Redshift-space Distortions Research Articles

SOPTICS: A modified density-based algorithm for identifying galaxy groups/clusters and brightest cluster galaxies

Abstract A direct approach to studying the galaxy-halo connection is to analyze groups and clusters of galaxies that trace the underlying dark matter halos, emphasizing the importance of identifying galaxy clusters and their associated brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). In this work, we test and propose a robust density-based clustering algorithm that outperforms the traditional Friends-of-Friends (FoF) algorithm in the currently available galaxy group/cluster catalogs. Our new approach is a modified version of the Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering Structure (OPTICS) algorithm, which accounts for line-of-sight positional uncertainties due to redshift space distortions by incorporating a scaling factor, and is thereby referred to as sOPTICS. When tested on both a galaxy group catalog based on semi-analytic galaxy formation simulations and observational data, our algorithm demonstrated robustness to outliers and relative insensitivity to hyperparameter choices. In total, we compared the results of eight clustering algorithms. The proposed density-based clustering method, sOPTICS, outperforms FoF in accurately identifying giant galaxy clusters and their associated BCGs in various environments with higher purity and recovery rate, also successfully recovering 115 BCGs out of 118 reliable BCGs from a large galaxy sample. Furthermore, when applied to an independent observational catalog without extensive re-tuning, sOPTICS maintains high recovery efficiency, confirming its flexibility and effectiveness for large-scale astronomical surveys.

Cosmological perturbations in the energy-momentum squared gravity theory: constraints from gravitational wave standard sirens and redshift space distortions

Cosmological perturbations in the energy-momentum squared gravity theory: constraints from gravitational wave standard sirens and redshift space distortions

The streaming model for the three-point correlation function and its connection to standard perturbation theory

Redshift-space distortions (RSDs) present a significant challenge in building models for the three-point correlation function (3PCF). We compare two possible lines of attack: the streaming model and standard perturbation theory (SPT). The two approaches differ in their treatment of the non-linear mapping from real to redshift space: SPT expands this mapping perturbatively, while the streaming model retains its non-linear form but relies on simplifying assumptions about the probability density function (PDF) of line-of-sight velocity differences between pairs or triplets of tracers. To assess the quality of the predictions and the validity of the assumptions of these models, we measure the monopole of the matter 3PCF and the first two moments of the pair- and triplewise velocity PDF from a suite of N-body simulations. We also evaluate the large-scale limit of the streaming model and determine under which conditions it aligns to SPT. On scales larger than 10 h -1 Mpc, we find that the streaming model for the 3PCF monopole is dominated by the first two velocity moments, making the exact shape of the PDF irrelevant. This model can match the accuracy of a Stage-IV galaxy survey, if the velocity moments are measured directly from the simulations. However, replacing the measurements with perturbative expressions to leading order generates large errors already on scales of 60–70 h -1 Mpc. This is the primary drawback of the streaming model. On the other hand, the SPT model for the 3PCF cannot account for the significant velocity dispersion that is present at all scales, and consequently provides predictions with limited accuracy. We demonstrate that this issue can be approximately addressed by isolating the large-scale limit of the dispersion, which leads to typical Fingers-of-God damping functions. Overall, the SPT model with a damping function provides the best compromise in terms of accuracy and computing time.

A model for the redshift-space galaxy 4-point correlation function

The field of cosmology is entering an epoch of unparalleled wealth of observational data thanks to galaxy surveys such as DESI, Euclid, and Roman. Therefore, it is essential to have a firm theoretical basis that allows the effective analysis of the data. With this purpose, we compute the nonlinear, gravitationally-induced connected galaxy 4-point correlation function (4PCF) at the tree level in Standard Perturbation Theory (SPT), including redshift-space distortions (RSD). We begin from the trispectrum and take its inverse Fourier transform into configuration space, exploiting the isotropic basis functions of [1]. We ultimately reduce the configuration-space expression to low-dimensional radial integrals of the power spectrum. This model will enable the use of the BAO feature in the connected 4PCF to sharpen our constraints on the expansion history of the Universe. It will also offer an additional avenue for determining the galaxy bias parameters, and thus tighten our cosmological constraints by breaking degeneracies. Survey geometry can be corrected in the 4PCF, and many systematics are localized, which is an advantage over data analysis with the trispectrum.

