1,394 research outputs found
Statistical and systematic errors in redshift-space distortion measurements from large surveys
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2012 RAS © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We investigate the impact of statistical and systematic errors on measurements of linear redshift-space distortions (RSD) in future cosmological surveys by analysing large catalogues of dark matter haloes from the baryonic acoustic oscillation simulations at the Institute for Computational Cosmology. These allow us to estimate the dependence of errors on typical survey properties, as volume, galaxy density and mass (i.e. bias factor) of the adopted tracer. We find that measures of the specific growth rate β = f/b using the Hamilton/Kaiser harmonic expansion of the redshift-space correlation function ξ(r p, π) on scales larger than 3h -1 Mpc are typically underestimated by up to 10 per cent for galaxy-sized haloes. This is significantly larger than the corresponding statistical errors, which amount to a few per cent, indicating the importance of non-linear improvements to the Kaiser model, to obtain accurate measurements of the growth rate. The systematic error shows a diminishing trend with increasing bias value (i.e. mass) of the haloes considered. We compare the amplitude and trends of statistical errors as a function of survey parameters to predictions obtained with the Fisher information matrix technique. This is what is usually adopted to produce RSD forecasts, based on the Feldman-Kaiser-Peacock prescription for the errors on the power spectrum. We show that this produces parameter errors fairly similar to the standard deviations from the halo catalogues, provided it is applied to strictly linear scales in Fourier space (k<0.2 h Mpc -1). Finally, we combine our measurements to define and calibrate an accurate scaling formula for the relative error on β as a function of the same parameters, which closely matches the simulation results in all explored regimes. This provides a handy and plausibly more realistic alternative to the Fisher matrix approach, to quickly and accurately predict statistical errors on RSD expected from future surveysEM is supported by the Spanish MICINNs Juan de la Cierva programme (JCI-2010-08112), by CICYT through the project FPA-2009 09017 and by the Community of Madrid through the project HEPHACOS (S2009/ESP-1473) under grant P-ESP-00346. Financial support of PRIN-INAF 2007, PRIN-MIUR 2008 and ASI Contracts I/023/05/0, I/088/06/0, I/016/07/0, I/064/08/0 and I/039/10/0 is gratefully acknowledged. LG is partly supported by ERC Advanced Grant #291521 ‘DARKLIGHT’
Measuring the growth of structure by matching dark matter haloes to galaxies with VIPERS and SDSS
We test the history of structure formation from redshift 1 to today by matching galaxies from the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with dark matter haloes in the MultiDark, Small MultiDark Planck (SMDPL), N-body simulation. We first show that the standard subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) recipe implemented with MultiDark fits the clustering of galaxies well both at redshift 0 for SDSS and at redshift 1 for VIPERS. This is an important validation of the SHAM model at high redshift. We then remap the simulation time steps to test alternative growth histories and infer the growth index gamma = 0.6 +/- 0.3. This analysis demonstrates the power of using N-body simulations to forward model galaxy surveys for cosmological inference. The data products and code necessary to reproduce the results of this analysis are available online (https://github.com/darklight- cosmology/vipers-sham)
The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). Never mind the gaps: comparing techniques to restore homogeneous sky coverage
[Abridged] Non-uniform sampling and gaps in sky coverage are common in galaxy
redshift surveys, but these effects can degrade galaxy counts-in-cells and
density estimates. We carry out a comparison of methods that aim to fill the
gaps to correct for the systematic effects. Our study is motivated by the
analysis of the VIMOS Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS), a flux-limited
survey (i<22.5) based on one-pass observations with VIMOS, with gaps covering
25% of the surveyed area and a mean sampling rate of 35%. Our findings are
applicable to other surveys with similar observing strategies. We compare 1)
two algorithms based on photometric redshift, that assign redshifts to galaxies
based on the spectroscopic redshifts of the nearest neighbours, 2) two Bayesian
methods, the Wiener filter and the Poisson-Lognormal filter. Using galaxy mock
catalogues we quantify the accuracy of the counts-in-cells measurements on
scales of R=5 and 8 Mpc/h after applying each of these methods. We also study
how they perform to account for spectroscopic redshift error and inhomogeneous
and sparse sampling rate. We find that in VIPERS the errors in counts-in-cells
measurements on R<10 Mpc/h scales are dominated by the sparseness of the
sample. All methods underpredict by 20-35% the counts at high densities. This
systematic bias is of the same order as random errors. No method outperforms
the others. Random and systematic errors decrease for larger cells. We show
that it is possible to separate the lowest and highest densities on scales of 5
Mpc/h at redshifts 0.5<z<1.1, over a large volume such as in VIPERS survey.
