Search

The next generation of cosmological surveys will have unprecedented measurement precision, hence they hold the power to put theoretical ideas to the most stringent tests yet. However, in order to realise the full potential of these measurements, we need to ensure that we apply the most effective analytical tools. We need to identify which cosmological observables are the best cosmological probes. Two commonly used cosmological observables are galaxy redshift number counts and cosmic magnification. Both of these observables have been investigated extensively in cosmological analyses, but only separately. In the light of interacting dark energy (IDE) emerging as a plausible means of alleviating current cosmological tensions, we investigate both observables on large scales in a universe with IDE, using the angular power spectrum: taking into account all known terms, including relativistic corrections, in the observed overdensity. Our results suggest that (given multi-tracer analysis) measuring relativistic effects with cosmic magnification will be relatively better than with galaxy redshift number counts, at all redshifts z. Conversely, without relativistic effects, galaxy redshift number counts will be relatively better in probing the imprint of IDE, at all z. At low z (up to around z = 0.1), relativistic effects enable cosmic magnification to be a relatively better probe of the IDE imprint; while at higher z (up to z < 3), galaxy redshift number counts become the better probe of IDE imprint. However, at z = 3 and higher, our results suggest that either of the observables will suffice., 11 pages, 5 figures (v2: Minor general revision; Fig. 1 improved; new figure added; conclusion remains unchanged. Version accepted by MNRAS.)

Gravitational lensing of fast radio bursts (FRBs) offers an exciting avenue for several cosmological applications. However, it is not yet clear how many such events future surveys will detect nor how to optimally find them. We use the known properties of FRBs to forecast detection rates of gravitational lensing on delay time-scales from microseconds to years, corresponding to lens masses spanning 15 orders of magnitude. We highlight the role of the FRB redshift distribution on our ability to observe gravitational lensing. We consider cosmological lensing of FRBs by stars in foreground galaxies and show that strong stellar lensing will dominate on microsecond time-scales. Upcoming surveys such as DSA-2000 and CHORD will constrain the fraction of dark matter in compact objects (e.g. primordial black holes) and may detect millilensing events from intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) or small dark matter halos. Coherent all-sky monitors will be able to detect longer-duration lensing events from massive galaxies, in addition to short time-scale lensing. Finally, we propose a new application of FRB gravitational lensing that will measure directly the circumgalactic medium of intervening galaxies.

We combine the isothermal Jeans model and the model of adiabatic halo contraction into a simple semi-analytic procedure for computing the density profile of self-interacting dark-matter (SIDM) haloes with the gravitational influence from the inhabitant galaxies. We show that the model agrees well with cosmological SIDM simulations over the entire core-forming stage and up to the onset of gravothermal core-collapse. Using this model, we show that the halo response to baryons is more diverse in SIDM than in CDM and depends sensitively on galaxy size, a desirable link in the context of the structural diversity of bright dwarf galaxies. The fast speed of the method facilitates analyses that would be challenging for numerical simulations -- notably, 1) we quantify the SIDM halo response as functions of the baryonic properties, on a fine mesh grid spanned by the baryon-to-total-mass ratio, $M_{\rm b}/M_{\rm vir}$, and galaxy compactness, $r_{1/2}/R_{\rm vir}$; 2) we show with high statistical precision that for typical Milky-Way-like systems, the SIDM profiles are similar to their CDM counterparts; and 3) we delineate the regime of gravothermal core-collapse in the $M_{\rm b}/M_{\rm vir}$-$r_{1/2}/R_{\rm vir}$ space, for a given cross section and a given halo concentration. Finally, we compare the isothermal Jeans model with the more sophisticated gravothermal fluid model, and show that the former yields faster core formation and agrees better with cosmological simulations. We attribute the difference to whether the target CDM halo is used as a boundary condition or as the initial condition for the gravothermal evolution, and thus comment on possible future improvements of the fluid model. We have made our programs for the model publicly available at https://github.com/JiangFangzhou/SIDM., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, submitted to MNRAS

The current generation of galaxy simulations can resolve individual giant molecular clouds, the progenitors of dense star clusters. But the evolutionary fate of these young massive clusters, and whether they can become the old globular clusters (GCs) observed in many galaxies, is determined by a complex interplay of internal dynamical processes and external galactic effects. We present the first star-by-star $N$-body models of massive ($N\sim10^5-10^7$) star clusters formed in a FIRE-2 MHD simulation of a Milky Way-mass galaxy, with the relevant initial conditions and tidal forces extracted from the cosmological simulation. We select 895 ($\sim 30\%$) of the YMCs with $ > 6\times10^4M_{\odot}$ from Grudić et al.~2022 and integrate them to $z=0$ using the Cluster Monte Carlo Code, \texttt{CMC}. This procedure predicts a MW-like system with 148 GCs, predominantly formed during the early, bursty mode of star formation. Our GCs are younger, less massive, and more core-collapsed than clusters in the Milky Way or M31. This results from the assembly history and age-metallicity relationship of the host galaxy: younger clusters are preferentially born in stronger tidal fields and initially retain fewer stellar-mass black holes, causing them to lose mass faster and reach core collapse sooner than older GCs. Our results suggest that the masses and core/half-light radii of GCs are shaped not only by internal dynamical processes, but also by the specific evolutionary history of their host galaxies. These results emphasize that $N$-body studies with realistic stellar physics are crucial to understanding the evolution and present-day properties of GC systems., 24 pages, 16 figures, matches version accepted by MNRAS

The search for cosmic polarization rotation or birefringence in the CMB is well-motivated because it can provide powerful constraints on parity-violating new physics, such as axion-like particles. In this paper we point out that since the CMB polarization is produced at two very different redshifts - it is generated at both reionization and recombination - new parity-violating physics can generically rotate the polarization signals from these different sources by different amounts. We explore two implications of this. First, measurements of CMB birefringence are challenging because the effect is degenerate with a miscalibration of CMB polarization angles; however, by taking the difference of the reionization and recombination birefringence angles (measured from different CMB angular scales), we can obtain a cosmological signal that is immune to instrumental angle miscalibration. Second, we note that the combination with other methods for probing birefringence can give tomographic information, constraining the redshift origin of any physics producing birefringence. We forecast that the difference of the reionization and recombination birefringence angles can be competitively determined to within ~0.05 degrees for future CMB satellites such as LiteBIRD. Although much further work is needed, we argue that foreground mitigation for this measurement should be less challenging than for inflationary B-mode searches on similar scales due to larger signals and lower foregrounds., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; comments welcome

Models of stellar population synthesis (SPS) are the fundamental tool that relates the physical properties of a galaxy to its spectral energy distribution (SED). In this paper, we present DSPS: a python package for stellar population synthesis. All of the functionality in DSPS is implemented natively in the JAX library for automatic differentiation, and so our predictions for galaxy photometry are fully differentiable, and directly inherit the performance benefits of JAX, including portability onto GPUs. DSPS also implements several novel features, such as i) a flexible empirical model for stellar metallicity that incorporates correlations with stellar age, and ii) support for the diffstar model that provides a physically-motivated connection between the star formation history of a galaxy (SFH) and the mass assembly of its underlying dark matter halo. We detail a set of theoretical techniques for using autodiff to calculate gradients of predictions for galaxy SEDs with respect to SPS parameters that control a range of physical effects, including SFH, stellar metallicity, nebular emission, and dust attenuation. When forward modeling the colors of a synthetic galaxy population, we find that DSPS can provide a factor of 5 speedup over standard SPS codes on a CPU, and a factor of 300-400 on a modern GPU. When coupled with gradient-based techniques for optimization and inference, DSPS makes it practical to conduct expansive likelihood analyses of simulation-based models of the galaxy--halo connection that fully forward model galaxy spectra and photometry., Comment: 13 pages, 2 appendices. Version accepted for publication in MNRAS

