Search

This report summarizes the present status of neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI). After a brief overview, several aspects of NSIs are discussed, including connection to neutrino mass models, model-building and phenomenology of large NSI with both light and heavy mediators, NSI phenomenology in both short- and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, neutrino cross-sections, complementarity of NSI with other low- and high-energy experiments, fits with neutrino oscillation and scattering data, DUNE sensitivity to NSI, effective field theory of NSI, as well as the relevance of NSI to dark matter and cosmology. We also discuss the open questions and interesting future directions that can be pursued by the community at large. This report is based on talks and discussions during the Neutrino Theory Network NSI workshop held at Washington University in St. Louis from May 29-31, 2019 (https://indico.cern.ch/event/812851/), 104 pages; minor revision

Acknowledgments We thank the participants of the FPF meetings and the Snowmass working groups for discussions that have contributed both directly and indirectly to this study. We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable support of the CERN Physics Beyond Colliders study group and the work of CERN technical teams related to civil engineering studies (SCE-DOD), safety discussions (HSE-OHS, HSE-RP, EP-DI-SO), integration (EN-ACE), and discussions on services (EN-CV, EN-EL, EN-AA) and simulations (SY-STI). L. A. Anchordoqui is supported by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant PHY-2112527. A. Ariga is supported by JSPS, Japan KAKENHI Grant JP20K23373 and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant 101002690). T. Ariga acknowledges support from JSPS, Japan KAKENHI Grant JP19H01909. B. Batell is supported by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Grant DE–SC0007914 and by PITT PACC, USA. The work of J. Bramante is supported by NSERC, Canada. F. G. Celiberto acknowledges support from the INFN/NINPHA project, USA and thanks the Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy for the warm hospitality. G. Chachamis is supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) under project CERN/FIS-PAR/0024/2019 and contract ‘‘Investigador auxiliar FCT - individual Call, Portugal CEECIND/03216/2017 and acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant 824093). P. B. Denton is supported by DOE, USA Grant DE-SC0012704. Y. Du was supported by National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Grants 12022514 and 11875003. The work of J. L. Feng is supported in part by NSF, USA Grants PHY- 1915005 and PHY-2111427, Simons Investigator Award, USA #376204, Simons Foundation, USA Grant 623683, and Heising-Simons Foundation, USA Grants 2019-1179 and 2020-1840. The work of M. Fieg, T. B. Smith, and Y.-D. Tsai is supported in part by NSF Grant PHY-1915005. M. Fucilla, M. M. A. Mohammed, and A. Papa acknowledge support from the INFN/QFT@COLLIDERS, Italy project. The work of M. V. Garzelli was supported in part by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany. V. P. Goncalves was partially financed by the Brazilian funding agencies CNPq, FAPERGS, and INCT-FNA (process number 464898/2014-5). M. Guzzi is supported in part by NSF, USA Grants PHY- 1820818 and PHY-2112025. J. C. Helo acknowledges support from ANID FONDECYT-Chile Grant 1201673 and from ANID Millennium Science Initiative Program ICN2019 044. K. Jodłowski is supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, Grant 2015/18/A/ST2/00748. Ahmed Ismail and R. Mammen Abraham are supported by DOE, USA Grant DE-SC0016013. Ameen Ismail is supported by NSERC, Canada (reference number 557763) and by NSF, USA Grant PHY-2014071. Y. S. Jeong is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT: Ministry of Science and ICT) (2021R1A2C1009296). The work of F. Kling is supported by DOE, USA Grant DE-AC02-76SF00515 and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2121 Quantum Universe – 390833306. P. Nadolsky is supported by DOE, USA Grant DE-SC0010129. H. Otono acknowledges support from JSPS, Japan KAKENHI Grant JP20H01919. V. Pandey is supported by DOE, USA Grant DE-SC-0009824. M. H. Reno is supported in part by DOE, USA Grant DE-SC-0010113. The work of A. Ritz is supported by NSERC, Canada, Canada. The work of D. Sengupta is supported by NSF, USA Grant PHY-1915147. T. Sjöstrand is supported by Swedish Research Council Grant 2016-05996. D. Soldin acknowledges support from the NSF, USA Grant PHY-1913607. S. Trojanowski is supported by the grant ‘‘AstroCeNT: Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Centre’’ carried out within the International Research Agendas programme of the Foundation for Polish Science financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund, and by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education through its scholarship for young and outstanding scientists (decision 1190/E-78/STYP/14/2019). K. Xie is supported by DOE, USA Grant DE-FG02-95ER40896, NSF, USA Grant PHY- 1820760, and in part by PITT PACC. Parts of this work have been supported by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, USA under Contract DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the DOE., The Forward Physics Facility (FPF) is a proposal to create a cavern with the space and infrastructure to support a suite of far-forward experiments at the Large Hadron Collider during the High Luminosity era. Located along the beam collision axis and shielded from the interaction point by at least 100 m of concrete and rock, the FPF will house experiments that will detect particles outside the acceptance of the existing large LHC experiments and will observe rare and exotic processes in an extremely low-background environment. In this work, we summarize the current status of plans for the FPF, including recent progress in civil engineering in identifying promising sites for the FPF and the experiments currently envisioned to realize the FPF's physics potential. We then review the many Standard Model and new physics topics that will be advanced by the FPF, including searches for long-lived particles, probes of dark matter and dark sectors, high-statistics studies of TeV neutrinos of all three flavors, aspects of perturbative and non-perturbative QCD, and high-energy astroparticle physics., ANID FONDECYT-Chile 1201673, Fermi Research Alliance DE-AC02-07CH11359, HSE-OHS, HSE-RP, NINPHA, PITT PACC, SY-STI, National Science Foundation PHY-2112527, U.S. Department of Energy DE–SC0007914, Simons Foundation 376204, 623683, Fuel Cell Technologies Program 824093, DE-SC0012704, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, First Peoples Fund, Heising-Simons Foundation 2019-1179, 2020-1840, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, European Commission, European Research Council, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 390833306, DE-SC-0009824, DE-SC-0010113, DE-SC0010129, JP20H01919, PHY-1915147, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP20K23373, National Natural Science Foundation of China 11875003, 12022514, PHY-1915005, PHY-2111427, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia CERN/FIS-PAR/0024/2019, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning 2021R1A2C1009296, DE-AC02-76SF00515, National Research Foundation of Korea, Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Narodowe Centrum Nauki 2015/18/A/ST2/00748, 557763, DE-SC0016013, PHY-2014071, Vetenskapsrådet 2016-05996, PHY-1913607, Ministerstwo Edukacji i Nauki 1190/E-78/STYP/14/2019, DE-FG02-95ER40896, PHY-1820760, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Horizon 2020 101002690, JP19H01909, European Regional Development Fund, Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia: Física Nuclear e Aplicações 464898/2014-5, PHY-1820818, PHY-2112025, Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo ICN2019 044

Lorentz invariance violation in quantum gravity (QG) models or a nonzero photon mass, $m_\gamma$, would lead to an energy-dependent propagation speed for photons, such that photons of different energies from a distant source would arrive at different times, even if they were emitted simultaneously. By developing source-by-source, Monte Carlo-based forward models for such time delays from gamma ray bursts, and marginalising over empirical noise models describing other contributions to the time delay, we derive constraints on $m_\gamma$ and the QG length scale, $\ell_{\rm QG}$, using spectral lag data from the BATSE satellite. We find $m_\gamma < 4.0 \times 10^{-5} \, h \, {\rm eV}/c^2$ and $\ell_{\rm QG} < 5.3 \times 10^{-18} \, h \, {\rm \, GeV^{-1}}$ at 95% confidence, and demonstrate that these constraints are robust to the choice of noise model. The QG constraint is among the tightest from studies which consider multiple gamma ray bursts and the constraint on $m_\gamma$, although weaker than from using radio data, provides an independent constraint which is less sensitive to the effects of dispersion by electrons., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

The Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model agrees with most of the cosmological observations, but has some hindrances from observed data at smaller scales such as galaxies. Recently, Berezhiani and Khoury (2015) proposed a new theory involving interacting superfluid dark matter with three model parameters, which explains galactic dynamics with great accuracy. In the present work, we study the cosmological behaviour of this model in the linear regime of cosmological perturbations. In particular, we compute both analytically and numerically the matter linear growth factor and obtain new bounds for the model parameters which are significantly stronger than previously found. These new constraints come from the fact that structures within the superfluid dark matter framework grow quicker than in LCDM, and quite rapidly when the DM-baryon interactions are strong., Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures

Covariance matrices are among the most difficult pieces of end-to-end cosmological analyses. In principle, for two-point functions, each component involves a four-point function, and the resulting covariance often has hundreds of thousands of elements. We investigate various compression mechanisms capable of vastly reducing the size of the covariance matrix in the context of cosmic shear statistics. This helps identify which of its parts are most crucial to parameter estimation. We start with simple compression methods, by isolating and "removing" 200 modes associated with the lowest eigenvalues, then those with the lowest signal-to-noise ratio, before moving on to more sophisticated schemes like compression at the tomographic level and, finally, with the Massively Optimized Parameter Estimation and Data compression (MOPED). We find that, while most of these approaches prove useful for a few parameters of interest, like $\Omega_m$, the simplest yield a loss of constraining power on the intrinsic alignment (IA) parameters as well as $S_8$. For the case considered -- cosmic shear from the first year of data from the Dark Energy Survey -- only MOPED was able to replicate the original constraints in the 16-parameter space. Finally, we apply a tolerance test to the elements of the compressed covariance matrix obtained with MOPED and confirm that the IA parameter $A_{\mathrm{IA}}$ is the most susceptible to inaccuracies in the covariance matrix., Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, 1 table. V2 reflects version accepted for publication in PRD

First order phase transitions in the early universe could produce a gravitational-wave background that might be detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Such an observation would provide evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model. We study the ability of LISA to observe a gravitational-wave background from phase transitions in the presence of an extragalactic foreground from binary black hole mergers throughout the universe, a galactic foreground from white dwarf binaries, and LISA noise. Modelling the phase transition gravitational wave background as a double broken power law, we use the deviance information criterion as a detection statistic, and Fisher matrix and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to assess the measurement accuracy of the parameters of the power spectrum. While estimating all the parameters associated with the gravitational-wave backgrounds, foregrounds, and LISA noise, we find that LISA could detect a gravitational-wave background from phase transitions with a peak frequency of 1 mHz and normalized energy density amplitude of Ωp ≃ 3 × 10-11. With Ωp ≃ 10-10, the signal is detectable if the peak frequency is in the range 4 × 10-4 to 9 × 10-3 Hz, and the peak amplitude and frequency can be estimated to an accuracy of 10% to 1%.

Gravitational vacuum condensate stars, proposed as the endpoint of gravitational collapse consistent with quantum theory, are reviewed. Gravastars are cold, low entropy, maximally compact objects characterized by a surface boundary layer and physical surface tension, instead of an event horizon. Within this thin boundary layer the effective vacuum energy changes rapidly, and the interior of a non-rotating gravastar is a non-singular static patch of de Sitter space with eq. of state p=-rho. Remarkably, essentially this same result is obtained by extrapolating Schwarzschild's 1916 constant density interior solution to its compact limit, showing how the black hole singularity theorems and the Buchdahl compactness bound are evaded. The surface stress tensor on the horizon is determined by a modification of the Lanczos-Israel junction conditions for null hypersurfaces, which is applied to rotating gravastar solutions as well. The fundamental basis for the quantum phase transition at the horizon is the stress tensor of the conformal anomaly, depending upon a new light scalar field in the low energy effective action for gravity. This scalar allows the effective value of the vacuum energy, described as a condensate of an exact 4-form abelian gauge field, to change at the horizon. The resulting effective theory thus replaces the fixed constant Lambda of classical general relativity, and its apparently unnaturally large sensitivity to UV physics, with a dynamical condensate whose ground state value in empty flat space is zero identically. This provides both a natural resolution of the cosmological constant problem and an effective Lagrangian dynamical framework for the boundary layer and interior of gravitational vacuum condensate stars. The status of present observational constraints and prospects for detection of gravastars through their gravitational wave and echo signatures are discussed., Comment: 69 pages, 8 figures, Review article to be published in "Regular Black Holes: Towards a New Paradigm of Gravitational Collapse," C. Bambi editor (Springer)

In this work we analyze how the spectrum of primordial scalar perturbations is modified, within the emergent universe scenario, when a particular version of the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model is incorporated as the generating mechanism of initial perturbations, providing also an explanation to the quantum-to-classical transition of such perturbations. On the other hand, a phase of super-inflation, prior to slow-roll inflation, is a characteristic feature of the emergent universe hypothesis. In recent works, it was shown that the super-inflation phase could generically induce a suppression of the temperature anisotropies of the CMB at large angular scales. We study here under what conditions the CSL maintains or modifies these characteristics of the emergent universe and their compatibility with the CMB observations., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Some references added. Version accepted in EPJC

Cosmic string networks form during cosmological phase transitions as a consequence of the Kibble mechanism. The evolution of the simplest networks is accurately described by the canonical Velocity Dependent One-Scale (VOS) model. However, numerical simulations have demonstrated the existence of significant quantities of short-wavelength propagation modes on the strings, known as wiggles, which motivated the recent development of a wiggly string extension of the VOS. Here we summarize recent progress in the physical interpretation of this model through a systematic study of the allowed asymptotic scaling solutions of the model. The modeling mainly relies on three mechanisms: the universe's expansion rate, energy transfer mechanisms (e.g., the production of loops and wiggles), and the choice of the scale in which wiggles are coarse-grained. We consider the various limits in which each mechanism dominates and compare the scaling solutions for each case, in order to gain insight into the role of each mechanism in the overall behavior of the network. Our results show that there are three scaling regimes for the wiggliness, consisting of the well-known Nambu-Goto solution, and non-trivial regimes where the amount of wiggliness can grow as the network evolves or, for specific expansion rates, become a constant. We also demonstrate that full scaling of the network is more likely in the matter era than in the radiation epoch, in agreement with numerical simulations., Summary of a talk given at the From Cosmic Strings to Superstrings parallel session of the Sixteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting, partially summarizing work previously reported in arXiv:2107.11653, and some extensions thereof. To appear in the proceedings

The quasar target selection for the upcoming survey of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will be fixed for the next 5 yr. The aim of this work is to validate the quasar selection by studying the impact of imaging systematics as well as stellar and galactic contaminants, and to develop a procedure to mitigate them. Density fluctuations of quasar targets are found to be related to photometric properties such as seeing and depth of the Data Release 9 of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. To model this complex relation, we explore machine learning algorithms (random forest and multilayer perceptron) as an alternative to the standard linear regression. Splitting the footprint of the Legacy Imaging Surveys into three regions according to photometric properties, we perform an independent analysis in each region, validating our method using extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) EZ-mocks. The mitigation procedure is tested by comparing the angular correlation of the corrected target selection on each photometric region to the angular correlation function obtained using quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 16. With our procedure, we recover a similar level of correlation between DESI quasar targets and SDSS quasars in two-thirds of the total footprint and we show that the excess of correlation in the remaining area is due to a stellar contamination that should be removed with DESI spectroscopic data. We derive the Limber parameters in our three imaging regions and compare them to previous measurements from SDSS and the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey., 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 Center, 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 Technology 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, Mexico; the Ministry of Economy of Spain, and by the DESI Member Institutions. ADM was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0019022.

