Power Spectrum Of Anisotropies Research Articles

The 3D Lyman-α forest power spectrum from eBOSS DR16

Abstract We measure the three-dimensional power spectrum (P3D) of the transmitted flux in the Lyman-α (Ly-α) forest using the complete extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey data release 16 (eBOSS DR16). This sample consists of ∼ 205,000 quasar spectra in the redshift range 2 ≤ z ≤ 4 at an effective redshift z = 2.334. We propose a pair-count spectral estimator in configuration space, weighting each pair by exp (ik · r), for wave vector k and pixel pair separation r, effectively measuring the anisotropic power spectrum without the need for fast Fourier transforms. This accounts for the window matrix in a tractable way, avoiding artifacts found in Fourier-transform based power spectrum estimators due to the sparse sampling transverse to the line-of-sight of Ly-α skewers. We extensively test our pipeline on two sets of mocks: (i) idealized Gaussian random fields with a sparse sampling of Ly-α skewers, and (ii) log-normal LyaCoLoRe mocks including realistic noise levels, the eBOSS survey geometry and contaminants. On eBOSS DR16 data, the Kaiser formula with a non-linear correction term obtained from hydrodynamic simulations yields a good fit to the power spectrum data in the range (0.02 ≤ k ≤ 0.35) h Mpc−1 at the 1 − 2σ level with a covariance matrix derived from LyaCoLoRe mocks. We demonstrate a promising new approach for full-shape cosmological analyses of Ly-α forest data from cosmological surveys such as eBOSS, the currently observing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and future surveys such as the Prime Focus Spectrograph, WEAVE-QSO and 4MOST.

Performance analysis of Sinh and Cosh Gaussian vortex beam in vertical underwater optical communication

The performance analysis of Sinh Gaussian vortex beam (ShGvB) and Cosh Gaussian vortex beam (ChGvB) in oceanic turbulence is established by employing an anisotropic spatial power spectrum that considers the influence of the ocean depth to mimic the actual oceanic conditions. Since the salinity and temperature variations along depth are not linear, the actual data of temperature and salinity measured from the tropical region of the ocean is used for the current study. The propagation properties of the ShGvB are studied by deriving the cross-spectral density of the beam, and the average intensity of the beam is plotted over depth and studied in both isotropic and anisotropic oceanic turbulence systems. The analysis of the beam spot radius shows that the beam degrades faster in anisotropic media than in isotropic media. Quantitative estimation of the detection probability, channel capacity and bit error rate (BER) have been made to evaluate the beam's performance for vertical underwater optical communication. The BER may be improved by enlarging the detector aperture radius and signal-to-noise ratio. The ShGvB performs effectively in vertical underwater optical communication compared to the ChGvB.

Fast Generation of Mock Galaxy Catalogs with COLA

We investigate the feasibility of using the comoving Lagrangian acceleration (COLA) technique to efficiently generate galaxy mock catalogs that can accurately reproduce the statistical properties of observed galaxies. Our proposed scheme combines the subhalo abundance-matching (SHAM) procedure with COLA simulations, using only three free parameters: the scatter magnitude (σ scat) in SHAM, the initial redshift (z init) of the COLA simulation, and the time stride (da) used by COLA. In this proof-of-concept study, we focus on a subset of BOSS CMASS NGC galaxies within the redshift range z ∈ [0.45, 0.55]. We perform GADGET simulation and low-resolution COLA simulations with various combinations of (z init, da), each using 10243 particles in an 800 h −1 Mpc box. By minimizing the difference between COLA mock and CMASS NGC galaxies for the monopole of the two-point correlation function (2PCF), we obtain the optimal σ scat. We have found that by setting z init = 29 and da = 1/30, we achieve a good agreement between COLA mock and CMASS NGC galaxies within the range of 4–20 h −1 Mpc, with a computational cost lower by 2 orders of magnitude than that of the GADGET N-body code. Moreover, a detailed verification is performed by comparing various statistical properties, such as anisotropic 2PCF, three-point clustering, and power spectrum multipoles, which shows a similar performance of the GADGET mock and COLA mock catalogs with the CMASS NGC galaxies. Furthermore, we assess the robustness of the COLA mock catalogs for different cosmological models, demonstrating consistent results in the resulting 2PCFs. Our findings suggest that COLA simulations are a promising tool for efficiently generating mock catalogs for emulators and machine-learning analyses to explore the large-scale structure of the Universe.