Detecting and measuring a non-Gaussian signature of primordial origin in the density field is a major science goal of next-generation galaxy surveys. The signal will permit us to determine primordial physics processes and constrain models of cosmic inflation. While traditional approaches utilise a limited set of statistical summaries of the galaxy distribution to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity, we present a field-level approach by Bayesian forward-modelling the entire three-dimensional galaxy survey. Our method naturally and fully self-consistently exploits the entirety of the large-scale structure, e.g., higher-order statistics, peculiar velocity fields, and scale-dependent galaxy bias, to extract information on the local non-Gaussianity parameter, $\fnl$. We demonstrate the performance of our approach through various tests with mock galaxy data emulating relevant features of the \sdssiii{}-like survey, and additional tests with a \textit{Stage IV} mock data set. These tests reveal that the method infers unbiased values of $\fnl$ by accurately handling survey geometries, noise, and unknown galaxy biases. We demonstrate that our method can achieve constraints of $\sigma_{\fnl} \approx 8.78$ for \sdssiii{}-like data, an improvement of a factor $\sim 2.5$ over currently published constraints. Tests with next-generation mock data show that significant further improvements are feasible with sufficiently high resolution. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that our method can consistently marginalise all nuisance parameters of the data model. The method further provides an inference of the three-dimensional primordial density field, providing opportunities to explore additional signatures of primordial physics., Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments are welcome

Where the cosmic baryons lie in and around galactic dark matter halos is only weakly constrained. We develop a method to quickly paint on models for their distribution. Our approach uses the statistical advantages of $N$-body simulations, while painting on the profile of gas around individual halos in ways that can be motivated by semi-analytic models or zoom-in hydrodynamic simulations of galaxies. Possible applications of the algorithm include extragalactic dispersion measures to fast radio bursts (FRBs), the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, baryonic effects on weak lensing, and cosmic metal enrichment. As an initial application, we use this tool to investigate how the baryonic profile of foreground galactic-mass halos affects the statistics of the dispersion measure (DM) towards cosmological FRBs. We show that the distribution of DM is sensitive to the distribution of baryons in galactic halos, with viable gas profile models having significantly different probability distributions for DM to a given redshift. We also investigate the requirements to statistically measure the circumgalactic electron profile for FRB analyses that stack DM with impact parameter to foreground galaxies, quantifying the size of the contaminating "two-halo" term from correlated systems and the number of FRBs for a high significance detection. Publicly available Python modules implement our CGMBrush algorithm., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, public python code at https://github.com/ianw89/cgm-brush

As we observe a rapidly growing number of astrophysical transients, we learn more about the diverse host galaxy environments in which they occur. Host galaxy information can be used to purify samples of cosmological Type Ia supernovae, uncover the progenitor systems of individual classes, and facilitate low-latency follow-up of rare and peculiar explosions. In this work, we develop a novel data-driven methodology to simulate the time-domain sky that includes detailed modeling of the probability density function for multiple transient classes conditioned on host galaxy magnitudes, colours, star formation rates, and masses. We have designed these simulations to optimize photometric classification and analysis in upcoming large synoptic surveys. We integrate host galaxy information into the SNANA simulation framework to construct the Simulated Catalogue of Optical Transients and Correlated Hosts (SCOTCH), a publicly-available catalogue of 5 million idealized transient light curves in LSST passbands and their host galaxy properties over the redshift range $0, Comment: 30 pages, 21 figures. Updated to reflect version published in MNRAS Vol. 520, Issue 2. This version improves the treatment of transient-host offsets and AGN host correlations. Associated SCOTCH files are available through Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7563623

A key unknown of the Milky Way (MW) satellites is their orbital history, and, in particular, the time they were accreted onto the MW system since it marks the point where they experience a multitude of environmental processes. We present a new methodology for determining infall times, namely using a neural network (NN) algorithm. The NN is trained on MW-analogues in the EAGLE hydrodynamical simulation to predict if a dwarf galaxy is at first infall or a backsplash galaxy and to infer its infall time. The resulting NN predicts with 85\% accuracy if a galaxy currently outside the virial radius is a backsplash satellite and determines the infall times with a typical 68\% confidence interval of 4.4 Gyrs. Applying the NN to MW dwarfs with Gaia EDR3 proper motions, we find that all of the dwarfs within 300 kpc had been inside the Galactic halo. The overall MW satellite accretion rate agrees well with the theoretical prediction except for late times when the MW shows a second peak at a lookback time of 1.5 Gyrs corresponding to the infall of the LMC and its satellites. We also find that the quenching times for ultrafaint dwarfs show no significant correlation with infall time and thus supporting the hypothesis that they were quenched during reionisation. In contrast, dwarfs with stellar masses above $10^5~M_\odot$ are found to be consistent with environmental quenching inside the Galactic halo, with star-formation ceasing on average at $0.5^{+0.9}_{-1.2}$ Gyrs after infall., 13 pages, 7 figures, appendix: 4 pages, published version

A fundamental requirement for reionizing the Universe is that a sufficient fraction of the ionizing photons emitted by galaxies successfully escapes into the intergalactic medium. However, due to the scarcity of high-redshift observational data, the sources driving reionization remain uncertain. In this work we calculate the ionizing escape fractions ($f_{\rm esc}$) of reionization-era galaxies from the state-of-the-art THESAN simulations, which combine an accurate radiation-hydrodynamic solver AREPO-RT with the well-tested IllustrisTNG galaxy formation model to self-consistently simulate both small-scale galaxy physics and large-scale reionization throughout a large patch of the universe ($L_{\rm box} = 95.5\,\rm cMpc$). This allows the formation of numerous massive haloes ($M_{\rm halo} \gtrsim 10^{10}\,{\rm M_{\odot}}$), which are often statistically underrepresented in previous studies but are believed to be important to achieve rapid reionization. We find that low-mass galaxies ($M_{\rm stars} \lesssim 10^7\,{\rm M_{\odot}}$) are the main drivers of reionization above $z \gtrsim 7$, while high-mass galaxies ($M_{\rm stars} \gtrsim 10^8\,{\rm M_{\odot}}$) dominate the escaped ionizing photon budget at lower redshifts. The variation in halo escape fractions decreases for higher-mass haloes, which can be understood from the more settled galactic structure, SFR stability, and fraction of sightlines within each halo significantly contributing to the escaped flux. We show that dust is capable of reducing the escape fractions of massive galaxies, but the impact on the global $f_{\rm esc}$ depends on the dust model. Finally, AGN are unimportant for reionization in THESAN and their escape fractions are lower than stellar ones due to being located near the centres of galaxy gravitational potential wells., 24 pages, 19 figures, MNRAS. Please visit www.thesan-project.com for more details

