64 research outputs found
Challenges in the hunt for dark energy dynamics
Includes bibliographical references. .One of the greatest challenges in modern cosmology is determining the origin of the observed acceleration of the Universe. The 'dark energy' believed to supply the negative pressure responsible for this cosmic acceleration remains elusive despite over a decade of investigation. Hunting for deviation from the 'vanilla' cosmological model, ACDM, and detecting dynamics with redshift in the equation of state remains a key research area, with many challenges. We introduce some of the challenges in the search for such dark energy dynamics. We illustrate that under the assumption of well-motivated scaling models for dark energy dynamics early universe constraints on the dark energy density imply that these models will be essentially indistinguishable from ACDM for the next decade. After introducing the Fisher Matrix formalism, we derive the Fisher Flex test as a measure of whether the assumption of Gaussianity in the likelihood is incorrect for parameter estimation. This formalism is general for any cosmological survey. Lastly, we study the degeneracies between dark energy and curvature and matter in a non-parametric approach, and show that incorrectly assuming values of cosmological components can exactly mimic dark energy dynamics. We connect to the parametric approach by showing how these uncertainties also degrade constraints on the dark energy parameters in an assumed functional form for w. Improving the accuracy of surveys and experiments to search for possible signatures of dark energy dynamics is the focus of much attention in contemporary cosmology; we highlight challenges in the hunt for dark energy dynamics
Extending BEAMS to incorporate correlated systematic uncertainties
New supernova surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey, Pan-STARRS and the LSST
will produce an unprecedented number of photometric supernova candidates, most
with no spectroscopic data. Avoiding biases in cosmological parameters due to
the resulting inevitable contamination from non-Ia supernovae can be achieved
with the BEAMS formalism, allowing for fully photometric supernova cosmology
studies. Here we extend BEAMS to deal with the case in which the supernovae are
correlated by systematic uncertainties. The analytical form of the full BEAMS
posterior requires evaluating 2^N terms, where N is the number of supernova
candidates. This `exponential catastrophe' is computationally unfeasible even
for N of order 100. We circumvent the exponential catastrophe by marginalising
numerically instead of analytically over the possible supernova types: we
augment the cosmological parameters with nuisance parameters describing the
covariance matrix and the types of all the supernovae, \tau_i, that we include
in our MCMC analysis. We show that this method deals well even with large,
unknown systematic uncertainties without a major increase in computational
time, whereas ignoring the correlations can lead to significant biases and
incorrect credible contours. We then compare the numerical marginalisation
technique with a perturbative expansion of the posterior based on the insight
that future surveys will have exquisite light curves and hence the probability
that a given candidate is a Type Ia will be close to unity or zero, for most
objects. Although this perturbative approach changes computation of the
posterior from a 2^N problem into an N^2 or N^3 one, we show that it leads to
biases in general through a small number of misclassifications, implying that
numerical marginalisation is superior.Comment: Resubmitted under married name Lochner (formally Knights). Version 3:
major changes, including a large scale analysis with thousands of MCMC
chains. Matches version published in JCAP. 23 pages, 8 figure
Towards the Future of Supernova Cosmology
For future surveys, spectroscopic follow-up for all supernovae will be
extremely difficult. However, one can use light curve fitters, to obtain the
probability that an object is a Type Ia. One may consider applying a
probability cut to the data, but we show that the resulting non-Ia
contamination can lead to biases in the estimation of cosmological parameters.