Unveiling galaxy pair alignment in cosmic filaments: A 3D exploration using EAGLE simulation

We investigate how galaxy pairs are oriented in three dimensions within cosmic filaments using data from the EAGLE simulation. We identify filament spines using DisPerSE and isolate galaxies residing in filamentary environments. Employing a FoF algorithm, we delineate individual filaments and determine their axes by diagonalizing the moment of inertia tensor. The orientations of galaxy pairs relative to the axis of their host filament are analyzed. Our study covers diverse subsets of filaments identified through varying linking lengths, examining how galaxy pairs align with the filament axis across different spatial parameters such as pair separation and distance from the filament spine. We observe a nearly uniform probability distribution for the cosine of the orientation angle, which is nearly identical in each case. We also investigate the effects of redshift space distortions and confirm that the probability distributions remain uniform in both real space and redshift space. To validate our approach, we conduct Monte Carlo simulations using various theoretical probability distributions. Our analysis does not reveal any evidence of preferential alignment of galaxy pairs within cosmic filaments in hydrodynamical simulations.

Constraining dark energy with the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect

We use the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect, by now detectable at ∼5σ within the context of Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmologies, to place strong constraints on dynamical dark energy theories. Working within an effective field theory (EFT) framework for dark energy we find that including ISW constraints from galaxy–cosmic microwave background (CMB) cross-correlations significantly strengthens existing large-scale structure constraints, yielding bounds consistent with ΛCDM and approximately reducing the viable parameter space by ∼70%. This is a direct consequence of O(1) changes induced in these cross-correlations by otherwise viable dark energy models, which we discuss in detail. We compute constraints by adapting the ΛCDM ISW likelihood from Stölzner [] for dynamical dark energy models using galaxy data from 2 MASS, wide-field infrared survey explorer (WISE) × SuperCOSMOS, Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12, the catalog of photometric quasars and NRAO Very Large Array Sky Survey, CMB data from Planck 18, and baryon acoustic oscillation and redshift space distortion large-scale structure measurements from BOSS and 6dF. We show constraints both in terms of EFT-inspired αi and phenomenological μ/Σ parametrizations. Furthermore we discuss the approximations involved and related aspects of bias modeling in detail and highlight what these constraints imply for the underlying dark energy theories. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Reconciling S8: insights from interacting dark sectors

ABSTRACT We do a careful investigation of the prospects of dark energy (DE) interacting with cold dark matter in alleviating the $S_8$ clustering tension. To this end, we consider various well-known parametrizations of the DE equation of state (EoS) and consider perturbations in both the dark sectors, along with an interaction term. Moreover, we perform a separate study for the phantom and non-phantom regimes. Using cosmic microwave background (CMB), baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia supernovae data sets, constraints on the model parameters for each case have been obtained and a generic reduction in the $H_0 \!\!-\!\! \sigma _{8,0}$ correlation has been observed, both for constant and dynamical DE EoS. This reduction, coupled with a significant negative correlation between the interaction term and $\sigma _{8,0}$, contributes to easing the clustering tension by lowering $\sigma _{8,0}$ to somewhere in between the early CMB and late-time clustering measurements for the phantom regime, for almost all the models under consideration. Additionally, this is achieved without exacerbating the Hubble tension. In this regard, the interacting Chevallier–Polarski–Linder and Jassal–Bagla–Padmanabhan models perform the best in relaxing the $S_8$ tension to $<\!\! 1\sigma$. However, for the non-phantom regime the $\sigma _{8,0}$ tension tends to have worsened, which reassures the merits of phantom DE from latest data. We further investigate the role of redshift space distortion data sets and find an overall reduction in tension, with a $\sigma _{8,0}$ value relatively closer to the CMB value. We finally check whether further extensions of this scenario, such as the inclusion of the sound speed of DE and warm dark matter interacting with DE, can have some effects.

