HP-CERTI: Towards a high performance, high availability open source RTI for composable simulations (04F-SIW-014)

Composing simulations of complex systems from already existing simulation components remains a challenging issue. Motivations for composable simulation include generation of a given federation driven by operational requirements provided "on the fly". The High Level Architecture, initially developed for designing fully distributed simulations, can be considered as an interoperability standard for composing simulations from existing components. Requirements for constructing such complex simulations are quite different from those discussed for distributed simulations. Although interoperability and reusability remain essential, both high performance and availability have also to be considered to fulfill the requirements of the end user. ONERA is currently designing a High Performance / High Availability HLA Run-time Infrastructure from its open source implementation of HLA 1.3 specifications. HP-CERTI is a software package including two main components: the first one, SHM-CERTI, provides an optimized version of CERTI based on a shared memory communication scheme; the second one, Kerrighed-CERTI, allows the deployment of CERTI through the control of the Kerrighed Single System Image operating system for clusters, currently designed by IRISA. This paper describes the design of both high performance and availability Runtime Infrastructures, focusing on the architecture of SHM-CERTI. This work is carried out in the context of the COCA (High Performance Distributed Simulation and Models Reuse) Project, sponsored by the DGA/STTC (Délégation Générale pour l'Armement/Service des Stratégies Techniques et des Technologies Communes) of the French Ministry of Defense

The SkyMapper Transient Survey

The SkyMapper 1.3 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory has now begun regular operations. Alongside the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky, SkyMapper will carry out a search for supernovae and other transients. The search strategy, covering a total footprint area of ~2000 deg2 with a cadence of $\leq 5$ days, is optimised for discovery and follow-up of low-redshift type Ia supernovae to constrain cosmic expansion and peculiar velocities. We describe the search operations and infrastructure, including a parallelised software pipeline to discover variable objects in difference imaging; simulations of the performance of the survey over its lifetime; public access to discovered transients; and some first results from the Science Verification data.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures; submitted to PAS

Measurement of telescope transmission using a Collimated Beam Projector

With the increasingly large number of type Ia supernova being detected by current-generation survey telescopes, and even more expected with the upcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time, the precision of cosmological measurements will become limited by systematic uncertainties in flux calibration rather than statistical noise. One major source of systematic error in determining SNe Ia color evolution (needed for distance estimation) is uncertainty in telescope transmission, both within and between surveys. We introduce here the Collimated Beam Projector (CBP), which is meant to measure a telescope transmission with collimated light. The collimated beam more closely mimics a stellar wavefront as compared to flat-field based instruments, allowing for more precise handling of systematic errors such as those from ghosting and filter angle-of-incidence dependence. As a proof of concept, we present CBP measurements of the StarDICE prototype telescope, achieving a standard (1 sigma) uncertainty of 3 % on average over the full wavelength range measured with a single beam illumination

Testing Models of Intrinsic Brightness Variations in Type Ia Supernovae, and their Impact on Measuring Cosmological Parameters

For spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae we evaluate models of intrinsic brightness variations with detailed data/Monte Carlo comparisons of the dispersion in the following quantities: Hubble-diagram scatter, color difference (B-V-c) between the true B-V color and the fitted color (c) from the SALT-II light curve model, and photometric redshift residual. The data sample includes 251 ugriz light curves from the 3-season Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II, and 191 griz light curves from the Supernova Legacy Survey 3-year data release. We find that the simplest model of a wavelength-independent (coherent) scatter is not adequate, and that to describe the data the intrinsic scatter model must have wavelength-dependent variations. We use Monte Carlo simulations to examine the standard approach of adding a coherent scatter term in quadrature to the distance-modulus uncertainty in order to bring the reduced chi2 to unity when fitting a Hubble diagram. If the light curve fits include model uncertainties with the correct wavelength dependence of the scatter, we find that the bias on the dark energy equation of state parameter $w$ is negligible. However, incorrect model uncertainties can lead to a significant bias on the distance moduli, with up to ~0.05 mag redshift-dependent variation. For the recent SNLS3 cosmology results we estimate that this effect introduces an additional systematic uncertainty on $w$ of ~0.02, well below the total uncertainty. However, this uncertainty depends on the samples used, and thus this small $w$-uncertainty is not guaranteed in future cosmology results.Comment: accepted by Ap