GW_CLASS: Cosmological Gravitational Wave Background in the cosmic linear anisotropy solving system

The anisotropies of the Cosmological Gravitational Wave Background (CGWB) retain information about the primordial mechanisms that source the gravitational waves and about the geometry and the particle content of the universe at early times. In this work, we discuss in detail the computation of the angular power spectra of CGWB anisotropies and of their cross correlation with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies, assuming different processes for the generation of these primordial signals. We present an efficient implementation of our results in a modified version of CLASS which will be publicly available. By combining our new code GW_CLASS with MontePython, we forecast the combined sensitivity of future gravitational wave interferometers and CMB experiments to the cosmological parameters that characterize the cosmological gravitational wave background.

Diffuse sources, clustering, and the excess anisotropy of the radio synchrotron background

ABSTRACT We present the largest low frequency (120 MHz) arcminute resolution image of the radio synchrotron background (RSB) to date, and its corresponding angular power spectrum of anisotropies (APS) with angular scales ranging from 3° to 0.3 arcmin. We show that the RSB around the north celestial pole has a significant excess anisotropy power at all scales over a model of unclustered point sources based on source counts of known source classes. This anisotropy excess, which does not seem attributable to the diffuse Galactic emission, could be linked to the surface brightness excess of the RSB. To better understand the information contained within the measured APS, we model the RSB varying the brightness distribution, size, and angular clustering of potential sources. We show that the observed APS could be produced by a population of faint clustered point sources only if the clustering is extreme and the size of the Gaussian clusters is ≲1 arcmin. We also show that the observed APS could be produced by a population of faint diffuse sources with sizes ≲1 arcmin, and this is supported by features present in our image. Both of these cases would also cause an associated surface brightness excess. These classes of sources are in a parameter space not well probed by even the deepest radio surveys to date.

Understanding large scale CMB anomalies with the generalized nonminimal derivative coupling during inflation

We study the observational implications of a class of inflationary models wherein the inflaton is coupled to the Einstein tensor through a generalized nonminimal derivative coupling (GNMDC). In particular, we explore whether these models can generate suitable features in the primordial spectrum of curvature perturbations as a possible explanation for the large-scale anomalies associated with the angular power spectrum of CMB temperature anisotropies. We derive model-independent constraints on the GNMDC function for such a scenario, considering both the scalar and tensor perturbations. We modify cosmomc to accommodate our GNMDC framework and investigate different classes of inflationary models using a fully consistent numerical approach. We find that the hilltop-quartic model with a specific choice of the GNMDC function provides a considerable improvement over the best-fit reference $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}\mathrm{CDM}$ model with a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum. While the large-scale structure observations should be able to provide independent constraints, future CMB experiments, such as CMB-S4 and CMB-Bharat, are expected to constrain further the parameter space of such beyond canonical single-field inflationary models.

CMB temperature trispectrum from accreting primordial black holes

It is known that primordial black holes (PBHs) can leave an imprint on cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy power spectra, due to their accretion-powered injection of energy into the recombining plasma. Here we study a qualitatively new CMB observable sourced by accreting PBHs: the temperature trispectrum or connected four-point function. This non-Gaussian signature is due to the strong spatial modulation of the PBH accretion luminosity, thus ionization perturbations, by large-scale supersonic relative velocities between PBHs and the accreted baryons. We first derive a factorizable quadratic transfer function for free-electron fraction inhomogeneities induced by accreting PBHs. We then compute the perturbation to the CMB temperature anisotropy due to a general modification of recombination and apply our results to accreting PBHs. We calculate a new contribution to the temperature power spectrum due to the spatial fluctuations of the ionization perturbation induced by accreting PBHs, going beyond past studies that only accounted for its homogeneous part. While these contributions are formally comparable, we find the new part to be subdominant due to the poor correlation of the perturbed temperature field with the standard CMB anisotropy. For the first time, we compute the temperature trispectrum due to accreting PBHs. This trispectrum is weakly correlated with the local-type primordial non-Gaussianity trispectrum; hence constraints on the latter do not lead to competitive bounds on accreting PBHs. We also forecast Planck's sensitivity to the temperature trispectrum sourced by accreting PBHs. Excitingly, we find it to be more sensitive to PBHs under $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{3}{M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$ than current temperature-only power-spectrum constraints. This result motivates our future work extending this study to temperature and polarization trispectra induced by inhomogeneously accreting PBHs.

