Catastrophic Photo-z Errors and the Dark Energy Parameter Estimates with Cosmic Shear

We study the impact of catastrophic errors occurring in the photometric redshifts of galaxies on cosmological parameter estimates with cosmic shear tomography. We consider a fiducial survey with 9-filter set and perform photo-z measurement simulations. It is found that a fraction of 1% galaxies at z_{spec}~0.4 is misidentified to be at z_{phot}~3.5. We then employ both chi^2 fitting method and the extension of Fisher matrix formalism to evaluate the bias on the equation of state parameters of dark energy, w_0 and w_a, induced by those catastrophic outliers. By comparing the results from both methods, we verify that the estimation of w_0 and w_a from the fiducial 5-bin tomographic analyses can be significantly biased. To minimize the impact of this bias, two strategies can be followed: (A) the cosmic shear analysis is restricted to 0.5<z<2.5 where catastrophic redshift errors are expected to be insignificant; (B) a spectroscopic survey is conducted for galaxies with 3<z_{phot}<4. We find that the number of spectroscopic redshifts needed scales as N_{spec} \propto f_{cata}\times A where f_{cata}=1% is the fraction of catastrophic redshift errors (assuming a 9-filter photometric survey) and A is the survey area. For A=1000 {deg}^2, we find that N_{spec}>320 and 860 respectively in order to reduce the joint bias in (w_0,w_a) to be smaller than 2\sigma and 1\sigma. This spectroscopic survey (option B) will improve the Figure of Merit of option A by a factor \times 1.5 thus making such a survey strongly desirable.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures. Revised version, as accepted for publication in Ap

Prospects for Dark Energy Evolution: a Frequentist Multi-Probe Approach

A major quest in cosmology is the understanding of the nature of dark energy. It is now well known that a combination of cosmological probes is required to break the underlying degeneracies on cosmological parameters. In this paper, we present a method, based on a frequentist approach, to combine probes without any prior constraints, taking full account of the correlations in the parameters. As an application, a combination of current SNIa and CMB data with an evolving dark energy component is first compared to other analyses. We emphasise the consequences of the implementation of the dark energy perturbations on the result for a time varying equation of state. The impact of future weak lensing surveys on the measurement of dark energy evolution is then studied in combination with future measurements of the cosmic microwave background and type Ia supernovae. We present the combined results for future mid-term and long-term surveys and confirm that the combination with weak lensing is very powerful in breaking parameter degeneracies. A second generation of experiment is however required to achieve a 0.1 error on the parameters describing the evolution of dark energy.Comment: Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics 14 pages, 8 figure

On the determination of the deceleration parameter from Supernovae data

Supernovae searches have shown that a simple matter-dominated and decelerating universe should be ruled out. However a determination of the present deceleration parameter $q_0$ through a simple kinematical description is not exempt of possible drawbacks. We show that, with a time dependent equation of state for the dark energy, a bias is present for $q_0$ : models which are very far from the so-called Concordance Model can be accommodated by the data and a simple kinematical analysis can lead to wrong conclusions. We present a quantitative treatment of this bias and we present our conclusions when a possible dynamical dark energy is taken into account.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitte

Cosmological parameter extraction and biases from type Ia supernova magnitude evolution

We study different one-parametric models of type Ia Supernova magnitude evolution on cosmic time scales. Constraints on cosmological and Supernova evolution parameters are obtained by combined fits on the actual data coming from Supernovae, the cosmic microwave background, and baryonic acoustic oscillations. We find that data prefer a magnitude evolution such that high-redshift Supernova are brighter than would be expected in a standard cosmos with a dark energy component. Data however are consistent with non-evolving magnitudes at the one-sigma level, except special cases. We simulate a future data scenario where SN magnitude evolution is allowed for, and neglect the possibility of such an evolution in the fit. We find the fiducial models for which the wrong model assumption of non-evolving SN magnitude is not detectable, and for which at the same time biases on the fitted cosmological parameters are introduced. Of the cosmological parameters the overall mass density has the strongest chances to be biased due to the wrong model assumption. Whereas early-epoch models with a magnitude offset ~z^2 show up to be not too dangerous when neglected in the fitting procedure, late epoch models with magnitude offset ~sqrt(z) have high chances to bias the fit results.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication by A&A. Revised version: Corrected Typos, reference added to section

Probing Dark Energy with Supernovae : a concordant or a convergent model?