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is designed to measure a high-precision integral spectrum of the endpoint region of T2 beta decay, with the primary goal of probing the absolute mass scale of the neutrino. After a first tritium commissioning campaign in 2018, the experiment has been regularly running since 2019, and in its first two measurement campaigns has already achieved a sub-eV sensitivity. After 1000 days of data-taking, KATRIN's design sensitivity is 0.2 eV at the 90% confidence level. In this white paper we describe the current status of KATRIN; explore prospects for measuring the neutrino mass and other physics observables, including sterile neutrinos and other beyond-Standard-Model hypotheses; and discuss research-and-development projects that may further improve the KATRIN sensitivity., Contribution to Snowmass 2021. 70 pages excluding references; 35 figures. Author list updated June 2023

In the present paper, the process of inverse double-Compton (IDC) scattering is considered in the context of astrophysical applications. It is assumed that the two hard X-ray photons emitted from an astrophysical source are scattered on a free electron and converted into a single soft photon of optical range. Using the QED S-matrix formalism for the derivation of a cross-section of direct double-Compton (DDC) scattering and assuming detailed balance conditions, an analytical expression for the cross-section of the IDC process is presented. It is shown that at fixed energies of incident photons, the inverse cross-section has no infrared divergences, and its behavior is completely defined by the spectral characteristics of the photon source itself, in particular by the finite interaction time of radiation with an electron. Thus, even for the direct process, the problem of resolving infrared divergence actually refers to a real physical source of radiation in which photons are never actually plane waves. As a result, the physical frequency profile of the scattered radiation for DDC as well as for IDC processes is a function of both the intensity and line shape of the incident photon field.

The presence of charged dust grains is known to have a profound impact on the physical evolution of the multiphase interstellar medium (ISM). Despite its importance, this process is still poorly explored in numerical simulations due to its complex physics and the tight dependence on the environment. Here we introduce a novel implementation of grain charging in the cosmological radiative transfer code CRASH. We first benchmark the code predictions on a series of idealized dusty HII regions created by a single star, in order to assess the impact of grain properties on the resulting spatial distribution of charges. Second, we perform a realistic radiative transfer simulation of a star forming region extracted from a dusty galaxy evolving in the Epoch of Reionization. We find that $\sim 13$ % of the total dust mass gets negatively charged, mainly silicate and graphite grains of radius micron. A complex spatial distribution of grain charges is also found, primarily depending on the exposure to stellar radiation and strongly varying along different lines of sight, as a result of radiative transfer effects. We finally assess the impact of grain properties (both chemical composition and size) on the resulting charge distribution. The new implementation described here will open up a wide range of possible studies investigating the physical evolution of the dusty ISM, nowadays accessible to observations of high and low redshift galaxies., Comment: MNRAS in press

We present a machine learning model to classify active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and galaxies (AGN-galaxy classifier) and a model to identify type 1 (optically unabsorbed) and type 2 (optically absorbed) AGN (type 1/2 classifier). We test tree-based algorithms, using training samples built from the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission–Newton (XMM–Newton) catalogue and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with labels derived from the SDSS survey. The performance was tested making use of simulations and of cross-validation techniques. With a set of features including spectroscopic redshifts and X-ray parameters connected to source properties (e.g. fluxes and extension), as well as features related to X-ray instrumental conditions, the precision and recall for AGN identification are 94 and 93 per cent, while the type 1/2 classifier has a precision of 74 per cent and a recall of 80 per cent for type 2 AGNs. The performance obtained with photometric redshifts is very similar to that achieved with spectroscopic redshifts in both test cases, while there is a decrease in performance when excluding redshifts. Our machine learning model trained on X-ray features can accurately identify AGN in extragalactic surveys. The type 1/2 classifier has a valuable performance for type 2 AGNs, but its ability to generalize without redshifts is hampered by the limited census of absorbed AGN at high redshift., FJC acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry MCIU under project RTI2018-096686-B-C21 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER/UE), cofunded by FEDER funds and from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu, ref. MDM-2017- 0765. Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions.

We explore how chromatic RFI flags affect 21-cm power spectrum measurements. We particularly study flags that are coarser than the analysis resolution. We find that such RFI flags produce excess power in the EoR window in much the same way as residual RFI. We use Fast Holographic Deconvolution (FHD) simulations to explain this as a result of chromatic disruptions in the interferometric sampling function of the array. We also use these simulations in conjunction with Error Propagated Power Spectrum with InterLeaved Observed Noise ($\varepsilon$ppsilon) to show that without modifying current flagging strategies or implementing extremely accurate and complete foreground subtraction, 21-cm EoR experiments will fail to make a significant detection. As a mitigation strategy, we find that circumventing the chromatic structure altogether by flagging the entire analysis band when RFI is detected is simple to implement and highly successful. This demands a detection strategy with a low false positive rate in order to prevent excessive data loss., Including revisions from peer review

The central regions of cool-core galaxy clusters harbour multiphase gas, with gas temperatures ranging from $10$ $\mathrm{K}$--$10^7$$\mathrm{K}$. Feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) jets prevents the gas from undergoing a catastrophic cooling flow. However, the exact mechanism of this feedback energy input is unknown, mainly due to the lack of velocity measurements of the hot phase gas. However, recent observations have measured the velocity structure functions ($\mathrm{VSF}$s) of the cooler molecular ($\sim10$$\mathrm{K}$) and H$\alpha$ filaments ($\sim10^4$$\mathrm{K}$) and used them to indirectly estimate the motions of the hot phase. In the first part of this study, we conduct high-resolution ($384^3$--$1536^3$ resolution elements) simulations of homogeneous isotropic subsonic turbulence, without radiative cooling. We analyse the second-order velocity structure functions ($\mathrm{VSF}_2$) in these simulations and study the effects of varying spatial resolution, the introduction of magnetic fields, and the effect of projection along the line of sight (LOS) on it. In the second part of the study, we analyse high-resolution ($768^3$ resolution elements) idealised simulations of multiphase turbulence in the intracluster medium (ICM) from Mohapatra et al 2021. We compare the $\mathrm{VSF}_2$ for both the hot ($T\sim10^7$$\mathrm{K}$) and cold ($T\sim10^4$$\mathrm{K}$) phases and find that their amplitude depends on the density contrast between the phases. They have similar scaling with separation, but introducing magnetic fields steepens the $\mathrm{VSF}_2$ of only the cold phase. We also find that projection along the LOS steepens the $\mathrm{VSF}_2$ for the hot phase and mostly flattens it for the cold phase., Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, simulation movies at this youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_0WIfRL9tI&list=PLuaNgQ1v_KMauk1cTu_ellwe6-pTkABIh. Accepted for publication in MNRAS, comments are welcome. Companion study at arxiv ID 2107.07722