Cosmological constraints from the power spectrum of eBOSS quasars

We present the effective-field theory (EFT)-based cosmological full-shape analysis of the anisotropic power spectrum of eBOSS quasars at the effective redshift $z_{\rm eff}=1.48$. We perform extensive tests of our pipeline on simulations, paying a particular attention to the modeling of observational systematics, such as redshift smearing, fiber collisions, and the radial integral constraint. Assuming the minimal $\Lambda$CDM model, and fixing the primordial power spectrum tilt and the physical baryon density, we find the Hubble constant $H_0=(66.7\pm 3.2)~$km~s$^{-1}$Mpc$^{-1}$, the matter density fraction $\Omega_m=0.32\pm 0.03$, and the late-time mass fluctuation amplitude $\sigma_8=0.95\pm 0.08$. These measurements are fully consistent with the Planck cosmic microwave background results. Our eBOSS quasar $S_8$ posterior, $0.98\pm0.11$, does not exhibit the so-called $S_8$ tension. Our work paves the way for systematic full-shape analyses of quasar samples from future surveys like DESI.

Searching for Anisotropic Stochastic Gravitational-wave Backgrounds with Constellations of Space-based Interferometers

Many recent works have shown that the angular resolution of ground-based detectors is too poor to characterize the anisotropies of the stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB). For this reason, we asked ourselves if a constellation of space-based instruments could be more suitable. We consider the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a constellation of multiple LISA-like clusters, and the Deci-hertz Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (DECIGO). Specifically, we test whether these detector constellations can probe the anisotropies of the SGWB. For this scope, we considered the SGWB produced by two astrophysical sources: merging compact binaries, and a recently proposed scenario for massive black hole seed formation through multiple mergers of stellar remnants. We find that measuring the angular power spectrum of the SGWB anisotropies is almost unattainable. However, it turns out that it could be possible to probe the SGWB anisotropies through cross-correlation with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations. In particular, we find that a constellation of two LISA-like detectors and CMB-S4 can marginally constrain the cross-correlation between the CMB lensing convergence and the SGWB produced by the black hole seed formation process. Moreover, we find that DECIGO can probe the cross-correlation between the CMB lensing and the SGWB from merging compact binaries.

Primordial clocks within stochastic gravitational wave anisotropies

A first order phase transition in the early universe can give an observable stochastic gravitational background (SGWB), which will necessarily have primordial anisotropies across the sky. In multi-field inflationary scenarios, these anisotropies may have a significant isocurvature component very different from adiabatic fluctuations, providing an alternate discovery channel for high energy physics at inflationary scales. Here, we consider classically oscillating heavy fields during inflation that can imprint distinctive scale-invariance-breaking features in the power spectrum of primordial anisotropies. While such features are highly constrained in the cosmic microwave background, we show that their amplitude can be observably large in isocurvature SGWB, despite both probing a similar period of inflation. Measuring SGWB multipoles at the required level, ℓ ∼ \U0001d4aa(10-100), will be technologically challenging. However, we expect that early detection of a strong isotropic SGWB, and the guarantee of anisotropies, would spur development of next generation detectors with sufficient sensitivity, angular resolution, and foreground discrimination.

Comparing the scalar-field dark energy models with recent observations

We focus on a class of scalar-field dark energy models (i.e., ϕCDM models) which behave like cosmological trackers at early times, and investigate the general properties of them. Particularly, we choose three ϕCDM models with typical potentials, i.e., V(ϕ)∝ϕ−α (inverse power-law (IPL) model), V(ϕ)∝cothαϕ (L-model) and V(ϕ)∝cosh(αϕ) (Oscillatory tracker model), where the latter two models are based on the α-attractors originated from the study of inflation. These models, which reduce to the ΛCDM model with α→0, are studied and compared with the recent observations, including the Pantheon sample of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) measurements extracted from 6dFGS, BOSS and eBOSS, as well as the temperature and polarization anisotropy power spectra data of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) from Planck 2018 results. The observational constraints from the combining sample (SNe Ia + BAO + CMB) indicate that none of the three ϕCDM models exclude the ΛCDM model at 68.3% confidence level. We find that the CMB anisotropy data have obvious advantages in constraining the dark energy models compared with other cosmological probes, which is particularly evident in the L-model. Furthermore, we apply the Bayesian evidence to compare the ϕCDM models and the ΛCDM model with the analysis of the combining sample. The concordance ΛCDM model is still the most supported one. In addition, among the three ϕCDM models, the IPL model is the most competitive one, while the L-model/Oscillatory tacker model is moderately/strongly disfavored.