The ATLAS3D project - XXIX : The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images

Date of Acceptance: 25/09/2014Galactic archaeology based on star counts is instrumental to reconstruct the past mass assembly of Local Group galaxies. The development of new observing techniques and data reduction, coupled with the use of sensitive large field of view cameras, now allows us to pursue this technique in more distant galaxies exploiting their diffuse low surface brightness (LSB) light. As part of the ATLAS3D project, we have obtained with the MegaCam camera at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope extremely deep, multiband images of nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs). We present here a catalogue of 92 galaxies from the ATLAS3D sample, which are located in low- to medium-density environments. The observing strategy and data reduction pipeline, which achieve a gain of several magnitudes in the limiting surface brightness with respect to classical imaging surveys, are presented. The size and depth of the survey are compared to other recent deep imaging projects. The paper highlights the capability of LSB-optimized surveys at detecting new prominent structures that change the apparent morphology of galaxies. The intrinsic limitations of deep imaging observations are also discussed, among those, the contamination of the stellar haloes of galaxies by extended ghost reflections, and the cirrus emission from Galactic dust. The detection and systematic census of fine structures that trace the present and past mass assembly of ETGs are one of the prime goals of the project. We provide specific examples of each type of observed structures - tidal tails, stellar streams and shells - and explain how they were identified and classified. We give an overview of the initial results. The detailed statistical analysis will be presented in future papers.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Analyse des données du fond diffus cosmologique : simulation et séparation de composantes

The next generation of experiments dedicated to measuring temperature and polarization anisotropies of the microwave background radiation (CMB), inaugurated with the launch of the Planck satellite, will enable the detection and study of increasingly subtle effects. However, the superposition of astrophysical foreground emissions hinder the analysis of the cosmological signal and will contribute as the main source of uncertainty in the forthcoming measurements. An improved modeling of foreground emissions and the development of statistical methods to extract the cosmological information from this contamination are thus crucial steps in the scientific analysis of incoming datasets. In this work we describe the development of the Planck Sky Model, a tool for modeling and simulating the sky emission. We then make use of these simulations to develop and evaluate statistical treatments of foreground emission. We explore the efficiency of wavelet analysis on the sphere (needlets) in the domain of spectral estimation on incomplete data with inhomogeneous contamination, and design a method for treating small scales contamination induced by point sources in the Planck and WMAP data. We also study the impact of foregrounds on our ability to detect primordial gravitational waves (predicted by inflation) and offer forecasts of the performance of future dedicated experiments.La prochaine génération d'expériences dédiées à la mesure des anisotropies de température et de polarisation du fond diffus cosmologique (CMB), inaugurée avec le lancement de Planck, va permettre la détection et l'étude d'effets de plus en plus fins. Toutefois, la superposition d'émissions astrophysiques d'avant-plan contamine le signal cosmologique et constituera, dans ces futures données, la principale source d'incertitude devant le bruit instrumental. L'amélioration de la modélisation des émissions d'avant-plan et le développement de méthodes statistiques pour permettre leur séparation sont donc des étapes cruciales de l'analyse scientifique des mesures à venir. Ce travail s'inscrit dans cette problématique et comprend le développement du Planck Sky Model, un outil de modélisation et de simulation de l'émission du ciel. Ces simulations sont par ailleurs mises à profit pour le développement et l'évaluation de méthode statistiques adaptées au problème des avant-plans. Nous explorons ainsi les possibilités offertes par l'analyse en ondelettes sur la sphère (needlets) pour le problème de l'estimation spectrale sur des mesures incomplètes avec une contamination inhomogène, et proposons une méthode pour traiter la contamination induites aux petites échelles par les sources ponctuelles dans les données Planck et WMAP. Nous étudions également l'impact des avant-plans sur la possibilité de détection des ondes gravitationnelles primordiales (prédites par l'inflation) et proposons une prospective des performances des futures missions dédiées à leur mesure