We have investigated the structure of the Hercules supercluster (SCL160) based on data originally extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS-DR7. We have traced the mass distribution in the field through the numerical density-weighted by the $r^\prime$-luminosity of the galaxies and classified them based on their spatial position and redshift. This has allowed us not only to address the kinematics of the supercluster as a whole, but also the internal kinematic of each cluster, which was no further explored before. We have confirmed that the Hercules supercluster is composed of the galaxy clusters A2147, A2151, and A2152. A2151 consists of five subclusters, A2147 on two and A2152 on at least two. They form the heart of the Hercules supercluster. We also have found two other gravitationally bond clusters, increasing, therefore, the known members of the supercluster. We have estimated a total mass of $2.1\pm0.2 \times 10^{15}$ M$_\odot$ for the Hercules supercluster. To determine the dynamical masses in this work, we have resorted to the $M_{200}-\sigma$ scaling relation and the caustic technique. Comparing both methods with simulated data of bimodal merging clusters, we found the caustic, as well as the $\sigma$-based masses, are biased through the merger age, showing a boost just after the pericentric passage. This is not in line with the principle of the caustic method that affirms it is not depending on the cluster dynamical state., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 7 tables - Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We use the Sherwood-Relics suite of hybrid hydrodynamical and radiative transfer simulations to model the effect of inhomogeneous reionisation on the 1D power spectrum of the \Lya forest transmitted flux at redshifts $4.2\leq z \leq 5$. Relative to models that assume a homogeneous UV background, reionisation suppresses the power spectrum at small scales, $k \sim 0.1\rm\,km^{-1}\,s$ by $\sim 10$ per cent because of spatial variations in the thermal broadening kernel and the divergent peculiar velocity field associated with over-pressurised intergalactic gas. On larger scales, $k4$, $0.006 \rm \,km^{-1}\,s\leq k \leq 0.2 \rm\, km^{-1}\,s$, we find inhomogeneous reionisation does not introduce any significant bias in thermal parameter recovery for the current measurement uncertainties of $\sim 10$ per cent. However, for $5$ per cent uncertainties, $\sim 1\sigma$ shifts between the estimated and true parameters occur., Comment: Accepted by MNRAS (21 November 2021), 20 pages, 11 figures

We present updated cosmological constraints from measurements of the gas mass fractions ($f_{gas}$) of massive, dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters. Our new data set has greater leverage on models of dark energy, thanks to the addition of the Perseus Cluster at low redshifts, two new clusters at redshifts $z>0.97$, and significantly longer observations of four clusters at $0.6, Comment: To be published in MNRAS. See https://github.com/abmantz/fgas-cosmo for code and https://github.com/abmantz/fgas-2021-paper for data presented in figures/tables

Obtaining accurately calibrated redshift distributions of photometric samples is one of the great challenges in photometric surveys like LSST, Euclid, HSC, KiDS, and DES. We present an inference methodology that combines the redshift information from the galaxy photometry with constraints from two-point functions, utilizing cross-correlations with spatially overlapping spectroscopic samples, and illustrate the approach on CosmoDC2 simulations. Our likelihood framework is designed to integrate directly into a typical large-scale structure and weak lensing analysis based on two-point functions. We discuss efficient and accurate inference techniques that allow us to scale the method to the large samples of galaxies to be expected in LSST. We consider statistical challenges like the parametrization of redshift systematics, discuss and evaluate techniques to regularize the sample redshift distributions, and investigate techniques that can help to detect and calibrate sources of systematic error using posterior predictive checks. We evaluate and forecast photometric redshift performance using data from the CosmoDC2 simulations, within which we mimic a DESI-like spectroscopic calibration sample for cross-correlations. Using a combination of spatial cross-correlations and photometry, we show that we can provide calibration of the mean of the sample redshift distribution to an accuracy of at least 0.002(1+z), consistent with the LSST-Y1 science requirements for weak lensing and large-scale structure probes., Comment: Updated to match the version accepted by the MNRAS, 23 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables

With a single training image and using wavelet phase harmonic augmentation, we present polarized Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) foreground marginalization in a high-dimensional likelihood-free (Bayesian) framework. We demonstrate robust foreground removal using only a single frequency of simulated data for a BICEP-like sky patch. Using Moment Networks we estimate the pixel-level posterior probability for the underlying {E,B} signal and validate the statistical model with a quantile-type test using the estimated marginal posterior moments. The Moment Networks use a hierarchy of U-Net convolutional neural networks. This work validates such an approach in the most difficult limiting case: pixel-level, noise-free, highly non-Gaussian dust foregrounds with a single training image at a single frequency. For a real CMB experiment, a small number of representative sky patches would provide the training data required for full cosmological inference. These results enable robust likelihood-free, simulation-based parameter and model inference for primordial B-mode detection using observed CMB polarization data., Accepted by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. 5 pages with 3 figures (plus 1 page of Supporting Materials with 2 figures)

The primordial gravitational wave background (GWB) offers an exciting future avenue of discovery for new physics. Its information content encodes multiple eras in the early Universe's history, corresponding to many orders of magnitude in frequency and physical scale to be measured today. By numerically solving for the GW transfer functions we provide simple yet accurate formulas describing the average power of the large-scale energy spectrum of the GWB for arbitrary primordial tensor power spectra. In doing so we can pedagogically explain and clarify previous GWB literature, highlight the important cosmological parameters of various GWB features, and reveal multiple ways in which cancelling conceptual errors can give deceptively accurate results. The scales considered here are particularly important for CMB probes of the GWB, via $B$-modes and spectral distortions. In particular, we carefully study the effects of both neutrino damping, and the precise nature of the transition between the radiation-dominated (RD) and matter-dominated (MD) eras. A byproduct of numerically solving the problem is the ability to study the robustness of common approximations in the literature. Specifically, we show that a numerical treatment is especially important around the RD--MD transition, and for a brief moment of history where neutrino damping occurs during MD. In passing we also discuss the effects of late acceleration caused by dark energy -- showing that this can be neglected in most practical GWB applications -- and the effects of changing relativistic degrees of freedom on the GWB at very small-scales., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, to be submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome

We perform a systematic study of the electric and magnetic dipole moments of dark matter (DM) that are induced at the one-loop level when DM experiences four-fermion interactions with Standard Model (SM) charged fermions. Related to their loop nature these moments can largely depend on the UV completion at the origin of the four-fermion operators. We illustrate this property by considering explicitly two simple ways to generate these operators, from $t$- or $s$-channel tree-level exchange. Fixing the strength of these interactions from the DM relic density constraint, we obtain in particular a magnetic moment that, depending on the interaction considered, lies typically between $10^{-20}$ to $10^{-23}$ ecm or identically vanishes. These non-vanishing values induce, via photon exchange, DM-nucleus scattering cross sections that could be probed by current or near future direct detection experiments., 23 pages, 7 figures

Cosmological phase transitions in the primordial universe can produce anisotropic stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (GWB), similar to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). For adiabatic perturbations, the fluctuations in GWB follow those in the CMB, but if primordial fluctuations carry an isocurvature component, this need no longer be true. It is shown that in non-minimal inflationary and reheating settings, primordial isocurvature can survive in GWB and exhibit significant non-Gaussianity (NG) in contrast to the CMB, while obeying current observational bounds. While probing such NG GWB is at best a marginal possibility at LISA, there is much greater scope at future proposed detectors such as DECIGO and BBO. It is even possible that the first observations of inflation-era NG could be made with gravitational wave detectors as opposed to the CMB or Large-Scale Structure surveys., Comment: 12+3 pages, 2 figures

Constant-rate inflation, including ultra-slow-roll as a special case, has been widely applied to the formation of primordial black holes with significant deviation from the standard slow-roll conditions at both the growing and decaying phases of the power spectrum. We derive analytic solutions for the curvature perturbations with respect to the late-time scaling dimensions (conformal weights) constrained by the dilatation symmetry of the de Sitter background and show that the continuity of conformal weights across different rolling phases is protected by the adiabatic condition of the inflaton perturbation. The temporal excitation of subleading states (with the next-to-lowest conformal weights), recorded as the "steepest growth" of the power spectrum, is triggered by the entropy production in the transition from slow-roll to constant-rate phases., Comment: 18 + 4 pages, 6 figures; v2: references added, provided entropy production as a criterion for the steepest growth; v3: minor corrections, version matched with publication