This is vital for the characterisation of cosmic variance and rare populations
(e.g, brightest galaxies) in environmental studies at these redshifts.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in A&A (revised
version after minor revision and language editing
The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). Exploring the dependence of the three-point correlation function on stellar mass and luminosity at 0.5<z<1.1
The three-point correlation function (3PCF) is a powerful probe to
investigate the clustering of matter in the Universe in a complementary way
with respect to lower-order statistics, providing additional information with
respect to the two-point correlation function and allowing us to shed light on
biasing, nonlinear processes, and deviations from Gaussian statistics. In this
paper, we analyse the first data release of the VIMOS Public Extragalactic
Redshift Survey (VIPERS), determining the dependence of the three-point
correlation function on luminosity and stellar mass at . We
exploit the VIPERS Public Data Release 1, consisting of more than 50,000
galaxies with B-band magnitudes in the range and stellar masses in the range
. We measure both the
connected 3PCF and the reduced 3PCF in redshift space, probing different
configurations and scales, in the range [Mpc/h]. We find a
significant dependence of the reduced 3PCF on scales and triangle shapes, with
stronger anisotropy at larger scales ( Mpc/h) and an almost flat trend
at smaller scales, Mpc/h. Massive and luminous galaxies present a
larger connected 3PCF, while the reduced 3PCF is remarkably insensitive to
magnitude and stellar masses in the range we explored. These trends, already
observed at low redshifts, are confirmed for the first time to be still valid
up to , providing support to the hierarchical scenario for which massive
and bright systems are expected to be more clustered. The possibility of using
the measured 3PCF to provide independent constraints on the linear galaxy bias
has also been explored, showing promising results in agreement with other
probes.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in A&
The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): PCA-based automatic cleaning and reconstruction of survey spectra
Identifying spurious reduction artefacts in galaxy spectra is a challenge for
large surveys. We present an algorithm for identifying and repairing residual
spurious features in sky-subtracted galaxy spectra with application to the
VIPERS survey. The algorithm uses principal component analysis (PCA) applied to
the galaxy spectra in the observed frame to identify sky line residuals
imprinted at characteristic wavelengths. We further model the galaxy spectra in
the rest-frame using PCA to estimate the most probable continuum in the
corrupted spectral regions, which are then repaired. We apply the method to
90,000 spectra from the VIPERS survey and compare the results with a subset
where careful editing was performed by hand. We find that the automatic
technique does an extremely good job in reproducing the time-consuming manual
cleaning and does it in a uniform and objective manner across a large data
sample. The mask data products produced in this work are released together with
the VIPERS second public data release (PDR-2).Comment: Find the VIPERS data release at http://vipers.inaf.i
The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): On the correct recovery of the count-in-cell probability distribution function
We compare three methods to measure the count-in-cell probability density
function of galaxies in a spectroscopic redshift survey. From this comparison
we found that when the sampling is low (the average number of object per cell
is around unity) it is necessary to use a parametric method to model the galaxy
distribution. We used a set of mock catalogues of VIPERS, in order to verify if
we were able to reconstruct the cell-count probability distribution once the
observational strategy is applied. We find that in the simulated catalogues,
the probability distribution of galaxies is better represented by a Gamma
expansion than a Skewed Log-Normal. Finally, we correct the cell-count
probability distribution function from the angular selection effect of the
VIMOS instrument and study the redshift and absolute magnitude dependency of
the underlying galaxy density function in VIPERS from redshift to .