We present a new set of cosmological zoom-in simulations of a MW-like galaxy which for the first time include elastic velocity-dependent self interacting dark matter (SIDM) and IllustrisTNG physics. With these simulations we investigate the interaction between SIDM and baryons and its effects on the galaxy evolution process. We also introduce a novel set of modified DMO simulations which can reasonably replicate the effects of fully realized hydrodynamics on the DM halo while simplifying the analysis and lowering the computational cost. We find that baryons change the thermal structure of the central region of the halo to a greater extent than the SIDM scatterings for MW-like galaxies. Additionally, we find that the new thermal structure of the MW-like halo causes SIDM to create cuspier central densities rather than cores because the SIDM scatterings remove the thermal support by transferring heat away from the center of the galaxy. We find that this effect, caused by baryon contraction, begins to affect galaxies with a stellar mass of $10^8$ M$_\odot$ and increases in strength to the MW-mass scale. This implies that any simulations used to constrain the SIDM cross sections for galaxies with stellar masses between $10^8$ and at least $10^{11}$ M$_\odot$ will require baryons to make accurate predictions., Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures

Non-thermal emission from relativistic Cosmic Ray (CR) electrons gives insight into the strength and morphology of intra-cluster magnetic fields, as well as providing powerful tracers of structure formation shocks. Emission caused by CR protons on the other hand still challenges current observations and is therefore testing models of proton acceleration at intra-cluster shocks. Large-scale simulations including the effects of CRs have been difficult to achieve and have been mainly reduced to simulating an overall energy budget, or tracing CR populations in post-processing of simulation output and has often been done for either protons or electrons. We introduce CRESCENDO: Cosmic Ray Evolution with SpeCtral Electrons aND prOtons, an efficient on-the-fly Fokker-Planck solver to evolve distributions of CR protons and electrons within every resolution element of our simulation. The solver accounts for CR (re-)acceleration at intra-cluster shocks, based on results of recent PIC simulations, adiabatic changes and radiative losses of electrons. We show its performance in test cases as well as idealized galaxy cluster (GC) simulations. We apply the model to an idealized GC merger following best-fit parameters for CIZA J2242.4+5301-1 and study CR injection, radio relic morphology, spectral steepening and synchrotron emission., Comment: 25 pages (21 main paper + 4 appendix), 17 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We employ several galaxy formation models, in particular, L-GALAXIES, IllustrisTNG, and EAGLE, as well as observational samples from SDSS and DESI, to investigate galactic conformity, the observed large-scale correlation between the star-formation properties of central (primary) galaxies and those of their neighbours. To analyse the models and observations uniformly, we introduce CENSAT, a new algorithm to define whether a galaxy is a central or a satellite system based on an isolation criterion. We find that the conformity signal is present, up to at least 5 Mpc from the centres of low- and intermediate-mass centrals in the latest version of L-GALAXIES (Ayromlou et al. 2021), IllustrisTNG, and EAGLE, as well as in SDSS and DESI observational samples. In comparison, the conformity signal is substantially weaker in an older version of L-GALAXIES (Henriques et al. 2020). One of the main differences between this older model and the other models is its neglect of ram-pressure stripping of the gas reservoirs of galaxies except within the boundaries of massive cluster haloes. Our observational comparisons demonstrate that this difference significantly affects the observed large-scale conformity signal. Furthermore, by examining the contribution of backsplash, fly-by, central, and satellite galaxies to the conformity signal, we show that much, but not all, of it arises from primary galaxies near massive systems. Remaining tensions between the models and observations may be solved by modifying the physical prescriptions for how feedback processes affect the distribution and kinematics of gas and the environment around galaxies out to scales of several Megaparsecs., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS

As one of Stage IV space-based telescopes, China Space Station Telescope (CSST) can perform photometric and spectroscopic surveys simultaneously to efficiently explore the Universe in extreme precision. In this work, we investigate several powerful CSST cosmological probes, including cosmic shear, galaxy-galaxy lensing, photometric and spectroscopic galaxy clustering, and number counts of galaxy clusters, and study the capability of these probes by forecasting the results of joint constraints on the cosmological parameters. By referring to real observational results, we generate mock data and estimate the measured errors based on CSST observational and instrumental designs. To study the systematical effects on the results, we also consider a number of systematics in CSST photometric and spectroscopic surveys, such as the intrinsic alignment, shear calibration uncertainties, photometric redshift uncertainties, galaxy bias, non-linear effects, instrumental effects, etc. The Fisher matrix method is used to derive the constraint results from individual or joint surveys on the cosmological and systematical parameters. We find that the joint constraints by including all these CSST cosmological probes can significantly improve the results from current observations by one order of magnitude at least, which gives $\Omega_m$ and $\sigma_8$ $, Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Increasingly, uncertainties in predictions from galaxy formation simulations (at sub-Milky Way masses) are dominated by uncertainties in stellar evolution inputs. In this paper, we present the full set of updates from the FIRE-2 version of the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project code, to the next version, FIRE-3. While the transition from FIRE-1 to FIRE-2 focused on improving numerical methods, here we update the stellar evolution tracks used to determine stellar feedback inputs, e.g. stellar mass-loss (O/B and AGB), spectra (luminosities and ionization rates), and supernova rates (core-collapse and Ia), as well as detailed mass-dependent yields. We also update the low-temperature cooling and chemistry, to enable improved accuracy at $T \lesssim 10^{4}\,$K and densities $n\gg 1\,{\rm cm^{-3}}$, and the meta-galactic ionizing background. All of these synthesize newer empirical constraints on these quantities and updated stellar evolution and yield models from a number of groups, addressing different aspects of stellar evolution. To make the updated models as accessible as possible, we provide fitting functions for all of the relevant updated tracks, yields, etc, in a form specifically designed so they can be directly 'plugged in' to existing galaxy formation simulations. We also summarize the default FIRE-3 implementations of 'optional' physics, including spectrally-resolved cosmic rays and supermassive black hole growth and feedback., Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome

We present a Bayesian hierarchical modelling approach to reconstruct the initial cosmic matter density field constrained by peculiar velocity observations. As our approach features a model for the gravitational evolution of dark matter to connect the initial conditions to late-time observations, it reconstructs the final density and velocity fields as natural byproducts. We implement this field-based physical inference approach by adapting the Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies (BORG) algorithm, which explores the high-dimensional posterior through the use of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampling. We test the self-consistency of the method using random sets of mock tracers, and assess its accuracy in a more complex scenario where peculiar velocity tracers are non-linearly evolved mock haloes. We find that our framework self-consistently infers the initial conditions, density and velocity fields, and shows some robustness to model mis-specification. As compared to the state-of-the-art approach of constrained Gaussian random fields/Wiener filtering, our method produces more accurate final density and velocity field reconstructions. It also allows us to constrain the initial conditions by peculiar velocity observations, complementing in this aspect previous field-based approaches based on other cosmological observables., Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present constraints on primordial B modes from large angular scale cosmic microwave background polarisation anisotropies measured with the Planck satellite. To remove Galactic polarised foregrounds, we use a Bayesian parametric component separation method, modelling synchrotron radiation as a power law and thermal dust emission as a modified blackbody. This method propagates uncertainties from the foreground cleaning into the noise covariance matrices of the maps. We construct two likelihoods: (i) a semi-analytical cross-spectrum-based likelihood-approximation scheme (momento) and (ii) an exact polarisation-only pixel-based likelihood (pixlike). Since momento is based on cross-spectra it is statistically less powerful than pixlike, but is less sensitive to systematic errors correlated across frequencies. Both likelihoods give a tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, that is consistent with zero from low multipole (2, 10 pages, 7 figures

