1,996 research outputs found
3D weak lensing with spin wavelets on the ball
We construct the spin flaglet transform, a wavelet transform to analyze spin
signals in three dimensions. Spin flaglets can probe signal content localized
simultaneously in space and frequency and, moreover, are separable so that
their angular and radial properties can be controlled independently. They are
particularly suited to analyzing of cosmological observations such as the weak
gravitational lensing of galaxies. Such observations have a unique 3D
geometrical setting since they are natively made on the sky, have spin angular
symmetries, and are extended in the radial direction by additional distance or
redshift information. Flaglets are constructed in the harmonic space defined by
the Fourier-Laguerre transform, previously defined for scalar functions and
extended here to signals with spin symmetries. Thanks to various sampling
theorems, both the Fourier-Laguerre and flaglet transforms are theoretically
exact when applied to bandlimited signals. In other words, in numerical
computations the only loss of information is due to the finite representation
of floating point numbers. We develop a 3D framework relating the weak lensing
power spectrum to covariances of flaglet coefficients. We suggest that the
resulting novel flaglet weak lensing estimator offers a powerful alternative to
common 2D and 3D approaches to accurately capture cosmological information.
While standard weak lensing analyses focus on either real or harmonic space
representations (i.e., correlation functions or Fourier-Bessel power spectra,
respectively), a wavelet approach inherits the advantages of both techniques,
where both complicated sky coverage and uncertainties associated with the
physical modeling of small scales can be handled effectively. Our codes to
compute the Fourier-Laguerre and flaglet transforms are made publicly
available.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, version accepted for publication in PR
A novel sampling theorem on the rotation group
We develop a novel sampling theorem for functions defined on the
three-dimensional rotation group SO(3) by connecting the rotation group to the
three-torus through a periodic extension. Our sampling theorem requires
samples to capture all of the information content of a signal band-limited at
, reducing the number of required samples by a factor of two compared to
other equiangular sampling theorems. We present fast algorithms to compute the
associated Fourier transform on the rotation group, the so-called Wigner
transform, which scale as , compared to the naive scaling of .
For the common case of a low directional band-limit , complexity is reduced
to . Our fast algorithms will be of direct use in speeding up the
computation of directional wavelet transforms on the sphere. We make our SO3
code implementing these algorithms publicly available.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, minor changes to match version accepted for
publication. Code available at http://www.sothree.or
How isotropic is the Universe?
A fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology is that the
Universe is isotropic on large scales. Breaking this assumption leads to a set
of solutions to Einstein's field equations, known as Bianchi cosmologies, only
a subset of which have ever been tested against data. For the first time, we
consider all degrees of freedom in these solutions to conduct a general test of
isotropy using cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization data
from Planck. For the vector mode (associated with vorticity), we obtain a limit
on the anisotropic expansion of (95%
CI), which is an order of magnitude tighter than previous Planck results that
used CMB temperature only. We also place upper limits on other modes of
anisotropic expansion, with the weakest limit arising from the regular tensor
mode, (95% CI). Including all
degrees of freedom simultaneously for the first time, anisotropic expansion of
the Universe is strongly disfavoured, with odds of 121,000:1 against.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, v2: replaced with version accepted by PR
Sparse Inpainting and Isotropy
Sparse inpainting techniques are gaining in popularity as a tool for
cosmological data analysis, in particular for handling data which present
masked regions and missing observations. We investigate here the relationship
between sparse inpainting techniques using the spherical harmonic basis as a
dictionary and the isotropy properties of cosmological maps, as for instance
those arising from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. In
particular, we investigate the possibility that inpainted maps may exhibit
anisotropies in the behaviour of higher-order angular polyspectra. We provide
analytic computations and simulations of inpainted maps for a Gaussian
isotropic model of CMB data, suggesting that the resulting angular trispectrum
may exhibit small but non-negligible deviations from isotropy.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures. v3: matches version published in JCAP;
formatting changes and single typo correction only. Code available from
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~smf/code.htm
SILC: a new Planck Internal Linear Combination CMB temperature map using directional wavelets
We present new clean maps of the CMB temperature anisotropies (as measured by
Planck) constructed with a novel internal linear combination (ILC) algorithm
using directional, scale-discretised wavelets --- Scale-discretised,
directional wavelet ILC or SILC. Directional wavelets, when convolved with
signals on the sphere, can separate the anisotropic filamentary structures
which are characteristic of both the CMB and foregrounds. Extending previous
component separation methods, which use the frequency, spatial and harmonic
signatures of foregrounds to separate them from the cosmological background
signal, SILC can additionally use morphological information in the foregrounds
and CMB to better localise the cleaning algorithm. We test the method on Planck
data and simulations, demonstrating consistency with existing component
separation algorithms, and discuss how to optimise the use of morphological
information by varying the number of directional wavelets as a function of
spatial scale. We find that combining the use of directional and axisymmetric
wavelets depending on scale could yield higher quality CMB temperature maps.
Our results set the stage for the application of SILC to polarisation
anisotropies through an extension to spin wavelets.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures. Minor changes to match version published in
MNRAS. Map products available at http://www.silc-cmb.or
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