Cosmology with Type Ia supernovæ: environmental effects

International audienceWe measure host galaxy photometry and local fluxes within 3 kpc for 882 Type Ia supernovæ (SNIa) spanning the redshift range 0.01 < z < 1 and use SED fitting techniques to derive host properties such as stellar masses and local U −V rest-frame colors. The latter is an indicator of the luminosity weighted age of the stellar population in a galaxy. We find that local U −V color brightness dependence is at least as significant as it is for properties of the host galaxy as a whole (host stellar mass or global U −V rest-frame color). Once selection requirements are chosen, we perform cosmological fits using local color as a third standardization variable and find its step significance at the level of 7σ, indicating that the remaining luminosity variations in SNIa samples can be reduced using a third standardization variable taking the local environment into account. Even after a mass step correction, a correlation of 4.6σ is found between local U −V color and Hubble diagram residuals. We find that using the local color in place of the stellar mass results in a change in the measured value of the dark energy equation of state parameter of 0.6%. The precise analysis of local environment of SNIa will be of great importance for the forthcoming surveys, and in particular LSST for which uncertainties on the dark energy equation of state will be comparable to the reported effects [1]

Analyse des données du fond diffus cosmologique (simulation et séparation de composantes)

La prochaine génération d'expériences dédiées à la mesure des anisotropies de température et de polarisation du fond diffus cosmologique (CMB), inaugurée avec le lancement de Planck, va permettre la détection et l'étude d'effets de plus en plus fins. Toutefois, la superposition d'émissions astrophysiques d'avant-plan contamine le signal cosmologique et constituera, dans ces futures données, la principale source d'incertitude devant le bruit instrumental. L'amélioration de la modélisation des émissions d'avant-plan et le développement de méthodes statistiques pour permettre leur séparation sont donc des étapes cruciales de l'analyse scientifique des mesures à venir. Ce travail s'inscrit dans cette problématique et comprend le développement du Planck Sky Model, un outil de modélisation et de simulation de l'émission du ciel. Ces simulations sont par ailleurs mises à profit pour le développement et l'évaluation de méthode statistiques adaptées au problème des avant-plans. Nous explorons ainsi les possibilités offertes par l'analyse en ondelettes sur la sphère (needlets) pour le problème de l'estimation spectrale sur des mesures incomplètes avec une contamination inhomogène, et proposons une méthode pour traiter la contamination induites aux petites échelles par les sources ponctuelles dans les données Planck et WMAP. Nous étudions également l'impact des avant-plans sur la possibilité de détection des ondes gravitationnelles primordiales (prédites par l'inflation) et proposons une prospective des performances des futures missions dédiées à leur mesure.The next generation of experiments dedicated to measuring temperature and polarization anisotropies of the microwave background radiation (CMB), inaugurated with the launch of the Planck satellite, will enable the detection and study of increasingly subtle effects. However, the superposition of astrophysical foreground emissions hinder the analysis of the cosmological signal and will contribute as the main source of uncertainty in the forthcoming measurements. An improved modeling of foreground emissions and the development of statistical methods to extract the cosmological information from this contamination are thus crucial steps in the scientific analysis of incoming datasets. In this work we describe the development of the Planck Sky Model, a tool for modeling and simulating the sky emission. We then make use of these simulations to develop and evaluate statistical treatments of foreground emission. We explore the efficiency of wavelet analysis on the sphere (needlets) in the domain of spectral estimation on incomplete data with inhomogeneous contamination, and design a method for treating small scales contamination induced by point sources in the Planck and WMAP data. We also study the impact of foregrounds on our ability to detect primordial gravitational waves (predicted by inflation) and offer forecasts of the performance of future dedicated experiments.PARIS-Observatoire (751142302) / SudocSudocFranceF