Analysis of Gaussian beam broadening and scintillation index in anisotropic plasma turbulence

In this paper, new expressions for the long-term beam spreading and scintillation index of Gaussian beams in anisotropic plasma turbulent media are derived on the basis of the anisotropic hypersonic plasma turbulent refractive index undulation power spectrum combined with the Rytov approximation theory. Considering the asymmetry of turbulent eddies in the orthogonal xy-plane throughout the path, two anisotropy factors are introduced to parameterize the anisotropy properties of turbulent cells in the horizontal and vertical directions. The spreading and scintillation index of Gaussian beams in plasma turbulence are calculated, and the propagation characteristics of Gaussian beams in anisotropic plasma turbulence are analyzed. Results show that enhancing the anisotropic properties of hypersonic plasma turbulence can significantly improve the propagation performance of Gaussian beams in hypersonic plasma turbulence. The effect of hypersonic plasma turbulence on Gaussian beam increases with the increase of the refractive index undulation variance and the decrease of the turbulent outer scale and anisotropy parameters. The results provide a theoretical basis for the further study of the propagation properties of electromagnetic waves in hypersonic plasma turbulence.

Anisotropy of phase transition gravitational wave and its implication for primordial seeds of the Universe

We quantitatively study how the primordial density fluctuations are imprinted on the anisotropy of the phase transition gravitational wave (PTGW). Generated long before recombination and free from Silk damping, the anisotropic PTGW might reveal the density perturbation seeded from inflation or alternatives. We find new behaviors of the PTGW anisotropy power spectrum. The PTGW anisotropy is stronger than the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background temperature at all scales, and the high-$\ell$ multiples are enhanced about 1 order due to the early integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. Furthermore, differences in primordial power spectra at small scales manifest themselves more significantly on the angular power spectrum of PTGW anisotropy compared to that of the cosmic microwave background. These properties might provide a novel clue to understanding the primordial density perturbation of our early Universe and thereby complete our understanding of inflation theory. Taking nanohertz PTGW from dark matter models as a typical example, we obtain amplitudes of PTGW anisotropy which are about 4 or 3 orders weaker than the isotropic PTGW energy spectra.

A Model of Spectral Line Broadening in Signal Forecasts for Line-intensity Mapping Experiments

Abstract Line-intensity mapping observations will find fluctuations of integrated line emission are attenuated by varying degrees at small scales due to the width of the line emission profiles. This attenuation may significantly impact estimates of astrophysical or cosmological quantities derived from measurements. We consider a theoretical treatment of the effect of line broadening on both the clustering and shot-noise components of the power spectrum of a generic line-intensity power spectrum using a halo model. We then consider possible simplifications to allow easier application in analysis, particularly in the context of inferences that require numerous, repeated, fast computations of model line-intensity signals across a large parameter space. For the CO Mapping Array Project and the CO(1–0) line-intensity field at z ∼ 3 serving as our primary case study, we expect a ∼10% attenuation of the spherically averaged power spectrum on average at relevant scales of k ≈ 0.2–0.3 Mpc−1 compared to ∼25% for the interferometric Millimetre-wave Intensity Mapping Experiment targeting shot noise from CO lines at z ∼ 1–5 at scales of k ≳ 1 Mpc−1. We also consider the nature and amplitude of errors introduced by simplified treatments of line broadening and find that while an approximation using a single effective velocity scale is sufficient for spherically averaged power spectra, a more careful treatment is necessary when considering other statistics such as higher multipoles of the anisotropic power spectrum or the voxel intensity distribution.

Intensity and anisotropies of the stochastic gravitational wave background from merging compact binaries in galaxies

We investigate the isotropic and anisotropic components of the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background (SGWB) originated from unresolved merging compact binaries in galaxies. We base our analysis on an empirical approach to galactic astrophysics that allows to follow the evolution of individual systems. We then characterize the energy density of the SGWB as a tracer of the total matter density, in order to compute the angular power spectrum of anisotropies with the Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System (CLASS) public code in full generality. We obtain predictions for the isotropic energy density and for the angular power spectrum of the SGWB anisotropies, and study the prospect for their observations with advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave and Virgo Observatories and with the Einstein Telescope. We identify the contributions coming from different type of sources (binary black holes, binary neutron stars and black hole-neutron star) and from different redshifts. We examine in detail the spectral shape of the energy density for all types of sources, comparing the results for the two detectors. We find that the power spectrum of the SGWB anisotropies behaves like a power law on large angular scales and drops at small scales: we explain this behavior in terms of the redshift distribution of sources that contribute most to the signal, and of the sensitivities of the two detectors. Finally, we simulate a high resolution full sky map of the SGWB starting from the power spectra obtained with CLASS and including Poisson statistics and clustering properties.