We found very weak evolution of the probability density distribution function
and that it is well approximated, independently from the chosen tracers, by a
Gamma distribution.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, 2 table
The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): A quiescent formation of massive red-sequence galaxies over the past 9 Gyr
We explore the evolution of the Colour-Magnitude Relation (CMR) and
Luminosity Function (LF) at 0.4<z<1.3 from the VIMOS Public Extragalactic
Redshift Survey (VIPERS) using ~45,000 galaxies with precise spectroscopic
redshifts down to i'_AB<22.5 over ~10.32 deg^2 in two fields. From z=0.5 to
z=1.3 the LF and CMR are well defined for different galaxy populations and
M^*_B evolves by ~1.04(1.09)+/-0.06(0.10) mag for the total (red) galaxy
sample. We compare different criteria for selecting early-type galaxies (ETGs):
(1) fixed cut in rest-frame (U-V) colours, (2) evolving cut in (U-V) colours,
(3) rest-frame (NUV-r')-(r'-K) colour selection, and (4) SED classification.
Regardless of the method we measure a consistent evolution of the red-sequence
(RS). Between 0.4<z<1.3 we find a moderate evolution of the RS intercept of
Delta(U-V)=0.28+/-0.14 mag, favouring exponentially declining star formation
(SF) histories with SF truncation at 1.7<=z<=2.3. Together with the rise in the
ETG number density by 0.64 dex since z=1, this suggests a rapid build-up of
massive galaxies (M>10^11 M_sun) and expeditious RS formation over a short
period of ~1.5 Gyr starting before z=1. This is supported by the detection of
ongoing SF in ETGs at 0.9<z<1.0, in contrast with the quiescent red stellar
populations of ETGs at 0.5<z<0.6. There is an increase in the observed CMR
scatter with redshift, two times larger than in galaxy clusters and at variance
with theoretical models. We discuss possible physical mechanisms that support
the observed evolution of the red galaxy population. Our findings point out
that massive galaxies have experienced a sharp SF quenching at z~1 with only
limited additional merging. In contrast, less-massive galaxies experience a mix
of SF truncation and minor mergers which build-up the low- and
intermediate-mass end of the CMR.Comment: 27 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in A&
The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Survey (VIPERS): First Data Release of 57 204 spectroscopic measurements
We present the first Public Data Release (PDR-1) of the VIMOS Public
Extragalactic Survey (VIPERS). It comprises 57 204 spectroscopic measurements
together with all additional information necessary for optimal scientific
exploitation of the data, in particular the associated photometric measurements
and quantification of the photometric and survey completeness. VIPERS is an ESO
Large Programme designed to build a spectroscopic sample of ' 100 000 galaxies
with iAB < 22.5 and 0.5 < z < 1.5 with high sampling rate (~45%). The survey
spectroscopic targets are selected from the CFHTLS-Wide five-band catalogues in
the W1 and W4 fields. The final survey will cover a total area of nearly 24
deg2, for a total comoving volume between z = 0.5 and 1.2 of ~4x10^7
h^(-3)Mpc^3 and a median galaxy redshift of z~0.8. The release presented in
this paper includes data from virtually the entire W4 field and nearly half of
the W1 area, thus representing 64% of the final dataset. We provide a detailed
description of sample selection, observations and data reduction procedures; we
summarise the global properties of the spectroscopic catalogue and explain the
associated data products and their use, and provide all the details for
accessing the data through the survey database (http://vipers.inaf.it) where
all information can be queried interactively.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A Added and/or replaced some figure,
added section on DataBase interface, expaned Introductio
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