We conduct the first case study towards developing optimal foreground mitigation strategies for neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping using radio interferometers at low redshifts. A pipeline for simulation, foreground mitigation and power spectrum estimation is built, which can be used for ongoing and future surveys using MeerKAT and Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO). It simulates realistic sky signals to generate visibility data given instrument and observation specifications, which is subsequently used to perform foreground mitigation and power spectrum estimation. A quadratic estimator formalism is developed to estimate the temperature power spectrum in visibility space. Using MeerKAT telescope specifications for observations in the redshift range z~0.25-0.30 corresponding to the MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) survey, we present a case study where we compare different approaches of foreground mitigation. We find that component separation in visibility space provides a more accurate estimation of HI clustering comparing to foreground avoidance, with the uncertainties being 30 per cent smaller. Power spectrum estimation from image is found to be less robust with larger bias and more information loss when compared to estimation in visibility. We conclude that for z~0.25-0.30, the MIGHTEE survey will be capable of measuring the HI power spectrum from k~0.5 Mpc$^{-1}$ to k~10 Mpc$^{-1}$ with high accuracy. We are the first to show that, at low redshift, component separation in visibility space suppresses foreground contamination at large line-of-sight scales, allowing measurement of HI power spectrum closer to the foreground wedge, crucial for data analysis towards future detections., 20 pages, 19 figures. Updated to match the published version in MNRAS

We use the small scales of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year-3 cosmic shear measurements, which are excluded from the DES Year-3 cosmological analysis, to constrain the baryonic feedback. To model the baryonic feedback, we adopt a baryonic correction model and use the numerical package \texttt{Baccoemu} to accelerate the evaluation of the baryonic nonlinear matter power spectrum. We design our analysis pipeline to focus on the constraints of the baryonic suppression effects, utilizing the implication given by a principal component analysis on the Fisher forecasts. Our constraint on the baryonic effects can then be used to better model and ameliorate the effects of baryons in producing cosmological constraints from the next generation large-scale structure surveys. We detect the baryonic suppression on the cosmic shear measurements with a $\sim 2 \sigma$ significance. The characteristic halo mass for which half of the gas is ejected by baryonic feedback is constrained to be $M_c > 10^{13.2} h^{-1} M_{\odot}$ (95\% C.L.). The best-fit baryonic suppression is $\sim 5\%$ at $k=1.0 {\rm Mpc}\ h^{-1}$ and $\sim 15\%$ at $k=5.0 {\rm Mpc} \ h^{-1}$. Our findings are robust with respect to the assumptions about the cosmological parameters, specifics of the baryonic model, and intrinsic alignments., Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures. DES Collaboration, Year-3 analysis

The eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS), with a sky area of 140 square degrees with depth equivalent to the equatorial patch of the final eROSITA all-sky survey, represents the largest continuous non-full-sky X-ray fields to-date, making it the premier data set for measuring the angular power spectrum. In this work, we measure the X-ray angular power spectrum of galaxy clusters and groups in the eFEDS field. We show that the measured power spectrum is consistent with past observations, including the ROSAT All Sky Survey, and the Chandra COSMOS and Bootes fields. The predictions of cluster gas halo model that is calibrated from Chandra observations is also consistent with the eFEDS power spectrum. While the eFEDS does not have large enough sky coverage to provide meaningful cosmological constraints, we predict that the X-ray power spectrum from the cycle 4 of the eROSITA All-Sky Survey (eRASS4) will provide constraints on $\Omega_M$ and $\sigma_8$ at the 10% level., Comment: 10 pages, 4 Figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Updated arxiv version matched to the published version. Major change: tensions at small-scale power are resolved after point source mask correction

Precision analysis of galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing images provides a unique way of characterizing small-scale dark matter halos, and could allow us to uncover the fundamental properties of dark matter's constituents. Recently, gravitational imaging techniques made it possible to detect a few heavy subhalos. However, gravitational lenses contain numerous subhalos and line-of-sight halos, whose subtle imprint is extremely difficult to detect individually. Existing methods for marginalizing over this large population of sub-threshold perturbers to infer population-level parameters are typically computationally expensive, or require compressing observations into hand-crafted summary statistics, such as a power spectrum of residuals. Here, we present the first analysis pipeline to combine parametric lensing models and a recently-developed neural simulation-based inference technique called truncated marginal neural ratio estimation (TMNRE) to constrain the warm dark matter halo mass function cutoff scale directly from multiple lensing images. Through a proof-of-concept application to simulated data, we show that our approach enables empirically testable inference of the dark matter cutoff mass through marginalization over a large population of realistic perturbers that would be undetectable on their own, and over lens and source parameters uncertainties. To obtain our results, we combine the signal contained in a set of images with Hubble Space Telescope resolution. Our results suggest that TMNRE can be a powerful approach to put tight constraints on the mass of warm dark matter in the multi-keV regime, which will be relevant both for existing lensing data and in the large sample of lenses that will be delivered by near-future telescopes., 15 pages, 11 figures; Updated to match version published in MNRAS

This study explores the gravitational lensing effects of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galaxy clusters. While the presence of central SMBHs in galaxies is firmly established, recent work from high-resolution simulations predict the existence of an additional population of wandering SMBHs. Though the masses of these SMBHs are a minor perturbation on the larger scale and individual galaxy scale dark matter components in the cluster, they can impact statistical lensing properties and individual lensed image configurations. Probing for these potentially observable signatures, we find that SMBHs imprint detectable signatures in rare, higher-order strong lensing image configurations although they do not manifest any statistically significant detectable evidence in either the magnification distribution or the integrated shear profile. Investigating specific lensed image geometries, we report that a massive, near point-like, potential of an SMBH causes the following detectable effects: (i) image splitting leading to the generation of extra images; (ii) positional and magnification asymmetries in multiply imaged systems; and (iii) the apparent disappearance of a lensed counter-image. Of these, image splitting inside the cluster tangential critical curve, is the most prevalent notable observational signature. We demonstrate these possibilities in two cases of observed giant arcs in $SGAS\,J003341.5+024217$ and $RX\,J1347.5-1145$, wherein specific image configurations seen can be reproduced with SMBHs. Future observations with high-resolution instrumentation (e.g. MAVIS-Very Large Telescope, MICADO-Extremely Large Telescope, and the upgraded ngVLA, along with data from the \textit{Euclid} \& \textit{Nancy Grace Roman} Space Telescopes and the Rubin LSST Observatory are likely to allow us to probe these unique yet rare SMBHs lensing signatures., 12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRAS. For associated online animation, see https://sites.google.com/view/guillaume-mahler-astronomer/paper-animation

MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) is an alternative to the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm which proposes an alteration of Newton's laws of motion at low accelerations, characterized by a universal acceleration scale a_0. It attempts to explain observations of galactic rotation curves and predicts a specific scaling relation of the baryonic and total acceleration in galaxies, referred to as the Rotational Acceleration Relation (RAR), which can be equivalently formulated as a Mass Discrepancy Acceleration Relation (MDAR). The appearance of these relations in observational data such as SPARC has lead to investigations into the existence of similar relations in cosmological simulations using the standard {\Lambda}CDM model. Here, we report the existence of an RAR and MDAR similar to that predicted by MOND in {\Lambda}CDM using a large sample of galaxies extracted from a cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation (Magneticum). Furthermore, by using galaxies in Magneticum at different redshifts, a prediction for the evolution of the inferred acceleration parameter a_0 with cosmic time is derived by fitting a MOND force law to these galaxies. In Magneticum, the best fit for a_0 is found to increase by a factor of approximately 3 from redshift z = 0 to z = 2. This offers a powerful test from cosmological simulations to distinguish between MOND and {\Lambda}CDM observationally., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures; accepted by MNRAS

We measure the local correlation between radio emission and Compton-$y$ signal across two galaxy clusters, Abell~399 and Abell~401, using maps from the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) + \Planck. These datasets allow us to make the first measurement of this kind at $\sim$arcminute resolution. We find that the radio brightness scales as $F_{\mathrm{radio}} \propto y^{1.5}$ for Abell~401 and $F_{\mathrm{radio}} \propto y^{2.8}$ for Abell~399. Furthermore, using \XMM data, we derive a sublinear correlation between radio and X-ray brightness for both the clusters ($F_{\mathrm{radio}} \propto F_{\rm X}^{0.7}$). Finally, we correlate the Compton-$y$ and X-ray data, finding that an isothermal model is consistent with the cluster profiles, $y \propto F_{\rm X}^{0.5}$. By adopting an isothermal--$\beta$ model, we are able, for the first time, to jointly use radio, X-ray, and Compton-$y$ data to estimate the scaling index for the magnetic field profile, $B(r) \propto n_{\mathrm{e}}(r)^{\eta}$ in the injection and re-acceleration scenarios. Applying this model, we find that the combined radio and Compton-$y$ signal exhibits a significantly tighter correlation with the X-ray across the clusters than when the datasets are independently correlated. We find $\eta \sim 0.6{-}0.8$. These results are consistent with the upper limit we derive for the scaling index of the magnetic field using rotation measure values for two radio galaxies in Abell~401. We also measure the radio, Compton-$y$, and X-ray correlations in the filament between the clusters but conclude that deeper data are required for a convincing determination of the correlations in the filament., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Main Journal

The recent rapid growth of the black hole (BH) catalog from gravitational waves (GWs), has allowed us to study the substructure of black hole mass function (BHMF) beyond the simplest Power-Law distribution. However, the BH masses inferred from binary BH merger events, may be systematically 'brightened' or 'dimmed' by the gravitational lensing effect. In this work, we investigate the impact of gravitational lensing on the BHMF inference considering the detection of the third-generation GW detector -- the Einstein Telescope (ET). We focus on high redshift, $z=10$, in order to obtain the upper limits of this effect. We use Monte Carlo (MC) method to simulate the data adopting 3 original BHMFs under Un-Lensed and Lensed scenarios, then recover the parameters of BHMFs from the mock data, and compare the difference of results, respectively. We found that all the parameters are well recovered within one standard deviation(std., 1$\sigma$), and all 3 BHMF models are reconstructed within 68\% credible interval, suggesting that lensing would not change the main structure drastically, even at very high redshifts and with high precision of ET. And the modest influence beyond $50M_{\odot}$, depends on the modeling of the high mass tail or substructure of BHMF. We conclude that the impact of lensing on BHMF inference with ET can be safely ignored in the foreseeable future. Careful handling of lensing effects is required only when focusing on an accurate estimation of the high mass end of BHMF at high redshifts., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted by MNRAS

M. Dixon et al., We use stacked spectra of the host galaxies of photometrically identified Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to search for correlations between Hubble diagram residuals and the spectral properties of the host galaxies. Utilizing full spectrum fitting techniques on stacked spectra binned by Hubble residual, we find no evidence for trends between Hubble residuals and properties of the host galaxies that rely on spectral absorption features (, MD would like to acknowledge support through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. This research was supported by the Australian Research Council The Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics (CDM; project number CE200100008) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav; project number CE170100004). This project/publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge this grant ID 61807, Two Standard Models Meet. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, NSF’s NOIRLab, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory at NSF’s NOIRLab (NOIRLab Prop. ID 2012B-0001; PI: J. Frieman), which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under grants ESP2017-89838, PGC2018-094773, PGC2018-102021, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) do e-Universo (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. Based on data acquired at the Anglo-Australian Telescope, under program A/2013B/012. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which the AAT stands, the Gamilaraay people, and pay our respects to elders past and present.

The next generation of detectors will detect gravitational waves from binary neutron stars at cosmological distances, for which around a thousand electromagnetic follow-ups may be observed per year. So far, most work devoted to the expected cosmological impact of these standard sirens employed them only as distance indicators. Only recently their use as tracers of clustering, similar to what already proposed for supernovae, has been studied. Focusing on the expected specifications of the Einstein Telescope (ET), we forecast here the performance on cosmological parameters of future standard sirens as both distance and density indicators, with emphasis on the linear perturbation growth index and on spatial curvature. We improve upon previous studies in a number of ways: a more detailed analysis of available telescope time, the inclusion of more cosmological and nuisance parameters, the Alcock-Paczynski correction, the use of sirens also as both velocity and density tracers, and a more accurate estimation of the distance posterior. We find that the analysis of the clustering of sirens improves the constraints on $H_0$ by 30% and on $\Omega_{k0}$ by over an order of magnitude, with respect to their use merely as distance indicators. With 5 years of joint ET and Rubin Observatory follow-ups we could reach precision of 0.1 km/s/Mpc in $H_0$ and 0.02 in $\Omega_{k0}$ using only data in the range $0, Comment: v2: minor clarifications added; matches version to appear in MNRAS

The velocity profile of galaxies around voids is a key ingredient for redshift space distortion (RSD) measurements made using the void-galaxy correlation function. In this paper we use simulations to test whether the velocity profile of the tracers used to find the voids matches the velocity profile of the dark matter around these voids. A mismatch is expected and found in the inner part of voids, where tracers are very sparse. We discuss how this difference is caused by a selection effect where the void centre positions are correlated to the particular realization of the sparse tracers and their spatial distribution. In turn, this then affects the RSD void-galaxy correlation analysis. We show this by evaluating the Jacobian of the real to redshift space mapping using the tracer or matter velocity profile. Differences of the order of 20\% in the velocity profile translate into differences of the order of few percent in the Jacobian. This small discrepancy propagates to the monopole and quadrupole of the void-tracer correlation function, producing modifications of comparable magnitude to those from changes in $f\sigma_8$ at the level of the statistical uncertainties from current analyses., Comment: Author's Accepted Manuscript