CMB anisotropies and linear matter power spectrum in models with non-thermal neutrinos and primordial magnetic fields

Angular power spectra of temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as well as the linear matter power spectra are calculated for models with three light neutrinos with non-thermal phase-space distributions in the presence of a primordial stochastic magnetic field. The non-thermal phase-space distribution function is assumed to be the sum of a Fermi-Dirac and a gaussian distribution. It is found that the known effective description of the non-thermal model in terms of a twin thermal model with extra relativistic degrees of freedom can also be extended to models including a stochastic magnetic field. Numerical solutions are obtained for a range of magnetic field parameters.

Friction analysis of anisotropic surface for viscoelastic material

PurposeThe anisotropic surfaces of viscoelastic materials play a role in sliding friction; the purpose of this paper is to study the effect of the anisotropic surfaces on contact area and the friction coefficient.Design/methodology/approachA complex elastic modulus and an anisotropic power spectrum are used to compute the coefficient of friction based on the extension Persson theory which considers the partial contact and the variation in the roughness slopes.FindingsThe ratios of the relative contact area that varies with velocity are obtained with different angles and eccentricities, and the effect of the elastic modulus needs to be considered. The coefficients of the friction parallel to the direction of motion decrease as the angle increases, or as the eccentricity decreases. The friction coefficients in the vertical direction change irregularly when the angles or eccentricities increase.Originality/valueAn extension of Persson’s work considering the partial contact and the effective mean square slope of the roughness is applied to study sliding friction, and the effect of the elastic modulus on contact area is considered.

Measurement of the anisotropy power spectrum of the radio synchrotron background

ABSTRACT We present the first targeted measurement of the power spectrum of anisotropies of the radio synchrotron background, at 140 MHz, where it is the overwhelmingly dominant photon background. This measurement is important for understanding the background level of radio sky brightness, which is dominated by steep-spectrum synchrotron radiation at frequencies below ν ∼ 0.5 GHz and has been measured to be significantly higher than that produced by known classes of extragalactic sources and most models of Galactic halo emission. We determine the anisotropy power spectrum on scales ranging from 2° to 0.2 arcmin with Low-Frequency Array observations of two 18-deg2 fields – one centred on the Northern hemisphere’s coldest patch of radio sky where the Galactic contribution is smallest and the other offset from that location by 15°. We find that the anisotropy power is higher than that attributable to the distribution of point sources above 100 $\mu$Jy in flux. This level of radio anisotropy power indicates that if it results from point sources, those sources are likely at low fluxes and incredibly numerous, and likely clustered in a specific manner.

Can small-scale baryon inhomogeneities resolve the Hubble tension? An investigation with ACT DR4

Small-scale inhomogeneities in the baryon density around recombination have been proposed as a solution to the tension between local and global determinations of the Hubble constant. These baryon clumping models make distinct predictions for the cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectra on small angular scales. We use recent data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to test these predictions. No evidence for baryon clumping is found, assuming a range of parameterizations for time-independent baryon density probability distribution functions. The inferred Hubble constant remains in significant tension with the SH0ES measurement.

Perturbed recombination from inhomogeneous photon injection and application to accreting primordial black holes

Exotic electromagnetic energy injection in the early Universe may alter cosmological recombination, and ultimately cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Moreover, if energy injection is inhomogeneous, it may induce a spatially-varying ionization fraction, and non-Gaussianity in the CMB. The observability of these signals, however, is contingent upon how far the injected particles propagate and deposit their energy into the primordial plasma, relative to the characteristic scale of energy injection fluctuations. In this study we inspect the spatial properties of energy deposition and perturbed recombination resulting from an inhomogeneous energy injection of sub-10 MeV photons, relevant to accreting primordial black holes (PBHs). We develop a novel Monte-Carlo radiation transport code accounting for all relevant photon interactions in this energy range, and including secondary electron energy deposition efficiency through a new analytic approximation. For a specified injected photon spectrum, the code outputs an injection-to-deposition Green's function depending on time and distance from the injection point. Combining this output with a linearized solution of the perturbed recombination problem, we derive time- and scale-dependent deposition-to-ionization Green's functions. We apply this general framework to accreting PBHs, whose luminosity is strongly spatially modulated by supersonic relative velocities between cold dark matter and baryons. We find that the resulting spatial fluctuations of the free-electron fraction are of the same magnitude as its mean deviation from standard recombination, from which current CMB power spectra constraints are derived. This work suggests that the sensitivity to accreting PBHs might be substantially improved by propagating these inhomogeneities to CMB anisotropy power spectra and non-Gaussian statistics, which we study in subsequent papers.