Within the ongoing debate about de Sitter (dS) vacua in string theory, different aspects of explicit dS proposals have come under intense scrutiny. One key ingredient is D7-brane gaugino condensation, which is usually treated using effective 4d supergravity. However, it is clearly more desirable to derive the relevant scalar potential directly from a local 10d Lagrangian. Such a local 10d description captures the interactions among the various localized sources and the background fields which are smeared in the 4d Lagrangian. While progress in this endeavour has recently been made, some form of non-locality related to the 4-gaugino term has remained hidden in the available proposals. We spell out the local counterterm removing the divergence that arises when integrating out the 3-form flux and which, upon dimensional reduction, serves to reproduce the relevant part of the 4d supergravity action. This is both a step towards a more complete understanding of 10d type-IIB supergravity as well as specifically towards better control of dS constructions in string theory involving gaugino condensation., 27 pages. v2: Minor changes; v3: Published in JHEP

In this work, we use the constrained Gaussian realization technique to study the early growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, exploring its relationship with features of the initial density peaks on large scales, ~1 Mpc/h. Our constrained simulations of volume (20 Mpc/h)^3 successfully reconstruct the large-scale structure as well as the black hole growth for the hosts of the rare 10^9 Msun SMBHs found in the BlueTides simulation at z~7. We run a set of simulations with constrained initial conditions by imposing a 5 \sigma_0(R_G) peak on scale of R_G = 1 Mpc/h varying different peak features, such as the shape and compactness as well as the tidal field surrounding the peak. We find that initial density peaks with high compactness and low tidal field induce the most rapid BH growth at early epochs. This is because compact density peaks with a more spherical large scale matter distribution lead to the formation of high density gas clumps in the centers of halos, and thus boost early BH accretion. Moreover, such initially compact density peaks in low tidal field regions also lead to a more compact BH host galaxy morphology. This can explain the tight correlation between BH growth and host galaxy compactness seen in observations., Comment: matches MNRAS accepted version

We study gravitational lensing of gravitational waves from compact object binaries as a probe of compact dark matter (DM) objects such as primordial black holes. Assuming a point mass lens, we perform parameter estimation of lensed gravitational wave signals from compact object binaries to determine the detectability of the lens with ground based laser interferometers. Then, considering binary populations that LIGO-Virgo has been probing, we derive a constraint on the abundance of compact DM from non-observation of lensed events. We find that the LIGO-Virgo observations imply that compact objects heavier than $M_l = 200M_\odot$ can not constitute all DM and less than $40\%$ of DM can be in compact objects heavier than $M_l = 400M_\odot$. We also show that the DM fraction in compact objects can be probed by LIGO in its final sensitivity for $M_l > 40M_\odot$ reaching $2\%$ of the DM abundance at $M_l > 200M_\odot$, and by ET for $M_l > 1M_\odot$ reaching DM fraction as low as $7\times 10^{-5}$ at $M_l > 40M_\odot$., 8 pages, 4 figures. published version

The demographics of dark matter substructure depend sensitively on the nature of dark matter. Optimally leveraging this probe requires accurate theoretical predictions regarding the abundance of subhaloes. These predictions are hampered by artificial disruption in numerical simulations, by large halo-to-halo variance, and by the fact that the results depend on the baryonic physics of galaxy formation. In particular, numerical simulations have shown that the formation of a central disc can drastically reduce the abundance of substructure compared to a dark matter-only simulation, which has been attributed to enhanced destruction of substructure due to disc shocking. We examine the impact of discs on substructure using the semi-analytical subhalo model SatGen, which accurately models the tidal evolution of substructure free of the numerical disruption that still hampers $N$-body simulations. Using a sample of 10,000 merger trees of Milky Way-like haloes, we study the demographics of subhaloes that are evolved under a range of composite halo-disc potentials with unprecedented statistical power. We find that the overall subhalo abundance is relatively insensitive to properties of the disc aside from its total mass. For a disc that contains $5\%$ of $M_\mathrm{vir}$, the mean subhalo abundance within $r_\mathrm{vir}$ is suppressed by ${\lesssim}10\%$ relative to the no-disc case, a difference that is dwarfed by halo-to-halo variance. For the same disc mass, the abundance of subhaloes within 50 kpc is reduced by ${\sim}30\%$. We argue that the disc mainly drives excess mass loss for subhaloes with small pericentric radii and that the impact of disc shocking is negligible., 13 pages, 8 figures. Accepted to MNRAS

Hydrodynamic simulations provide a powerful, but computationally expensive, approach to study the interplay of dark matter and baryons in cosmological structure formation. Here we introduce the EMulating Baryonic EnRichment (EMBER) Deep Learning framework to predict baryon fields based on dark-matter-only simulations thereby reducing computational cost. EMBER comprises two network architectures, U-Net and Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks (WGANs), to predict two-dimensional gas and HI densities from dark matter fields. We design the conditional WGANs as stochastic emulators, such that multiple target fields can be sampled from the same dark matter input. For training we combine cosmological volume and zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project to represent a large range of scales. Our fiducial WGAN model reproduces the gas and HI power spectra within 10% accuracy down to ~10 kpc scales. Furthermore, we investigate the capability of EMBER to predict high resolution baryon fields from low resolution dark matter inputs through upsampling techniques. As a practical application, we use this methodology to emulate high-resolution HI maps for a dark matter simulation of a L=100 Mpc/h comoving cosmological box. The gas content of dark matter haloes and the HI column density distributions predicted by EMBER agree well with results of large volume cosmological simulations and abundance matching models. Our method provides a computationally efficient, stochastic emulator for augmenting dark matter only simulations with physically consistent maps of baryon fields., 21 pages, 12 figures, accepted by MNRAS, comments welcome

The quest for high-redshift quasars has led to a series of record-breaking sources, with the current record holder at $z=7.642$. Here, we show how future detections of $z>8$ quasars impact the constraints on the parameters for black hole growth and seed models. Using broad flat priors on the growth parameters (Eddington ratio $\,f_{\rm Edd}$, duty cycle ${\cal D}$, seed mass $M_{\rm \bullet, seed}$ and radiative efficiency $\epsilon$), we show that the large uncertainties in their determination decrease by a factor $\sim 5$ when a quasar's detection redshift goes from $z=9$ to $z=12$. In this high-redshift regime, $\epsilon$ tends to the lowest value allowed, and the distribution for $M_{\rm \bullet, seed}$ peaks well inside the heavy seed domain. Remarkably, two quasars detected at $z > 7$ with low accretion rates (J1243+0100 and J0313-1806) already tighten the available parameter space, requiring $M_{\rm \bullet, seed} > 10^{3.5} \,{\rm M_\odot}$ and $\epsilon < 0.1$. The radiative efficiency is a crucial unknown, with factor $\sim 2$ changes able to modify the predicted mass by $\sim 3$ orders of magnitude already at $z\sim 9$. The competing roles of inefficient accretion (decreasing $\epsilon$) and black hole spin-up (increasing $\epsilon$) significantly impact growth models. Finally, we suggest that yields currently predicted by upcoming quasar surveys (e.g., Euclid) will be instrumental for determining the most-likely seed mass regime. For example, assuming thin-disk accretion, a detection of a quasar with $M_\bullet \sim 10^{10} \,{\rm M_\odot}$ by $z\sim 9-10$ would exclude the entire parameter space available for light seeds and dramatically reduce the one for heavy seeds., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. This is the final version of the manuscript. 8 pages, 5 figures

Disc fragmentation plays an important role in determining the number of primordial stars (Pop III stars), their masses, and hence the initial mass function. In this second paper of a series, we explore the effect of uniform far-ultraviolet H2-photodissociating and X-ray radiation backgrounds on the formation of Pop III stars using a grid of high-resolution zoom-in simulations. We find that, in an X-ray background, protostellar discs have lower surface density and higher Toomre Q parameter, so they are more stable. For this reason, X-ray irradiated discs undergo fewer fragmentations and typically produce either binary systems or low-multiplicity systems. In contrast, the cases with weak or no X-ray irradiation produce systems with a typical multiplicity of 6 ± 3. In addition, the most massive protostar in each system is smaller by roughly a factor of 2 when the disc is irradiated by X-rays, due to lower accretion rate. With these two effects combined, the initial mass function of fragments becomes more top-heavy in a strong X-ray background and is well described by a power law with slope 1.53 and high-mass cutoff of 61 M⊙. Without X-rays, we find a slope 0.49 and cutoff mass of 229 M⊙. Finally, protostars migrate outward after their formation likely due to the accretion of high-angular momentum gas from outside and the migration is more frequent and significant in absence of X-ray irradiation.