Efficient compression of redshift-space distortion data for late-time modified gravity models

Current cosmological observations allow for deviations from the standard growth of large-scale structures in the universe. These deviations could indicate modifications to General Relativity on cosmological scales or suggest the dynamical nature of dark energy. It is important to characterize these departures in a model-independent manner to understand their significance objectively and explore their fundamental causes more generically across a wider spectrum of theories and models. In this paper, we compress the information from redshift-space distortion data into 2–3 parameters μ i , which control the ratio between the effective gravitational coupling in Poisson's equation and Newton's constant in several redshift bins in the late universe. We test the efficiency of this compression using mock final-year data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and considering three different models within the class of effective field theories of dark energy. The constraints on the parameters of these models, obtained from both the direct fit to the data and the projection of the compressed parameters onto the parameters of the models, are fully consistent, demonstrating the method's good performance. Then, we apply it to current data and find hints of a suppressed matter growth in the universe at ∼ 2.7σ C.L., in full accordance with previous works in the literature. Finally, we perform a forecast with DESI data and show that the uncertainties on the parameters μ 1 at z < 1 and μ 2 at 1 < z < 3 are expected to decrease by approximately 40% and 20%, respectively, compared to those obtained with current data. Additionally, we project these forecasted constraints onto the parameters of the aforesaid models.

Constraints on power law and exponential models in f(Q) gravity

In this paper, we observationally test the f(Q) gravity model at both background and perturbation levels using Pantheon+, Hubble measurements, and Redshift Space Distortion Data. We obtain the best-fit parameters by solving numerically the modified Friedmann equations for two distinct cosmological models of f(Q) gravity namely the Power law and Exponential models. This involves performing a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis for these specific forms of f(Q). To evaluate the statistical significance of the f(Q) gravity models, we use the Bayesian and corrected Akaike Information Criteria. Our results indicate that the Exponential model in f(Q) gravity is statistically favored over both the Power-law model and the ΛCDM model.

Growth of cosmic perturbations in the modified [formula omitted] gravity

We explore the generalized f(R,T) modified theory of gravity, where the gravitational Lagrangian is a function of Ricci scalar R and the trace of the energy–momentum tensor T. We derive modified field equations to the linear order of perturbations in the context of f(R,T) model. We then investigate the growth of perturbations in the context of f(R,T) modified gravity. Primary numerical investigations based on matter power spectra diagrams indicate a structure growth suppression in f(R,T) gravity, which exhibits consistency with local measurements. Also, we notice that matter-geometry interaction in f(R,T) model would results in the specific feature named as “matter acoustic oscillations” appeared in matter power spectra diagrams. Moreover, we put constraints on the cosmological parameters of f(R,T) model, utilizing current observations, chiefly cosmic microwave background (CMB), weak lensing, supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, and redshift-space distortions data. Numerical results based on MCMC calculations imply that f(R,T) is a qualified theory of modified gravity in reconciling Planck CMB data with local probes of large scale structures, by reporting lower values for the structure growth parameter σ8 compared to the standard model of cosmology.

Extracting key information from spectroscopic galaxy surveys

ABSTRACT We develop a novel method to extract key cosmological information, which is primarily carried by the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and redshift space distortions (RSD), from spectroscopic galaxy surveys based on a joint principal component analysis (PCA) and massive optimized parameter estimation and data compression (MOPED) algorithm. We apply this method to galaxy samples from BOSS DR12, and find that a PCA manipulation is effective at extracting the informative modes in the 2D correlation function $\xi (s, \mu)$, giving a tighter constraint on BAO and RSD parameters compared to that using the lowest three multipole moments by the traditional method; i.e. the figure of merit of BAO and RSD parameters is improved by 17 per cent. We then perform a compression of the informative PC modes for BAO and RSD parameters using the MOPED scheme, reducing the dimension of the data vector to the number of interesting parameters, manifesting the joint PCA and MOPED as a powerful tool for clustering analysis with almost no loss of constraining power.