In view of the recent measurement of $H_{0}$ from HST and SH0ES team, we explore the possibility of existence of a negative cosmological constant (AdS vacua in the dark energy sector) in the Universe. In this regard, we consider quintessence fields on top of a negative cosmological constant and compare such construction with $\Lambda$CDM model using a different combination of CMB, SnIa, BAO and $H_{0}$ data. Various model comparison estimators show that quintessence models with a negative $\Lambda$ is either preferred over $\Lambda$CDM or performs equally as $\Lambda$CDM model. This suggests that the presence of a negative $\Lambda$ (AdS ground state) in our Universe, which can naturally arise in string theory, is consistent with cosmological observations., Comment: 9 pages, Latex style, 6 figures, 6 tables, Revised version with new discussions and results, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Primordial gravitational waves with extremely low frequency are expected to origin from inflation in the early Universe. The detection of such kind of gravitational waves is of great significance to verify the inflationary theory and determine the energy scale of inflation. B-mode of polarization of cosmic microwave background shows to be a promising probe of extremely low frequency primordial gravitational wave. In order to find a complementary observational feature induced by primordial gravitational wave with extremely low frequency, we propose an alternative way of detection by investigating the effect of primordial gravitational wave with extremely low frequency on a gravitational lens system with a non-aligned source-deflector-observer configuration. The results show that, with a series of chosen parameters, gravitational lens system with perturbation from extremely low frequency primordial gravitational wave could induce time delay which could deviate from the time delay deduced from theoretical model as much as about one hundred percent, meaning that gravitational lens system with a non-aligned configuration could serve as a potential long-base-line detector of extremely low frequency primordial gravitational wave., 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present angular power spectra and cosmological parameter constraints derived from the Planck PR4 (NPIPE) maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background. NPIPE, released by the Planck Collaboration in 2020, is a new processing pipeline for producing calibrated frequency maps from Planck data. We have created new versions of the CamSpec likelihood using these maps and applied them to constrain LCDM and single-parameter extensions. We find excellent consistency between NPIPE and the Planck 2018 maps at the parameter level, showing that the Planck cosmology is robust to substantial changes in the mapmaking. The lower noise of NPIPE leads to ~10% tighter constraints, and we see both smaller error bars and a shift toward the LCDM values for beyond-LCDM parameters including Omega_K and A_Lens., Comment: 17 pages, 20 figures, updated to match accepted version

In general relativity (GR), the internal dynamics of a self-gravitating system under free-fall in an external gravitational field should not depend on the external field strength. Recent work has claimed a statistical detection of an `external field effect' (EFE) using galaxy rotation curve data. We show that large uncertainties in rotation curve analyses and inaccuracies in published simulation-based external field estimates compromise the significance of the claimed EFE detection. We further show analytically that a qualitatively similar statistical signal is, in fact, expected in a $\Lambda$-cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) universe without any violation of the strong equivalence principle. Rather, such a signal arises simply because of the inherent correlations between galaxy clustering strength and intrinsic galaxy properties. We explicitly demonstrate the effect in a baryonified mock catalog of a $\Lambda$CDM universe. Although the detection of an EFE-like signal is not, by itself, evidence for physics beyond GR, our work shows that the $\textit{sign}$ of the EFE-like correlation between the external field strength and the shape of the radial acceleration relation can be used to probe new physics: e.g., in MOND, the predicted sign is opposite to that in our $\Lambda$CDM mocks., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; v2: minor changes and added discussion, accepted in MNRAS

The structural and dynamic properties of the dark matter halos, though an important ingredient in understanding large-scale structure formation, require more conservative particle resolution than those required by halo mass alone in a simulation. This reduces the parameter space of the simulations, more severely for high-redshift and large-volume mocks which are required by the next-generation large sky surveys. Here, we incorporate redshift and cosmology dependence into an algorithm that assigns accurate halo properties such as concentration, spin, velocity, and spatial distribution to the sub-resolution haloes in a simulation. By focusing on getting the right correlations with halo mass and local tidal anisotropy $\alpha$ measured at $4 \times$ halo radius, our method will also recover the correlations of these small scale structural properties with the large-scale environment, i.e., the halo assembly bias at all scales greater than $5 \times$ halo radius. We find that the distribution of halo properties is universal with redshift and cosmology. By applying the algorithm to a large volume simulation $(600 h^{-1}{\rm Mpc})$, we can access the $30-500$ particle haloes, thus gaining an order of magnitude in halo mass and two to three orders of magnitude in number density at $z=2-4$. This technique reduces the cost of mocks required for the estimation of covariance matrices, weak lensing studies, or any large-scale clustering analysis with less massive haloes., Comment: 9 figures, 6 tables, accepted by MNRAS, access to code at https://github.com/rsujatha/mockhaloprop

We study the effect of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) and baryons on the shape of early-type galaxies (ETGs) and their dark matter haloes, comparing them to the predictions of the cold dark matter (CDM) scenario. We use five hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations of haloes hosting ETGs ($M_{\rm vir}\sim 10^{13}M_{\odot}$ and $M_{*}\sim10^{11}M_{\odot}$), simulated in CDM and a SIDM model with constant cross-section of $\sigma_T/m_\chi = 1\ \mathrm{cm}^2 \mathrm{g}^{-1}$. We measure the three-dimensional and projected shapes of the dark matter haloes and their baryonic content using the inertia tensor and compare our measurements to the results of three $HST$ samples of gravitational lenses and $Chandra$ and $XMM-Newton$ X-ray observations. We find that the inclusion of baryons greatly reduces the differences between CDM and a SIDM, together with the ability to draw constraints based on shapes. Lensing measurements reject the predictions of CDM dark-matter-only simulations and prefer one of the hydro scenarios. When we consider the total sample of lenses, observational data prefer the CDM hydro scenario. The shapes of the X-ray emitting gas are compatible with observational results in both hydro runs, with CDM predicting higher elongations only in the very centre. Contrary to previous claims at the scale of elliptical galaxies, we conclude that both CDM and our SIDM model can still explain observed shapes once we include baryons in the simulations. Our results demonstrate that this is essential to derive realistic constraints and that new simulations are needed to confirm and extend our findings., Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, revised version accepted for publication in MNRAS

Most cosmic shear analyses to date have relied on summary statistics (e.g. $\xi_+$ and $\xi_-$). These types of analyses are necessarily sub-optimal, as the use of summary statistics is lossy. In this paper, we forward-model the convergence field of the Universe as a lognormal random field conditioned on the observed shear data. This new map-based inference framework enables us to recover the joint posterior of the cosmological parameters and the convergence field of the Universe. Our analysis properly accounts for the covariance in the mass maps across tomographic bins, which significantly improves the fidelity of the maps relative to single-bin reconstructions. We verify that applying our inference pipeline to Gaussian random fields recovers posteriors that are in excellent agreement with their analytical counterparts. At the resolution of our maps -- and to the extent that the convergence field can be described by the lognormal model -- our map posteriors allow us to reconstruct \it all \rm summary statistics (including non-Gaussian statistics). We forecast that a map-based inference analysis of LSST-Y10 data can improve cosmological constraints in the $\sigma_8$--$\Omega_{\rm m}$ plane by $\approx 30\%$ relative to the currently standard cosmic shear analysis. This improvement happens almost entirely along the $S_8=\sigma_8\Omega_{\rm m}^{1/2}$ directions, meaning map-based inference fails to significantly improve constraints on $S_8$., Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, To be submitted to MNRAS, Comments welcome

The relation between the integrated thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) $y$-decrement versus halo mass ($Y$--$M$) can potentially constrain galaxy formation models, if theoretical and observational systematics can be properly assessed. We investigate the $Y$--$M$ relation in the SIMBA and IllustrisTNG-100 cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, quantifying the effects of feedback, line-of-sight projection, and beam convolution. We find that SIMBA's AGN jet feedback generates strong deviations from self-similar expectations for the $Y$--$M$ relation, especially at $M_{500}, 14 pages, 7 figures. Accepted by MNRAS, comments welcome