The first luminous objects forming in the universe produce radiation backgrounds in the far-ultraviolet and X-ray bands that affect the formation of Population III stars. Using a grid of cosmological hydrodynamics zoom-in simulations, we explore the impact of the Lyman–Warner (LW) and X-ray radiation backgrounds on the critical dark matter (DM) halo mass for Population III star formation and the total mass in stars per halo. We find that the LW radiation background lowers the H2 fraction and delays the formation of the Population III stars. On the other hand, X-ray irradiation anticipates the redshift of collapse and reduces the critical halo mass, unless the X-ray background is too strong and gas heating shuts down gas collapse into the haloes and prevents star formation. Therefore, an X-ray background can increase the number of DM haloes forming Population III stars by about a factor of 10, but the total mass in stars forming in each halo is reduced. This is because X-ray radiation increases the molecular fraction and lowers the minimum temperature of the collapsing gas (or equivalently the mass of the quasi-hydrostatic core) and therefore slows down the accretion of the gas on to the central protostar.

In this paper, we investigate the properties of binary neutron stars (BNSs) and their mergers by combining population synthesis models for binary stellar evolution (BSE) with cosmological galaxy formation and evolution models. We obtain constraints on BSE model parameters by using the observed Galactic BNSs and local BNS merger rate density ($R_0$) inferred from Gravitational Wave (GW) observations, and consequently estimate the host galaxy distributions of BNS mergers. We find that the Galactic BNS observations imply efficient energy depletion in the common envelope (CE) phase, a bimodal kick velocity distribution, and low mass ejection during the secondary supernova explosion. However, the inferred $R_0$ does not necessarily require an extremely high CE ejection efficiency and low kick velocities, different from the previous claims, mainly because the latest inferred $R_0$ is narrowed to a lower value ($320_{-240}^{+490}\,{\rm Gpc^{-3}\,yr^{-1}}$). The BNS merger rate density resulting from the preferred model can be described by $R(z)\sim R_0(1+z)^{\zeta}$ at low redshift ($z\lesssim0.5$), with $R_0\sim316$-$784\,{\rm Gpc^{-3}\,yr^{-1}}$ and $\zeta\sim1.34$-$2.03$, respectively. Our results also show that $R_{0}$ and $\zeta$ depend on settings of BSE model parameters, and thus accurate estimates of these parameters by future GW detections will put strong constraints on BSE models. We further estimate that the fractions of BNS mergers hosted in spiral and elliptical galaxies at $z\sim0$ are $\sim81$%-$84$% and $\sim16$%-$19$%, respectively. The BNS merger rate per galaxy can be well determined by the host galaxy stellar mass, star formation rate, and metallicity, which provides a guidance in search for most probable candidates of BNS host galaxies., Comment: 32 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The characteristic mass that sets the peak of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is closely linked to the thermodynamic behaviour of interstellar gas, which controls how gas fragments as it collapses under gravity. As the Universe has grown in metal abundance over cosmic time, this thermodynamic behaviour has evolved from a primordial regime dominated by the competition between compressional heating and molecular hydrogen cooling to a modern regime where the dominant process in dense gas is protostellar radiation feedback, transmitted to the gas by dust-gas collisions. In this paper we map out the primordial-to-modern transition by constructing a model for the thermodynamics of collapsing, dusty gas clouds at a wide range of metallicities. We show the transition from the primordial regime to the modern regime begins at metallicity $Z\sim 10^{-4} \rm{Z_\odot}$, passes through an intermediate stage where metal line cooling is dominant at $Z \sim 10^{-3}\,\rm{Z_{\odot}}$, and then transitions to the modern dust- and feedback-dominated regime at $Z\sim 10^{-2} \rm{Z_\odot}$. In low pressure environments like the Milky Way, this transition is accompanied by a dramatic change in the characteristic stellar mass, from $\sim 50\,\rm{M_\odot}$ at $Z \sim 10^{-6}\,\rm{Z_{\odot}}$ to $\sim 0.3\,\rm{M_\odot}$ once radiation feedback begins to dominate, which marks the appearance of the modern bottom-heavy Milky Way IMF. In the high pressure environments typical of massive elliptical galaxies, the characteristic mass for the modern, dust-dominated regime falls to $\sim 0.1\,\rm{M_{\odot}}$, thus providing an explanation for the more bottom-heavy IMF observed in these galaxies. We conclude that metallicity is a key driver of variations in the characteristic stellar mass, and by extension, the IMF., 26 pages (main result in figures 7 and 8). MNRAS in press

We estimate the 3D density profile of the Galactic dark matter (DM) halo within $r \lesssim 30$ kpc from the Galactic centre by using the astrometric data for halo RR Lyrae stars from Gaia DR2. We model both the stellar halo distribution function and the Galactic potential, fully taking into account the survey selection function, the observational errors, and the missing line-of-sight velocity data for RR Lyrae stars. With a Bayesian MCMC method, we infer the model parameters, including the density flattening of the DM halo $q$, which is assumed to be constant as a function of radius. We find that 99\% of the posterior distribution of $q$ is located at $q>0.963$, which strongly disfavours a flattened DM halo. We cannot draw any conclusions as to whether the Galactic DM halo at $r \lesssim 30$ kpc is prolate, because we restrict ourselves to axisymmetric oblate halo models with $q\leq1$. Our result is inconsistent with predictions from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations that advocate more oblate ($\langle{q}\rangle \sim0.8 \pm 0.15$) DM halos within $\sim 15\%$ of the virial radius for Milky-Way-sized galaxies. An alternative possibility, based on our validation tests with a cosmological simulation, is that the true value $q$ of the Galactic halo could be consistent with cosmological simulations but that disequilibrium in the Milky Way potential is inflating our measurement of $q$ by 0.1-0.2. As a by-product of our analysis, our model constrains the DM density in the Solar neighbourhood to be $��_{\mathrm{DM},\odot} = (9.01^{+0.18}_{-0.20})\times10^{-3}M_\odot \mathrm{pc}^{-3} = 0.342^{+0.007}_{-0.007}$ $\;\mathrm{GeV} \mathrm{cm}^{-3}$., MNRAS submitted. 15 pages (plus Appendix 7 pages). 6 figures (plus 10 figures in Appendix). Comments welcome