Catalog-level blinding on the bispectrum for DESI-like galaxy surveys

We evaluate the performance of the catalog-level blind analysis technique (blinding) presented in Brieden et al. (2020) in the context of a fixed template power spectrum and bispectrum analysis. This blinding scheme, which is tailored for galaxy redshift surveys similar to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), has two components: the so-called “AP blinding” (concerning the dilation parameters α ∥, α ⊥) and “RSD blinding” (redshift space distortions, affecting the growth rate parameter f). Through extensive testing, including checks for the RSD part in cubic boxes, the impact of AP blinding on mocks with realistic survey sky coverage, and the implementation of a full AP+RSD blinding pipeline, our analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the technique in preserving the integrity of cosmological parameter estimation when the analysis includes the bispectrum statistic. We emphasize the critical role of sophisticated — and difficult to accidentally unblind — blinding methods in precision cosmology.

Probing dark energy evolution post-DESI 2024

We study the evidence for dark energy (DE) evolution at low redshift, using baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAOs) from the DESI Early Data Release, Pantheon+ Type Ia supernovae (SNe-Ia), and redshift space distortions (RSDs) to constrain cosmological parameters. Furthermore, we make use of the angular acoustic scale to analyse the effect of introducing condensed CMB information on the cosmological parameters informing DE evolution. The analysis is divided into cases based on the variability of priors inferred from early-time physics. Using a quadratic parametrisation, X(z), for DE density, we find evidence for DE evolution in all cases, both with and without the angular acoustic scale. We reconstruct X(z) using best fit parameters and find that DE density starts to exhibit dynamical behaviour at z∼0.5, assuming negative values beyond z∼1.5. The data show no significant preference for X(z)CDM over a ΛCDM, with both models performing equally well according to our chosen metrics of reduced χ2 and the Durbin–Watson statistic.

Redshift-space distortions corner interacting dark energy

Despite the fact that the ΛCDM model has been highly successful over the last few decades in providing an accurate fit to a broad range of cosmological and astrophysical observations, different intriguing tensions and anomalies emerged at various statistical levels. Given the fact that the dark energy and the dark matter sectors remain unexplored, the answer to some of the tensions may rely on modifications of these two dark sectors. This manuscript explores the important role of the growth of structure in constraining non-standard cosmologies. In particular, we focus on the interacting dark energy (IDE) scenario, where dark matter and dark energy interact non-gravitationally. We aim to place constraints on the phenomenological parameters of these alternative models, by considering different datasets related to a number of cosmological measurements, to achieve a complementary analysis. A special emphasis is devoted to redshift-space distortion measurements (RSD), whose role in constraining beyond the standard paradigm models has not been recently highlighted. These observations indeed have a strong constraining power, rendering all parameters to their ΛCDM canonical values, and therefore leaving little room for the IDE models explored here.

Analysis of an iterative reconstruction method in comparison of the standard reconstruction method

ABSTRACT We present a detailed analysis of a new iterative density reconstruction algorithm. This algorithm uses a decreasing smoothing scale to better reconstruct the density field in Lagrangian space. We implement this algorithm to run on the quijote simulations, and extend it to (a) include a smoothing kernel that smoothly goes from anisotropic to isotropic, and (b) a variant that does not correct for redshift space distortions. We compare the performance of this algorithm with the standard reconstruction method. Our examinations of the methods include cross-correlation of the reconstructed density field with the linear density field, reconstructed two-point functions, and BAO parameter fitting. We also examine the impact of various parameters, such as smoothing scale, anisotropic smoothing, tracer type/bias, and the inclusion of second order perturbation theory. We find that the two reconstruction algorithms are comparable in most of the areas we examine. In particular, both algorithms give consistent fittings of BAO parameters. The fits are robust over a range of smoothing scales. We find the iterative algorithm is significantly better at removing redshift space distortions. The new algorithm will be a promising method to be employed in the ongoing and future large-scale structure surveys.