We present the first comparison between properties of clusters of galaxies detected by the eROSITA Final Equatorial-Depth Survey (eFEDS) and the XMM Cluster Survey (XCS). We have compared, in an ensemble fashion, properties from the eFEDS X-ray cluster catalogue with those from the Ultimate XMM eXtragaLactic (XXL) survey project (XXL-100-GC). We find the distributions of redshift and X-ray temperature ($T_{\rm X}$) to be broadly similar between the two surveys, with a larger proportion of clusters above 4 keV in the XXL-100-GC sample. We find 62 eFEDS cluster candidates with XMM data (eFEDS-XMM sample); 10 do not have good enough XMM data to confirm or deny, 11 are classed as sample contaminants, and 4 have their X-ray flux contaminated by another source. The majority of eFEDS-XMM sources have a longer exposure in XMM than eFEDS, and the majority of eFEDS positions are within 100 kpc of XCS positions. Our eFEDS-XCS sample of 37 clusters is used to calculate minimum sample contamination fractions of ${\sim}$18% and ${\sim}$9% in the eFEDS X-ray and optically confirmed samples respectively, in general agreement with eFEDS findings. We compare 29 X-ray luminosities ($L_{\rm X}$) measured by eFEDS and XCS, which are in excellent agreement. Eight clusters have a $T_{\rm X}$ measured by XMM and eROSITA, and we find that XMM temperatures are 25$\pm$9% larger than their eROSITA counterparts. Finally, we construct $L_{\rm X}$ - $T_{\rm X}$ scaling relations based on eFEDS and XCS measurements, which are in tension; the tension is decreased when we measure a third scaling relation with calibrated XCS temperatures., 20 pages (13 + 7 appendices), 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Many sources contribute to the diffuse gamma-ray background (DGRB), including star forming galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and cosmic ray interactions in the Milky Way. Exotic sources, such as dark matter annihilation, may also make some contribution. The photon counts-in-pixels distribution is a powerful tool for analyzing the DGRB and determining the relative contributions of different sources. However, including photon energy information in a likelihood analysis of the counts-in-pixels distribution quickly becomes computationally intractable as the number of source types and energy bins increase. Here, we apply the likelihood-free method of Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to the problem. We consider a mock analysis that includes contributions from dark matter annihilation in galactic subhalos as well as astrophysical backgrounds. We show that our results using ABC are consistent with the exact likelihood when energy information is discarded, and that significantly tighter parameter constraints can be obtained with ABC when energy information is included. ABC presents a powerful tool for analyzing the DGRB and understanding its varied origins., 10 pages main text, 2 pages appendices, 7 figures; updated to match version accepted by MNRAS

We study the stacked filaments connecting group-mass halo pairs, using dark-matter-only N-body simulations. We calculate the dark matter over-density profile of these stacked filaments at different redshifts as a function of the distance perpendicular to the filament axis. A four-parameter universal functional form, including three comoving scale radii and one amplitude parameter (core density), provides a good fit out to a radius of 20 cMpc/h for stacked filaments over a range of redshifts, lengths and masses. The scale radii are approximately independent of redshift but increase as power-laws with the comoving filament length. Lastly, we compare the scaling of the filament mass measured directly from the simulations to the predicted scaling from the halo-halo-matter three-point correlation function as a function of redshift and of the mass of the halo pairs. We find that both measured scalings are similar to, but somewhat shallower than the predictions, by 10% and 30%, respectively. These results provide a template to interpret present and upcoming observational results based on stacking, for example, weak lensing, thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich, or X-ray observations., Comment: 15 pages. 11 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Comments welcome

The merger rate density evolution of binary compact objects and the properties of their host galaxies carry crucial information to understand the sources of gravitational waves. Here, we present galaxyRate, a new code that estimates the merger rate density of binary compact objects and the properties of their host galaxies, based on observational scaling relations. We generate our synthetic galaxies according to the galaxy stellar mass function. We estimate the metallicity according to both the mass-metallicity relation (MZR) and the fundamental metallicity relation (FMR). Also, we take into account galaxy-galaxy mergers and the evolution of the galaxy properties from the formation to the merger of the binary compact object. We find that the merger rate density changes dramatically depending on the choice of the star-forming galaxy main sequence, especially in the case of binary black holes (BBHs) and black hole neutron star systems (BHNSs). The slope of the merger rate density of BBHs and BHNSs is steeper if we assume the MZR with respect to the FMR, because the latter predicts a shallower decrease of metallicity with redshift. In contrast, binary neutron stars (BNSs) are only mildly affected by both the galaxy main sequence and metallicity relation. Overall, BBHs and BHNSs tend to form in low-mass metal-poor galaxies and merge in high-mass metal-rich galaxies, while BNSs form and merge in massive galaxies. We predict that passive galaxies host at least ~5-10%, ~15-25%, and ~15-35% of all BNS, BHNS and BBH mergers in the local Universe., 21 pages, 22 figures (including appendices), 3 tables, published in MNRAS

We revisited the problem of mixing in a gravitational N-body system from the point of view of the ordering of coarse-grained cells in the one-particle energy space, here denoted {\it energy ranking preservation} (ERP). This effect has been noted for some time in simulations, although individual particle energies and their phase-space variables mix considerably. The present investigation aimed to map ERP in terms of parameters involving the collective range in which it is effective, as well as in terms of global and historical characterisations of gravitational systems evolving towards equilibrium. We examined a subset of the IllustrisTNG cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations (TNG50-4 and TNG100-3), considering both their full and dark-only versions. For each simulation, we selected the $20$ most massive haloes at redshift $z=0$, tracing their ERP fractions back at selected redshift markers ({\tt z} $= \{1.0, 5.0, 10.0 \}$), and for a coarse-graining set ranging from $5$ to $30$ energy bins. At the redshift marker {\tt z} $= 1$, we found high ERP fractions (above $\sim 80 \%$) in both simulations, regardless of the coarse-graining level. The {\it decline} in ERP fractions with redshift was roughly a function of mass and fractional mass increase in the analysed TNG50-4 haloes, but not in the TNG100-3 ones, indicating a possible relative susceptibility of the ERP effect to mass accretion for haloes less massive than $\sim 10^{14} ~ M_{\odot}$. We confirmed earlier indications in the literature concerning a possible "mesoscopic" constraint operative in a time span of at least several Gyr., 23 pages, 14 figures (+ 6 panels in the Appendix), final accepted version to MNRAS

Current tensions in cosmology, including $H_0$ and $\sigma_8$, provide one of the strong reasons to suspect the existence of physics beyond the standard model of cosmology ($\Lambda$CDM). In this paper, we investigate if there is a relation between these tensions and beyond cold dark matter scenarios. To model non-CDM, we assume a decaying dark matter (DDM) which is unstable and may decay into two daughter particles, a combination of cold dark matter, warm dark matter, and dark radiation, to explore a vast era of possibilities. We checked our model against CMB data and could show that decaying dark matter seems not a promising candidate to address the cosmological tensions., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures

The cross-correlation between 21-cm intensity mapping experiments and photometric surveys of galaxies (or any other cosmological tracer with a broad radial kernel) is severely degraded by the loss of long-wavelength radial modes due to Galactic foreground contamination. Higher-order correlators are able to restore some of these modes due to the non-linear coupling between them and the local small-scale clustering induced by gravitational collapse. We explore the possibility of recovering information from the bispectrum between a photometric galaxy sample and an intensity mapping experiment, in the context of the clustering-redshifts technique. We demonstrate that the bispectrum is able to calibrate the redshift distribution of the photometric sample to the required accuracy of future experiments such as the Rubin Observatory, using future single-dish and interferometric 21-cm observations, in situations where the two-point function is not able to do so due to foreground contamination. We also show how this calibration is affected by the photometric redshift width $\sigma_{z,0}$ and maximum scale $k_{\mathrm{max}}$. We find that it is important to reach scales $k \gtrsim 0.3\,h\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, with the constraints saturating at around $k\sim 1\,h\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ for next-generation experiments., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures

We perform a flexion-based weak gravitational analysis of the first two Hubble Frontier Field clusters: Abell 2744 and MACS 0416. A parametric method for using radially projected flexion signals as a probe of cluster member mass is described in detail. The normalization and slope of a L − θE (as a proxy for L − σ) scaling relation in each cluster is determined using measured flexion signals. A parallel field analysis is undertaken concurrently to provide a baseline measure of method effectiveness. We find an agreement in the Faber–Jackson slope ℓ associated with galaxy age and morphology for both clusters, as well as a theoretical distinction in the cluster normalization mass.

Realistic lightcone mocks are important in the clustering analyses of large galaxy surveys. For simulations where only the snapshots are available, it is common to create approximate lightcones by joining together the snapshots in spherical shells. We assess the two-point clustering measurements of central galaxies in approximate lightcones built from the Millennium-XXL simulation, which are constructed using different numbers of snapshots. The monopole and quadrupole of the real-space correlation function is strongly boosted on small scales below 1 Mpc/h, due to some galaxies being duplicated at the boundaries between snapshots in the lightcone. When more snapshots are used, the total number of duplicated galaxies is approximately constant, but they are pushed to smaller separations. The effect of this in redshift space is small, as long as the snapshots are cut into shells in real space. Randomly removing duplicated galaxies is able to reduce the excess clustering signal. Including satellite galaxies will reduce the impact of the duplicates, since many small-scale pairs come from satellites in the same halo. Galaxies that are missing from the lightcone at the boundaries can be added to the lightcone by having a small overlap between each shell. This effect will impact analyses that use very small-scale clustering measurements, and when using mocks to test the impact of fibre collisions., 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Accurate computations of spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are required for constraining energy release scenarios at redshifts $z\gtrsim 10^3$. The existing literature focuses on distortions that are small perturbations to the background blackbody spectrum. At high redshifts ($z\gtrsim 10^6$), this assumption can be violated, and the CMB spectrum can be significantly distorted at least during part of its cosmic evolution. In this paper, we carry out accurate thermalization computations, evolving the distorted CMB spectrum in a general, fully non-linear way, consistently accounting for the time-dependence of the injection process, modifications to the Hubble expansion rate and relativistic Compton scattering. Specifically, we study single energy injection and decaying particle scenarios, discussing constraints on these cases. We solve the thermalization problem using two independent numerical approaches that are now available in {\tt CosmoTherm} as dedicated setups for computing CMB spectral distortions in the large distortion regime. New non-linear effects at low frequencies are furthermore highlighted, showing that these warrant a more rigorous study. This work eliminates one of the long-standing simplifications in CMB spectral distortion computations, which also opens the way to more rigorous treatments of distortions induced by high-energy particle cascade, soft photon injection and in the vicinity of primordial black holes., Comments welcome

In this work, we study some properties of the Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs) using N-body simulations for the Generalized Dark Matter (GDM) model, described by three free functions, the sound speed, the viscosity and the equation of state. We consider three GDM models associated with different values of the free functions to neglect collisional effects. We constructed the initial seeds of our simulations according to the matter power spectrum of GDM linear perturbations, which hold a cut-off at small scales, and explored their effects on the non-linear structure formation at small and intermediate scales. We generated mock catalogues of galaxies for different models and classify HCGs by implementing an algorithm that adapts the original selection method for mock catalogues. Once the HCGs samples are classified, we analyzed their properties and compared them between models. We found that a larger amount of HCGs are counted in GDM simulations in comparison to CDM counts. This difference suggests that HCGs can proliferate within GDM despite the suppressed substructure, which indicates a possible modification in the HCG formation process within models where DM is not perfectly like CDM. Additionally, we identified different mechanisms of clustering, for models with a large amount of galaxy-halos self-agglomerate because of their abundance while models with fewer galaxy-halos need massive halos acting as a dominant potential well. Finally, by comparing distributions of different observables of simulated HCGs against observations, we found a good agreement in the intrinsic properties. However, a discrepancy in the velocity dispersion remains unsolved., 13 pages, 11 figures

We investigate using three-point statistics in constraining the galaxy–halo connection. We show that for some galaxy samples, the constraints on the halo occupation distribution parameters are dominated by the three-point function signal (over its two-point counterpart). We demonstrate this on mock catalogues corresponding to the Luminous red galaxies (LRGs), Emission-line galaxies (ELGs), and quasars (QSOs) targeted by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey. The projected three-point function for triangle sides less up to 20 h−1 Mpc measured from a cubic Gpc of data can constrain the characteristic minimum mass of the LRGs with a preci sion of 0.46 per cent. For comparison, similar constraints from the projected two-point function are 1.55 per cent. The improvements for the ELGs and QSOs targets are more modest. In the case of the QSOs, it is caused by the high shot-noise of the sample, and in the case of the ELGs, it is caused by the range of halo masses of the host haloes. The most time-consuming part of our pipeline is the measurement of the three-point functions. We adopt a tabulation method, proposed in earlier works for the two-point function, to significantly reduce the required compute time for the three-point analysis., LS is grateful for support from DOE grants DE-SC0021165 and DE-SC0011840, NASA ROSES grants 12-EUCLID12-0004 and 15-WFIRST15-0008, and Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia grants FR 19-498. This research is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract; additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences under Contract No. AST-0950945 to the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory; the Science and Technologies Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico; the Ministry of Economy of Spain, and by the DESI Member Institutions. We acknowledge the use of the NASA astrophysics data system https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/ and the arXiv open-access repository https://arxiv.org/. The software was hosted on the GitHub platform https://github.com/. The manuscript was typeset using the overleaf cloud-based LaTeX editor https://www.overleaf.com.

The evolution of the gravitational potentials on large scales due to the accelerated expansion of the Universe is an important and independent probe of dark energy, known as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. We measure this ISW effect through cross-correlating the cosmic microwave background maps from the Planck satellite with a radio continuum galaxy distribution map from the recent Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). We detect a positive cross-correlation at $\sim 2.8\,\sigma$ relative to the null hypothesis of no correlation. We parameterise the strength of the ISW effect through an amplitude parameter and find the constraints to be $A_{\mathrm{ISW}} = 0.94^{+0.42}_{-0.41}$, which is consistent with the prediction of an accelerating universe within the current concordance cosmological model, $\Lambda$CDM. The credible interval on this parameter is independent of the different bias models and redshift distributions that were considered when marginalising over the nuisance parameters. We also detect a power excess in the galaxy auto-correlation angular power spectrum on large scales ($\ell \leq 40$), and investigate possible systematic causes., Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures. Angular power spectra and covariance matrices can be found at https://github.com/racs-cosmology/isw