A different method, which allows the use of the full dataset and results in
unbiased cosmological parameter estimation, is Bayesian Estimation Applied to
Multiple Species (BEAMS). BEAMS is a Bayesian approach to the problem which
includes the uncertainty in the types in the evaluation of the posterior. Here
we outline the theory of BEAMS and demonstrate its effectiveness using both
simulated datasets and SDSS-II data. We also show that it is possible to use
BEAMS if the data are correlated, by introducing a numerical marginalisation
over the types of the objects. This is largely a pedagogical introduction to
BEAMS with references to the main BEAMS papers.Comment: Replaced under married name Lochner (formally Knights). 3 pages, 2
figures. To appear in the Proceedings of 13th Marcel Grossmann Meeting
(MG13), Stockholm, Sweden, 1-7 July 201
Bayesian estimation applied to multiple species
Observed data are often contaminated by undiscovered interlopers, leading to biased parameter estimation. Here we present BEAMS (Bayesian estimation applied to multiple species) which significantly improves on the standard maximum likelihood approach in the case where the probability for each data point being “pure” is known. We discuss the application of BEAMS to future type-Ia supernovae (SNIa) surveys, such as LSST, which are projected to deliver over a million supernovae light curves without spectra. The multiband light curves for each candidate will provide a probability of being Ia (pure) but the full sample will be significantly contaminated with other types of supernovae and transients. Given a sample of N supernovae with mean probability, ⟨P⟩, of being Ia, BEAMS delivers parameter constraints equal to N⟨P⟩ spectroscopically confirmed SNIa. In addition BEAMS can be simultaneously used to tease apart different families of data and to recover properties of the underlying distributions of those families (e.g. the type-Ibc and II distributions). Hence BEAMS provides a unified classification and parameter estimation methodology which may be useful in a diverse range of problems such as photometric redshift estimation or, indeed, any parameter estimation problem where contamination is an issue
A search for ultra-light axions using precision cosmological data
Ultra-light axions (ULAs) with masses in the range 10^{-33} eV <m <10^{-20}
eV are motivated by string theory and might contribute to either the
dark-matter or dark-energy density of the Universe. ULAs could suppress the
growth of structure on small scales, or lead to an enhanced integrated
Sachs-Wolfe effect on large-scale cosmic microwave-background (CMB)
anisotropies. In this work, cosmological observables over the full ULA mass
range are computed, and then used to search for evidence of ULAs using CMB data
from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), Planck satellite, Atacama
Cosmology Telescope, and South Pole Telescope, as well as galaxy clustering
data from the WiggleZ galaxy-redshift survey. In the mass range 10^{-32} eV < m
<10^{-25.5} eV, the axion relic-density \Omega_{a} (relative to the total
dark-matter relic density \Omega_{d}) must obey the constraints
\Omega_{a}/\Omega_{d} < 0.05 and \Omega_{a}h^{2} < 0.006 at 95%-confidence. For
m> 10^{-24} eV, ULAs are indistinguishable from standard cold dark matter on
the length scales probed, and are thus allowed by these data. For m < 10^{-32}
eV, ULAs are allowed to compose a significant fraction of the dark energy.Comment: 31 pages, 16 figures, 1 table, updated to have same figure
line-types/language as version published in Phys. Rev. D, grammatical
corrections made, references added, results unchange
Axiverse cosmology and the energy scale of inflation
Ultra-light axions (eV), motivated by string theory,
can be a powerful probe of the energy scale of inflation. In contrast to
heavier axions the isocurvature modes in the ultra-light axions can coexist
with observable gravitational waves. Here it is shown that large scale
structure constraints severely limit the parameter space for axion mass,
density fraction and isocurvature amplitude. It is also shown that radically
different CMB observables for the ultra-light axion isocurvature mode
additionally reduce this space. The results of a new, accurate and efficient
method to calculate this isocurvature power spectrum are presented, and can be
used to constrain ultra-light axions and inflation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, v3 some references added, matches version
published in Physical Review
Characterizing the contaminating distance distribution for Bayesian supernova cosmology
Measurements of the equation of state of dark energy from surveys of
thousands of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) will be limited by spectroscopic
follow-up and must therefore rely on photometric identification, increasing the
chance that the sample is contaminated by Core Collapse Supernovae (CC SNe).