Scalar Field Dark Matter (SFDM) comprised of ultralight ($\gtrsim 10^{-22}$ eV) bosons is an alternative to standard, collisionless Cold Dark Matter (CDM) that is CDM-like on large scales but inhibits small-scale structure formation. As a Bose-Einstein condensate, its free-field ("fuzzy") limit (FDM) suppresses structure below the de Broglie wavelength, $\lambda_\text{deB}$, creating virialized haloes with central cores of radius $\sim\lambda_\text{deB}$, surrounded by CDM-like envelopes, and a halo mass function (HMF) with a sharp cut-off on small scales. With a strong enough repulsive self-interaction (SI), structure is inhibited, instead, below the Thomas-Fermi (TF) radius, $R_\text{TF}$ (the size of an SI-pressure-supported ($n=1$)-polytrope), when $R_\text{TF} > \lambda_\text{deB}$. Previously, we developed tools to describe SFDM dynamics on scales above $\lambda_\text{deB}$ and showed that SFDM-TF haloes formed by Jeans-unstable collapse from non-cosmological initial conditions have $R_\text{TF}$-sized cores, surrounded by CDM-like envelopes. Revisiting SFDM-TF in the cosmological context, we simulate halo formation by cosmological infall and collapse, and derive its transfer function from linear perturbation theory to produce cosmological initial conditions and predict statistical measures of structure formation, such as the HMF. Since FDM and SFDM-TF transfer functions both have small-scale cut-offs, we can align them to let observational constraints on FDM proxy for SFDM-TF, finding FDM with particle masses $1 \lesssim m/(10^{-22} \text{ eV}/c^2) \lesssim 30$ corresponds to SFDM-TF with $10 \gtrsim R_\text{TF}/(1 \text{ pc}) \gtrsim 1$, favoring sub-galactic (sub-kpc) core-size. The SFDM-TF HMF cuts off gradually, however, leaving more small-mass haloes: its Jeans mass shrinks so fast, scales filtered early can still recover and grow!, Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, accepted by MNRAS 09/22/21, comments welcome

We introduce zeus, a well-tested Python implementation of the Ensemble Slice Sampling (ESS) method for Bayesian parameter inference. ESS is a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm specifically designed to tackle the computational challenges posed by modern astronomical and cosmological analyses. In particular, the method requires only minimal hand--tuning of 1-2 hyper-parameters that are often trivial to set; its performance is insensitive to linear correlations and it can scale up to 1000s of CPUs without any extra effort. Furthermore, its locally adaptive nature allows to sample efficiently even when strong non-linear correlations are present. Lastly, the method achieves a high performance even in strongly multimodal distributions in high dimensions. Compared to emcee, a popular MCMC sampler, zeus performs 9 and 29 times better in a cosmological and an exoplanet application respectively., Comment: 15 pages, 17 figures, 2 tables, published in MNRAS; Code available at https://github.com/minaskar/zeus

We characterize the selection cuts and clustering properties of a magnitude-limited sample of bright galaxies that is part of the Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) using the ninth data release of the Legacy Imaging Surveys (DR9). We describe changes in the DR9 selection compared to the DR8 one and we also compare the DR9 selection in three distinct regions: BASS/MzLS in the north Galactic Cap (NGC), DECaLS in the NGC, and DECaLS in the south Galactic Cap (SGC). We investigate the systematics associated with the selection and assess its completeness by matching the BGS targets with the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. We measure the angular clustering for the overall bright sample (rmag ≤ 19.5) and as function of apparent magnitude and colour. This enables to determine the clustering strength r0 and slope γ by fitting a power-law model that can be used to generate accurate mock catalogues for this tracer. We use a counts-in-cells technique to explore higher order statistics and cross-correlations with external spectroscopic data sets in order to check the evolution of the clustering with redshift and the redshift distribution of the BGS targets using clustering redshifts. While this work validates the properties of the BGS bright targets, the final target selection pipeline and clustering properties of the entire DESI BGS will be fully characterized and validated with the spectroscopic data of Survey Validation. © 2021 The Author(s)., PZ, OR-M, SC, PN, and CB acknowledge support from the Science Technology Facilities Council through ST/P000541/1 andST/T000244/1. OR-M is supported by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) through grant No. 297228/440775 and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734374. JM gratefully acknowledges support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under Award Number DESC0020086 and from the National Science Foundation under grant AST-1616414. Authors want to thank the GAMA collaboration for early access to GAMA DR4 data for this work. Some of the results in this paper have been derived using the healpy and HEALPIX package. We acknowledge the usage of the HyperLeda database (http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr).This work also made extensive use of the NASA Astrophysics Data System and of the astro-ph preprint archive at arXiv.org. This work used the DiRAC@Durham facility managed by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). The equipment was funded by BEIS capital funding via STFC capital grants ST/K00042X/1, ST/P002293/1, and ST/R002371/1, Durham University and STFC operations grant ST/R000832/1. DiRAC is part of the National e-Infrastructure. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). NERSC is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. 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-AC02-05CH1123, and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, 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. The authors are honored to be permitted to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to the Tohono O’odham Nation., With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.

We use 78 reverberation-measured Mg II time-lag quasars (QSOs) in the redshift range $0.0033 \leq z \leq 1.89$ to constrain cosmological parameters in six different cosmological models. The basis of our method is the use of the radius-luminosity or $R-L$ relation to standardize these 78 Mg II QSOs. In each cosmological model we simultaneously determine $R-L$ relation and cosmological model parameters, thus avoiding the circularity problem. We find that the $R-L$ relation parameter values are independent of the cosmological model used in the analysis thus establishing that current Mg II QSOs are standardizable candles. Cosmological constraints obtained using these QSOs are significantly weaker than, but consistent with, those obtained from a joint analysis of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) observations and Hubble parameter [$H(z)$] measurements. So, we also analyse these QSOs in conjunction with the BAO + $H(z)$ data and find cosmological constraints consistent with the standard spatially-flat $\Lambda$CDM model as well as with mild dark energy dynamics and a little spatial curvature. A larger sample of higher-quality reverberation-measured QSOs should have a smaller intrinsic dispersion and so should provide tighter constraints on cosmological parameters., Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure, Mg II QSO data are given, MNRAS accepted version. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2105.12692

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will open the mHz frequency window of the gravitational wave (GW) landscape. Among all the new GW sources expected to emit in this frequency band, extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) constitute a unique laboratory for astrophysics and fundamental physics. Here we show that EMRIs can also be used to extract relevant cosmological information, complementary to both electromagnetic (EM) and other GW observations. By using the loudest EMRIs (SNR$>$100) detected by LISA as dark standard sirens, statistically matching their sky localisation region with mock galaxy catalogs, we find that constraints on $H_0$ can reach $\sim$1.1% ($\sim$3.6%) accuracy, at the 90% credible level, in our best (worst) case scenario. By considering a dynamical dark energy (DE) cosmological model, with $\Lambda$CDM parameters fixed by other observations, we further show that in our best (worst) case scenario $\sim$5.9% ($\sim$12.3%) relative uncertainties at the 90% credible level can be obtained on $w_0$, the DE equation of state parameter. Besides being relevant in their own right, EMRI measurements will be affected by different systematics compared to both EM and ground-based GW observations. Cross validation with complementary cosmological measurements will therefore be of paramount importance, especially if convincing evidence of physics beyond $\Lambda$CDM emerges from future observations., Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. v2: new author in author list, new sub-Appendix with additional results, new Fig. A1; some explicative paragraphs added, Fig. 3 updated. Matches the journal version

A clump moving through the intracluster medium of a galaxy cluster can drive a bow shock trailed by a bullet-like core. In some cases, such as in the prototypical Bullet cluster, X-rays show a gas bullet with a protruding head and pronounced shoulders. We point out that these features, while difficult to explain without dark matter (DM), naturally arise as the head of the slowed-down gas is gravitationally pulled forward toward its unhindered DM counterpart. X-ray imaging thus provides a unique, robust probe of the offset, collisionless DM, even without gravitational lensing or other auxiliary data. Numerical simulations and a toy model suggest that the effect is common in major mergers, is often associated with a small bullet-head radius of curvature, and may lead to distinct bullet morphologies, consistent with observations., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, comments welcome

