Non-Gaussian Minkowski functionals & extrema counts in redshift space

In the context of upcoming large-scale structure surveys such as Euclid, it is of prime importance to quantify the effect of peculiar velocities on geometric probes. Hence the formalism to compute in redshift space the geometrical and topological one-point statistics of mildly non-Gaussian 2D and 3D cosmic fields is developed. Leveraging the partial isotropy of the target statistics, the Gram-Charlier expansion of the joint probability distribution of the field and its derivatives is reformulated in terms of the corresponding anisotropic variables. In particular, the cosmic non-linear evolution of the Minkowski functionals, together with the statistics of extrema are investigated in turn for 3D catalogues and 2D slabs. The amplitude of the non-Gaussian redshift distortion correction is estimated for these geometric probes. In 3D, gravitational perturbation theory is implemented in redshift space to predict the cosmic evolution of all relevant Gram-Charlier coefficients. Applications to the estimation of the cosmic parameters sigma(z) and beta=f/b1 from upcoming surveys is discussed. Such statistics are of interest for anisotropic fields beyond cosmology.Comment: 35 pages, 15 figures, matches version published in MNRAS with a typo corrected in eq A1

The invariant joint distribution of a stationary random field and its derivatives: Euler characteristic and critical point counts in 2 and 3D

The full moments expansion of the joint probability distribution of an isotropic random field, its gradient and invariants of the Hessian is presented in 2 and 3D. It allows for explicit expression for the Euler characteristic in ND and computation of extrema counts as functions of the excursion set threshold and the spectral parameter, as illustrated on model examples.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Corrected expansion coefficients for orders n>=5. Relation between Gram-Charlier and Edgeworth expansions is clarified

On Poincare and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities for a class of singular Gibbs measures

This note, mostly expository, is devoted to Poincar{\'e} and log-Sobolev inequalities for a class of Boltzmann-Gibbs measures with singular interaction. Such measures allow to model one-dimensional particles with confinement and singular pair interaction. The functional inequalities come from convexity. We prove and characterize optimality in the case of quadratic confinement via a factorization of the measure. This optimality phenomenon holds for all beta Hermite ensembles including the Gaussian unitary ensemble, a famous exactly solvable model of random matrix theory. We further explore exact solvability by reviewing the relation to Dyson-Ornstein-Uhlenbeck diffusion dynamics admitting the Hermite-Lassalle orthogonal polynomials as a complete set of eigenfunctions. We also discuss the consequence of the log-Sobolev inequality in terms of concentration of measure for Lipschitz functions such as maxima and linear statistics.Comment: Minor improvements. To appear in Geometric Aspects of Functional Analysis -- Israel Seminar (GAFA) 2017-2019", Lecture Notes in Mathematics 225

Moment transport equations for the primordial curvature perturbation

In a recent publication, we proposed that inflationary perturbation theory can be reformulated in terms of a probability transport equation, whose moments determine the correlation properties of the primordial curvature perturbation. In this paper we generalize this formulation to an arbitrary number of fields. We deduce ordinary differential equations for the evolution of the moments of zeta on superhorizon scales, which can be used to obtain an evolution equation for the dimensionless bispectrum, fNL. Our equations are covariant in field space and allow identification of the source terms responsible for evolution of fNL. In a model with M scalar fields, the number of numerical integrations required to obtain solutions of these equations scales like O(M^3). The performance of the moment transport algorithm means that numerical calculations with M >> 1 fields are straightforward. We illustrate this performance with a numerical calculation of fNL in Nflation models containing M ~ 10^2 fields, finding agreement with existing analytic calculations. We comment briefly on extensions of the method beyond the slow-roll approximation, or to calculate higher order parameters such as gNL.Comment: 23 pages, plus appendices and references; 4 figures. v2: incorrect statements regarding numerical delta N removed from Sec. 4.3. Minor modifications elsewher

qq-Gaussian processes: non-commutative and classical aspects

We examine, for $-1<q<1$, $q$-Gaussian processes, i.e. families of operators (non-commutative random variables) $X_t=a_t+a_t^*$ -- where the $a_t$ fulfill the $q$-commutation relations a_sa_t^*-qa_t^*a_s=c(s,t)\cdot \id for some covariance function $c(\cdot,\cdot)$ -- equipped with the vacuum expectation state. We show that there is a $q$-analogue of the Gaussian functor of second quantization behind these processes and that this structure can be used to translate questions on $q$-Gaussian processes into corresponding (and much simpler) questions in the underlying Hilbert space. In particular, we use this idea to show that a large class of $q$-Gaussian processes possess a non-commutative kind of Markov property, which ensures that there exist classical versions of these non-commutative processes. This answers an old question of Frisch and Bourret \cite{FB}.Comment: AMS-TeX 2.