this paper we present and validate the galaxy sample used for the analysis of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation signal (BAO) in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Y3 data. The definition is based on a colour and redshift-dependent magnitude cut optimized to select galaxies at redshifts higher than 0.5, while ensuring a high quality photometric redshift determination. The sample covers $\approx 4100$ square degrees to a depth of $i = 22.3 \ (AB)$ at $10σ$. It contains 7,031,993 galaxies in the redshift range from $z$= 0.6 to 1.1, with a mean effective redshift of 0.835. Photometric redshifts are estimated with the machine learning algorithm DNF, and are validated using the VIPERS PDR2 sample. We find a mean redshift bias of $z_{\mathrm{bias}} \approx 0.01$ and a mean uncertainty, in units of $1+z$, of $σ_{68} \approx 0.03$. We evaluate the galaxy population of the sample, showing it is mostly built upon Elliptical to Sbc types. Furthermore, we find a low level of stellar contamination of $\lesssim 4\%$. We present the method used to mitigate the effect of spurious clustering coming from observing conditions and other large-scale systematics. We apply it to the DES Y3 BAO sample and calculate sample weights that are used to get a robust estimate of the galaxy clustering signal. This paper is one of a series dedicated to the analysis of the BAO signal in the DES Y3 data. In the companion papers, Ferrero et al. (2021) and DES Collaboration (2021), we present the galaxy mock catalogues used to calibrate the analysis and the angular diameter distance constraints obtained through the fitting to the BAO scale, respectively. The galaxy sample, masks and additional material will be released in the public DES data repository upon acceptance.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Cosmology with peaks using an emulator approach

We constrain the matter density $Ω_{\mathrm{m}}$ and the amplitude of density fluctuations $σ_8$ within the $Λ$CDM cosmological model with shear peak statistics and angular convergence power spectra using mass maps constructed from the first three years of data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES Y3). We use tomographic shear peak statistics, including cross-peaks: peak counts calculated on maps created by taking a harmonic space product of the convergence of two tomographic redshift bins. Our analysis follows a forward-modelling scheme to create a likelihood of these statistics using N-body simulations, using a Gaussian process emulator. We include the following lensing systematics: multiplicative shear bias, photometric redshift uncertainty, and galaxy intrinsic alignment. Stringent scale cuts are applied to avoid biases from unmodelled baryonic physics. We find that the additional non-Gaussian information leads to a tightening of the constraints on the structure growth parameter yielding $S_8~\equiv~σ_8\sqrt{Ω_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3}~=~0.797_{-0.013}^{+0.015}$ (68% confidence limits), with a precision of 1.8%, an improvement of ~38% compared to the angular power spectra only case. The results obtained with the angular power spectra and peak counts are found to be in agreement with each other and no significant difference in $S_8$ is recorded. We find a mild tension of $1.5 \thinspace σ$ between our study and the results from Planck 2018, with our analysis yielding a lower $S_8$. Furthermore, we observe that the combination of angular power spectra and tomographic peak counts breaks the degeneracy between galaxy intrinsic alignment $A_{\mathrm{IA}}$ and $S_8$, improving cosmological constraints. We run a suite of tests concluding that our results are robust and consistent with the results from other studies using DES Y3 data.

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