The first generation (Pop-III) stars can ionize 1-10% of the universe by $z=15$, when the metal-enriched (Pop-II) stars may contribute negligibly to the ionization. This low ionization tail might leave detectable imprints on the large-scale CMB E-mode polarization. However, we show that physical models for reionization are unlikely to be sufficiently extended to detect any parameter beyond the total optical depth through reionization. This result is driven in part by the total optical depth inferred by Planck, indicating a reionization midpoint around $z=8$, which in combination with the requirement that reionization completes by $z\approx 5.5$ limits the amplitude of an extended tail. To demonstrate this, we perform semi-analytic calculations of reionization including Pop-III star formation in minihalos with Lyman-Werner feedback. We find that standard Pop-III models need to produce very extended reionization at $z>15$ to be distinguishable at 2-$��$ from Pop-II-only models, assuming a cosmic variance-limited measurement of the low-$\ell$ EE power spectrum. However, we show that unless there is (1) a late-time quenching mechanism such as from strong X-ray feedback or (2) some other extreme Pop-III scenario, structure formation makes it quite challenging to produce high enough Thomson scattering optical depth from $z>15$, $��(z>15)$, and still be consistent with other observational constraints on reionization., 11 pages 4 figures + appendix

We present the v1.0 release of CLMM, an open source Python library for the estimation of the weak lensing masses of clusters of galaxies. CLMM is designed as a standalone toolkit of building blocks to enable end-to-end analysis pipeline validation for upcoming cluster cosmology analyses such as the ones that will be performed by the LSST-DESC. Its purpose is to serve as a flexible, easy-to-install and easy-to-use interface for both weak lensing simulators and observers and can be applied to real and mock data to study the systematics affecting weak lensing mass reconstruction. At the core of CLMM are routines to model the weak lensing shear signal given the underlying mass distribution of galaxy clusters and a set of data operations to prepare the corresponding data vectors. The theoretical predictions rely on existing software, used as backends in the code, that have been thoroughly tested and cross-checked. Combined, theoretical predictions and data can be used to constrain the mass distribution of galaxy clusters as demonstrated in a suite of example Jupyter Notebooks shipped with the software and also available in the extensive online documentation., 21 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication by MNRAS

Our understanding of quantum correlators in cosmological spacetimes, including those that we can observe in cosmological surveys, has improved qualitatively in the past few years. Now we know many constraints that these objects must satisfy as consequences of general physical principles, such as symmetries, unitarity and locality. Using this new understanding, we derive the most general scalar four-point correlator, i.e., the trispectrum, to all orders in derivatives for manifestly local contact interactions. To obtain this result we use techniques from commutative algebra to write down all possible scalar four-particle amplitudes without assuming invariance under Lorentz boosts. We then input these amplitudes into a contact reconstruction formula that generates a contact cosmological correlator in de Sitter spacetime from a contact scalar or graviton amplitude. We also show how the same procedure can be used to derive higher-point contact cosmological correlators. Our results further extend the reach of the boostless cosmological bootstrap and build a new connection between flat and curved spacetime physics., 31 pages

We describe a new phenomenon in quantum cosmology: self-organised localisation. When the fundamental parameters of a theory are functions of a scalar field subject to large fluctuations during inflation, quantum phase transitions can act as dynamical attractors. As a result, the theory parameters are probabilistically localised around the critical value and the Universe finds itself at the edge of a phase transition. We illustrate how self-organised localisation could account for the observed near-criticality of the Higgs self-coupling, the naturalness of the Higgs mass, or the smallness of the cosmological constant., 104 pages, 12 figures. v3: Measure problem discussion extended and references added. Version to be published in JHEP

High energy astrophysical neutrinos interacting with ultralight dark matter (DM) can undergo flavour oscillations that induce an energy dependence in the flavour ratios. Such a dependence on the neutrino energy will reflect in the track to shower ratio in neutrino telescopes like IceCube or KM3NeT. This opens up a possibility to study DM density profiles of astrophysical objects like AGN, GRB etc., which are the suspected sources of such neutrinos., 26 pages, 10 figures. To appear in JHEP

In this paper, we propose a bubble filtering-out mechanism for an asymmetric dark matter scenario during the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) phase transition. Based on a QCD axion model, extended by extra chiral neutrinos, we show that the PQ phase transition can be first order in the parameter space of the model and regarding the PQ symmetry breaking scale, the mechanism can generate PeV-scale heavy neutrinos as a dark matter candidate. Considering a CP-violating source, during the phase transition, discriminating between the neutrino and antineutrino number density, we find the observed dark matter relic abundance, such that the setup can be applied to the first order phase transition with different strengths. We then calculate effective couplings of the QCD axion addressing the strong CP problem within the model. We also study the energy density spectrum of gravitational waves generated from the first order phase transition and show that the signals can be detected by future ground-based detectors such as Einstein Telescope. In particular, for a visible heavy axion case of the model, it is shown that gravitational waves can be probed by DECIGO and BBO interferometers. Furthermore, we discuss the dark matter-standard model neutrino annihilation process as a source for the creation of PeV-scale neutrinos., 20 pages, 6 figures; matches published version

The locations of Ly-$\alpha$ emitting galaxies (LAEs) at the end of the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR) are expected to correlate with regions of ionised hydrogen, traced by the redshifted 21~cm hyperfine line. Mapping the neutral hydrogen around regions with detected and localised LAEs offers an avenue to constrain the brightness temperature of the Universe within the EoR by providing an expectation for the spatial distribution of the gas, thereby providing prior information unavailable to power spectrum measurements. We use a test set of 12 hours of observations from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in extended array configuration, to constrain the neutral hydrogen signature of 58 LAEs, detected with the Subaru Hypersuprime Cam in the \textit{Silverrush} survey, centred on $z$=6.58. We assume that detectable emitters reside in the centre of ionised HII bubbles during the end of reionization, and predict the redshifted neutral hydrogen signal corresponding to the remaining neutral regions using a set of different ionised bubble radii. A prewhitening matched filter detector is introduced to assess detectability. We demonstrate the ability to detect, or place limits upon, the amplitude of brightness temperature fluctuations, and the characteristic HII bubble size. With our limited data, we constrain the brightness temperature of neutral hydrogen to $\Delta{\rm T}_B, Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Dark Matter (DM) halos with masses below $\sim10^{8}$ $M_{\odot}$, which would help to discriminate between DM models, may be detected through their gravitational effect on distant sources. The same applies to primordial black holes, considered as an alternative scenario to DM particle models. However, there is still no evidence for the existence of such objects. With the aim of finding compact objects in the mass range $\sim$ 10$^{6}$ -- 10$^{9}$$M_{\odot}$, we search for strong gravitational lenses on milli (mas)-arcseconds scales (< 150 mas). For our search, we used the Astrogeo VLBI FITS image database -- the largest publicly available database, containing multi-frequency VLBI data of 13828 individual sources. We used the citizen science approach to visually inspect all sources in all available frequencies in search for images with multiple compact components on mas-scales. At the final stage, sources were excluded based on the surface brightness preservation criterion. We obtained a sample of 40 sources that passed all steps and therefore are judged to be milli-arcsecond lens candidates. These sources are currently followed-up with on-going European VLBI Network (EVN) observations at 5 and 22 GHz. Based on spectral index measurements, we suggest that two of our candidates have a higher probability to be associated with gravitational lenses., 6 pages, 1 figure; accepted for publication