Bayesian methods for supernova cosmology can remove contamination bias while
maintaining high statistical precision but are sensitive to the choice of
parameterization of the contaminating distance distribution. We use simulations
to investigate the form of the contaminating distribution and its dependence on
the absolute magnitudes, light curve shapes, colors, extinction, and redshifts
of core collapse supernovae. We find that the CC luminosity function dominates
the distance distribution function, but its shape is increasingly distorted as
the redshift increases and more CC SNe fall below the survey magnitude limit.
The shapes and colors of the CC light curves generally shift the distance
distribution, and their effect on the CC distances is correlated. We compare
the simulated distances to the first year results of the SDSS-II SN survey and
find that the SDSS distance distributions can be reproduced with simulated CC
SNe that are ~1 mag fainter than the standard Richardson et al. (2002)
luminosity functions, which do not produce a good fit. To exploit the full
power of the Bayesian parameter estimation method, parameterization of the
contaminating distribution should be guided by the current knowledge of the CC
luminosity functions, coupled with the effects of the survey selection and
magnitude-limit, and allow for systematic shifts caused by the parameters of
the distance fit.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journa
Photometric Supernova Cosmology with BEAMS and SDSS-II
Supernova cosmology without spectroscopic confirmation is an exciting new
frontier which we address here with the Bayesian Estimation Applied to Multiple
Species (BEAMS) algorithm and the full three years of data from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey II Supernova Survey (SDSS-II SN). BEAMS is a Bayesian
framework for using data from multiple species in statistical inference when
one has the probability that each data point belongs to a given species,
corresponding in this context to different types of supernovae with their
probabilities derived from their multi-band lightcurves. We run the BEAMS
algorithm on both Gaussian and more realistic SNANA simulations with of order
10^4 supernovae, testing the algorithm against various pitfalls one might
expect in the new and somewhat uncharted territory of photometric supernova
cosmology. We compare the performance of BEAMS to that of both mock
spectroscopic surveys and photometric samples which have been cut using typical
selection criteria. The latter typically are either biased due to contamination
or have significantly larger contours in the cosmological parameters due to
small data-sets. We then apply BEAMS to the 792 SDSS-II photometric supernovae
with host spectroscopic redshifts. In this case, BEAMS reduces the area of the
(\Omega_m,\Omega_\Lambda) contours by a factor of three relative to the case
where only spectroscopically confirmed data are used (297 supernovae). In the
case of flatness, the constraints obtained on the matter density applying BEAMS
to the photometric SDSS-II data are \Omega_m(BEAMS)=0.194\pm0.07. This
illustrates the potential power of BEAMS for future large photometric supernova
surveys such as LSST.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Ap
Power-law Template for Infrared Point-source Clustering
We perform a combined fit to angular power spectra of unresolved infrared (IR) point sources from the Planck
satellite (at 217, 353, 545, and 857 GHz, over angular scales 100 ≾ ℓ ≾ 2200), the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture
Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST; 250, 350, and 500μm; 1000 ≾ ℓ ≾ 9000), and from correlating BLAST and Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT; 148 and 218 GHz) maps. We find that the clustered power over the range of angular scales and frequencies considered is well fitted by a simple power law of the form C^(clust)_ℓ ∝ ℓ^(-n) with n = 1.25 ± 0.06. While the IR sources are understood to lie at a range of redshifts, with a variety of dust properties, we find that the frequency dependence of the clustering power can be described by the square of a modified blackbody, ν^(β)B(ν, T_(eff)), with a single emissivity index β = 2.20 ± 0.07 and effective temperature T_(eff) = 9.7 K. Our predictions for the clustering amplitude are consistent with existing ACT and South Pole Telescope results at around 150 and 220 GHz, as is our prediction for the effective dust spectral index, which we find to be α_(150–220) = 3.68±0.07 between 150 and 220 GHz. Our constraints on the clustering shape and frequency dependence can be used to model the IR clustering as a contaminant in cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements. The combined Planck and BLAST data also rule out a linear bias clustering model
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