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We derive constraints on cosmological parameters and tests of dark energy models from the combination of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements with cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Type Ia supernova (SN) data. We take advantage of high-precision BAO measurements from galaxy clustering and the Ly-alpha forest (LyaF) in the BOSS survey of SDSS-III. BAO data alone yield a high confidence detection of dark energy, and in combination with the CMB angular acoustic scale they further imply a nearly flat universe. Combining BAO and SN data into an "inverse distance ladder" yields a 1.7% measurement of $H_0=67.3 \pm1.1$ km/s/Mpc. This measurement assumes standard pre-recombination physics but is insensitive to assumptions about dark energy or space curvature, so agreement with CMB-based estimates that assume a flat LCDM cosmology is an important corroboration of this minimal cosmological model. For open LCDM, our BAO+SN+CMB combination yields $\Omega_m=0.301 \pm 0.008$ and curvature $\Omega_k=-0.003 \pm 0.003$. When we allow more general forms of evolving dark energy, the BAO+SN+CMB parameter constraints remain consistent with flat LCDM. While the overall $\chi^2$ of model fits is satisfactory, the LyaF BAO measurements are in moderate (2-2.5 sigma) tension with model predictions. Models with early dark energy that tracks the dominant energy component at high redshifts remain consistent with our constraints. Expansion history alone yields an upper limit of 0.56 eV on the summed mass of neutrino species, improving to 0.26 eV if we include Planck CMB lensing. Standard dark energy models constrained by our data predict a level of matter clustering that is high compared to most, but not all, observational estimates. (Abridged), Comment: 38 pages, 20 figures, BOSS collaboration paper; v2: fixed inconsistent definitions of DH, added references; v3: version accepted by PRD, corrected error resulting in significantly weaker constraints on decaying dark matter model

The 4MOST consortium is currently halfway through a Conceptual Design study for ESO with the aim to develop a wide-field (>3 square degree, goal >5 square degree), high-multiplex (>1500 fibres, goal 3000 fibres) spectroscopic survey facility for an ESO 4m-class telescope (VISTA). 4MOST will run permanently on the telescope to perform a 5 year public survey yielding more than 20 million spectra at resolution R~5000 ({\lambda}=390-1000 nm) and more than 2 million spectra at R~20,000 (395-456.5 nm & 587-673 nm). The 4MOST design is especially intended to complement three key all-sky, space-based observatories of prime European interest: Gaia, eROSITA and Euclid. Initial design and performance estimates for the wide-field corrector concepts are presented. We consider two fibre positioner concepts, a well-known Phi-Theta system and a new R-Theta concept with a large patrol area. The spectrographs are fixed configuration two-arm spectrographs, with dedicated spectrographs for the high- and low-resolution. A full facility simulator is being developed to guide trade-off decisions regarding the optimal field-of-view, number of fibres needed, and the relative fraction of high-to-low resolution fibres. Mock catalogues with template spectra from seven Design Reference Surveys are simulated to verify the science requirements of 4MOST. The 4MOST consortium aims to deliver the full 4MOST facility by the end of 2018 and start delivering high-level data products for both consortium and ESO community targets a year later with yearly increments., Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation + Telescopes conference, Amsterdam, 2012. 15 pages, 16 figures

We use a model developed by Xu et al. (2010) to compute the 21 cm line absorption signatures imprinted by star-forming dwarf galaxies (DGs) and starless minihalos (MHs). The method, based on a statistical comparison of the equivalent width (W_\nu) distribution and flux correlation function, allows us to derive a simple selection criteria for candidate DGs at very high (z >= 8) redshift. We find that ~ 18% of the total number of DGs along a line of sight to a target radio source (GRB or quasar) can be identified by the condition W_\nu < 0; these objects correspond to the high-mass tail of the DG distribution at high redshift, and are embedded in large HII regions. The criterion W_\nu > 0.37 kHz instead selects ~ 11% of MHs. Selected candidate DGs could later be re-observed in the near-IR by the JWST with high efficiency, thus providing a direct probe of the most likely reionization sources., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Science in China Series G