Apparent Parity Violation in the Observed Galaxy Trispectrum.

Recent measurements of the four-point correlation function in large-scale galaxy surveys have found apparent evidence of parity violation in the distribution of galaxies. This cannot happen via dynamical gravitational effects in general relativity. If such a violation arose from physics in the early Universe it could indicate important new physics beyond the standard model, and would be at odds with most models of inflation. It is therefore now timely to consider the galaxy trispectrum in more detail. While the intrinsic four-point correlation function, or equivalently the trispectrum, its Fourier counterpart, is parity invariant, the observed trispectrum must take redshift-space distortions into account. Although the standard Newtonian correction also respects parity invariance, we show that subleading relativistic corrections do not. We demonstrate that these can be significant at intermediate linear scales and are dominant over the Newtonian parity-invariant part around the equality scale and above. Therefore when observing the galaxy four-point correlation function, we should expect to detect parity violation on large scales.

Neural network reconstruction of density and velocity fields from the 2MASS Redshift Survey

Aims. Our aim is to reconstruct the 3D matter density and peculiar velocity fields in the local Universe up to a distance of 200 h−1 Mpc from the Two-Micron All-Sky Redshift Survey (2MRS) using a neural network (NN). Methods. We employed an NN with a U-net autoencoder architecture and a weighted mean squared error loss function trained separately to output either the density or velocity field for a given input grid of galaxy number counts. The NN was trained on mocks derived from the Quijote N-body simulations, incorporating redshift-space distortions (RSDs), galaxy bias, and selection effects closely mimicking the characteristics of 2MRS. The trained NN was benchmarked against a standard Wiener filter (WF) on a validation set of mocks before applying it to 2MRS. Results. The NN reconstructions effectively approximate the mean posterior estimate of the true density and velocity fields conditioned on the observations. They consistently outperform the WF in terms of reconstruction accuracy and effectively capture the nonlinear relation between velocity and density. The NN-reconstructed bulk flow of the total survey volume exhibits a significant correlation with the true mock bulk flow, demonstrating that the NN is sensitive to information on “super-survey” scales encoded in the RSDs. When applied to 2MRS, the NN successfully recovers the main known clusters, some of which are partially in the Zone of Avoidance. The reconstructed bulk flows in spheres of different radii less than 100 h−1 Mpc are in good agreement with a previous 2MRS analysis that required an additional external bulk flow component inferred from directly observed peculiar velocities. The NN-reconstructed peculiar velocity of the Local Group closely matches the observed Cosmic Microwave Background dipole in amplitude and Galactic latitude, and only deviates by 18° in longitude. The NN-reconstructed fields are publicly available.

Revisiting the effects of baryon physics on small-scale redshift space distortions

Abstract Redshift space distortions are an important probe of the growth of large-scale structure and for constraining cosmological parameters in general. As galaxy redshift surveys approach percent level precision in their observations of the two point clustering statistics, it is timely to review what effects baryons and associated processes such as feedback may have on small-scale clustering in redshift space. Contrary to previous studies in the literature, we show using the large-volume Bahamas hydrodynamic simulations that the effect of baryons can be as much as 1 per cent in the k ∼ 0.1 h Mpc−1 range for the monopole and 5 per cent for quadrupole, and that this could rise to as much as 10 per cent at k ∼ 10 h Mpc−1 in both measurements. For the halo power spectra, this difference can be as much 3-4 per cent in the monopole on scales of 0.05 &amp;lt; k &amp;lt; 0.3 h Mpc−1 for 1013 h−1 M⊙ haloes. We find that these deviations can be mitigated to the sub-percent level in the both the monopole and quadrupole up to k ∼ 0.3 h Mpc−1 if the baryon corrected halo masses are used to calculate the redshift space power spectra. Finally, we use the cosmo-OWLS simulation suite to explore the changes in the redshift space power spectra with different feedback prescriptions, finding that there is a maximum of 15-20 per cent difference between the redshift space monopole and quadrupole with and without baryons at k ∼ 1–2 h Mpc−1 within these models.