We present a revised interpretation of recent analysis of supernovae data. We evaluate the effect of the priors on the extraction of the dark energy equation of state. We find that the conclusions depend strongly on the $\Omega_M$ prior value and on its uncertainty, and show that a biased fitting procedure applied on non concordant simulated data can converge to the "concordance model". Relaxing the prior on $\Omega_M$ points to other sets of solutions, which are not excluded by observational data.Comment: 1+4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Re

Probing Dark Energy with Supernovae : Bias from the time evolution of the equation of state

Observation of thousands of type Ia supernovae should offer the most direct approach to probe the dark energy content of the universe. This will be undertaken by future large ground-based surveys followed by a space mission (SNAP/JDEM). We address the problem of extracting the cosmological parameters from the future data in a model independent approach, with minimal assumptions on the prior knowledge of some parameters. We concentrate on the comparison between a fiducial model and the fitting function and adress in particular the effect of neglecting (or not) the time evolution of the equation of state. We present a quantitative analysis of the bias which can be introduced by the fitting procedure. Such bias cannot be ignored as soon as the statistical errors from present data are drastically improved.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Beyond Einstein-Cartan gravity: Quadratic torsion and curvature invariants with even and odd parity including all boundary terms

Recently, gravitational gauge theories with torsion have been discussed by an increasing number of authors from a classical as well as from a quantum field theoretical point of view. The Einstein-Cartan(-Sciama-Kibble) Lagrangian has been enriched by the parity odd pseudoscalar curvature (Hojman, Mukku, and Sayed) and by torsion square and curvature square pieces, likewise of even and odd parity. (i) We show that the inverse of the so-called Barbero-Immirzi parameter multiplying the pseudoscalar curvature, because of the topological Nieh-Yan form, can only be appropriately discussed if torsion square pieces are included. (ii) The quadratic gauge Lagrangian with both parities, proposed by Obukhov et al. and Baekler et al., emerges also in the framework of Diakonov et al.(2011). We establish the exact relations between both approaches by applying the topological Euler and Pontryagin forms in a Riemann-Cartan space expressed for the first time in terms of irreducible pieces of the curvature tensor. (iii) Only in a Riemann-Cartan spacetime, that is, in a spacetime with torsion, parity violating terms can be brought into the gravitational Lagrangian in a straightforward and natural way. Accordingly, Riemann-Cartan spacetime is a natural habitat for chiral fermionic matter fields.Comment: 12 page latex, as version 2 an old file was submitted by mistake, this is now the real corrected fil

Light-particle emission from the fissioning nuclei 126Ba, 188Pt and (266,272,278)/110: theoretical predictions and experimental results

We present a comparison of our model treating fission dynamics in conjunction with light-particle (n, p, alpha) evaporation with the available experimental data for the nuclei 126Ba, 188Pt and three isotopes of the element Z=110. The dynamics of the symmetric fission process is described through the solution of a classical Langevin equation for a single collective variable characterizing the nuclear deformation along the fission path. A microscopic approach is used to evaluate the emission rates for pre-fission light particles. Entrance-channel effects are taken into account by generating an initial spin distribution of the compound nucleus formed by the fusion of two deformed nuclei with different relative orientations

Single-Proton Removal Reaction Study of 16B

The low-lying level structure of the unbound system $^{16}$B has been investigated via single-proton removal from a 35 MeV/nucleon $^{17}$C beam. The coincident detection of the beam velocity $^{15}$B fragment and neutron allowed the relative energy of the in-flight decay of $^{16}$B to be reconstructed. The resulting spectrum exhibited a narrow peak some 85 keV above threshold. It is argued that this feature corresponds to a very narrow ($\Gamma \ll$100 keV) resonance, or an unresolved multiplet, with a dominant $\pi (p_{3/2})^{-1} \otimes \nu (d_{5/2}^3)_{J=3/2^+}$ + $\pi (p_{3/2})^{-1} \otimes \nu (d_{5/2}^2,s_{1/2})_{J=3/2^+}$ configuration which decays by d-wave neutron emission.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, submitted to Phys. Lett.

Spallation Neutron Production by 0.8, 1.2 and 1.6 GeV Protons on various Targets

Spallation neutron production in proton induced reactions on Al, Fe, Zr, W, Pb and Th targets at 1.2 GeV and on Fe and Pb at 0.8, and 1.6 GeV measured at the SATURNE accelerator in Saclay is reported. The experimental double-differential cross-sections are compared with calculations performed with different intra-nuclear cascade models implemented in high energy transport codes. The broad angular coverage also allowed the determination of average neutron multiplicities above 2 MeV. Deficiencies in some of the models commonly used for applications are pointed out.Comment: 20 pages, 32 figures, revised version, accepted fpr publication in Phys. Rev.