We present a general expression for a lognormal filter given an arbitrary nonlinear galaxy bias. We derive this filter as the maximum a posteriori solution assuming a lognormal prior distribution for the matter field with a given mean field and modeling the observed galaxy distribution by a Poissonian process. We have performed a three-dimensional implementation of this filter with a very efficient Newton-Krylov inversion scheme. Furthermore, we have tested it with a dark matter N-body simulation assuming a unit galaxy bias relation and compared the results with previous density field estimators like the inverse weighting scheme and Wiener filtering. Our results show good agreement with the underlying dark matter field for overdensities even above delta~1000 which exceeds by one order of magnitude the regime in which the lognormal is expected to be valid. The reason is that for our filter the lognormal assumption enters as a prior distribution function, but the maximum a posteriori solution is also conditioned on the data. We find that the lognormal filter is superior to the previous filtering schemes in terms of higher correlation coefficients and smaller Euclidean distances to the underlying matter field. We also show how it is able to recover the positive tail of the matter density field distribution for a unit bias relation down to scales of about >~2 Mpc/h., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 1 table

We present the largest Wiener reconstruction of the cosmic density field made to date. The reconstruction is based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 6 covering the northern Galactic cap. We use a novel supersampling algorithm to suppress aliasing effects and a Krylov-space inversion method to enable high performance with high resolution. These techniques are implemented in the ARGO computer code. We reconstruct the field over a 500 Mpc cube with Mpc grid-resolution while accounting both for the angular and radial selection functions of the SDSS, and the shot noise giving an effective resolution of the order of ~10 Mpc. In addition, we correct for the redshift distortions in the linear and nonlinear regimes in an approximate way. We show that the commonly used method of inverse weighting the galaxies by the corresponding selection function heads to excess noise in regions where the density of the observed galaxies is small. It is more accurate and conservative to adopt a Bayesian framework in which we model the galaxy selection/detection process to be Poisson-binomial. This results in heavier smoothing in regions of reduced sampling density. Our results show a complex cosmic web structure with huge void regions indicating that the recovered matter distribution is highly non-Gaussian. Filamentary structures are clearly visible on scales up to ~20 Mpc. We also calculate the statistical distribution of density after smoothing the reconstruction with Gaussian kernels of different radii r_S and find good agreement with a log-normal distribution for ~10 Mpc < r_S < ~30 Mpc., Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables

We analyse the local variance effect in the standard method for detecting the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect (ISW) via cross-correlating the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with the large-scale structure (LSS). Local variance is defined as the systematic noise in the ISW detection that originates in the realisation of the matter distribution in the observed Universe. We show that the local variance contributes about 11 per cent to the total variance in the standard method, if a perfect and complete LSS survey up to z ~ 2 is assumed. Due to local variance, the estimated detection significance and cosmological parameter constraints in the standard method are biased. In this work, we present an optimal method of how to reduce the local variance effect in the ISW detection by working conditional on the LSS-data. The variance of the optimal method, and hence the signal-to-noise ratio, depends on the actual realisation of the matter distribution in the observed Universe. We show that for an ideal galaxy survey, the average signal-to-noise ratio is enhanced by about 7 per cent in the optimal method, as compared to the standard method. Furthermore, in the optimal method there is no need to estimate the covariance matrix by Monte Carlo simulations as in the standard method, which saves time and increases the accuracy. Finally, we derive the correct joint likelihood function for cosmological parameters given CMB- and LSS-data within the linear LSS formation regime, which includes a small coupling of the two datasets due to the ISW effect., Comment: Proof added to appendix. Minor changes to text and formulae. Results and figures unchanged. Matches published MNRAS version

We develop information field theory (IFT) as a means of Bayesian inference on spatially distributed signals, the information fields. A didactical approach is attempted. Starting from general considerations on the nature of measurements, signals, noise, and their relation to a physical reality, we derive the information Hamiltonian, the source field, propagator, and interaction terms. Free IFT reproduces the well known Wiener-filter theory. Interacting IFT can be diagrammatically expanded, for which we provide the Feynman rules in position-, Fourier-, and spherical harmonics space, and the Boltzmann-Shannon information measure. The theory should be applicable in many fields. However, here, two cosmological signal recovery problems are discussed in their IFT-formulation. 1) Reconstruction of the cosmic large-scale structure matter distribution from discrete galaxy counts in incomplete galaxy surveys within a simple model of galaxy formation. We show that a Gaussian signal, which should resemble the initial density perturbations of the Universe, observed with a strongly non-linear, incomplete and Poissonian-noise affected response, as the processes of structure and galaxy formation and observations provide, can be reconstructed thanks to the virtue of a response-renormalization flow equation. 2) We design a filter to detect local non-linearities in the cosmic microwave background, which are predicted from some Early-Universe inflationary scenarios, and expected due to measurement imperfections. This filter is the optimal Bayes' estimator up to linear order in the non-linearity parameter and can be used even to construct sky maps of non-linearities in the data., Comment: 38 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX; version accepted by PRD