Enhancing Morphological Measurements of the Cosmic Web with Delaunay Tessellation Field Estimation

The density fields constructed by traditional mass assignment methods are susceptible to irritating discreteness, which hinders morphological measurements of cosmic large-scale structure (LSS) through Minkowski functionals (MFs). To alleviate this issue, fixed-kernel smoothing methods are commonly used in the literature, at the expense of losing substantial structural information. In this work, we propose to measure MFs with the Delaunay tessellation field estimation (DTFE) technique, with the goal of maximizing the extraction of morphological information from sparse tracers. We perform our analyses starting from matter fields and progressively extending to halo fields. At the matter-field level, we elucidate how discreteness affects morphological measurements of LSS. Then, by comparing with the traditional Gaussian smoothing scheme, we preliminarily showcase the advantages of DTFE for enhancing measurements of MFs from sparse tracers. At the halo-field level, we first numerically investigate various systematic effects on MFs of DTFE fields, which are induced by finite voxel sizes, halo number densities, halo weightings, and redshift space distortions (RSDs), respectively. Then, we explore the statistical power of MFs measured with DTFE for extracting the cosmological information encoded in RSDs. We find that MFs measured with DTFE exhibit improvements by ∼2 orders of magnitude in discriminative power for RSD effects and by a factor of ∼3–5 in constraining power on the structure growth rate over the MFs measured with Gaussian smoothing. These findings demonstrate the remarkable enhancements in statistical power of MFs achieved by DTFE, showing enormous application potentials for our method in extracting various key cosmological information from galaxy surveys.

Estimation of line-of-sight velocities of individual galaxies using neural networks – I. Modelling redshift–space distortions at large scales

ABSTRACT We present a scheme based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) to estimate the line-of-sight velocities of individual galaxies from an observed redshift–space galaxy distribution. We find an estimate of the peculiar velocity at a galaxy based on galaxy counts and barycentres in shells around it. By training the network with environmental characteristics, such as the total mass and mass centre within each shell surrounding every galaxy in redshift space, our ANN model can accurately predict the line-of-sight velocity of each individual galaxy. When this velocity is used to eliminate the RSD effect, the two-point correlation function (TPCF) in real space can be recovered with an accuracy better than 1 per cent at s &amp;gt; 8 $\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}$, and 4 per cent on all scales compared to ground truth. The real-space power spectrum can be recovered within 3 per cent on k&amp;lt; 0.5 $\, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}\, h$, and less than 5 per cent for all k modes. The quadrupole moment of the TPCF or power spectrum is almost zero down to s = 10 $\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}$ or all k modes, indicating an effective correction of the spatial anisotropy caused by the RSD effect. We demonstrate that on large scales, without additional training with new data, our network is adaptable to different galaxy formation models, different cosmological models, and mock galaxy samples at high-redshifts and high biases, achieving less than 10 per cent error for scales greater than 15 $\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}$. As it is sensitive to large-scale densities, it does not manage to remove Fingers of God in large clusters, but works remarkably well at recovering real-space galaxy positions elsewhere. Our scheme provides a novel way to predict the peculiar velocity of individual galaxies, to eliminate the RSD effect directly in future large galaxy surveys, and to reconstruct the three-dimensional cosmic velocity field accurately.