Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: Reverberation mapping is a robust method to measure the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) outside of the local Universe. Measurements of the radius -- luminosity ($R-L$) relation using the Mg II emission line are critical for determining these masses near the peak of quasar activity at $z \approx 1 - 2$, and for calibrating secondary mass estimators based on Mg II that can be applied to large samples with only single-epoch spectroscopy. We present the first nine Mg II lags from our five-year Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) reverberation mapping program, which substantially improves the number and quality of Mg II lag measurements. As the Mg II feature is somewhat blended with iron emission, we model and subtract both the continuum and iron contamination from the multi-epoch spectra before analyzing the Mg II line. We also develop a new method of quantifying correlated spectroscopic calibration errors based on our numerous, contemporaneous observations of F-stars. The lag measurements for seven of our nine sources are consistent with both the H$\beta$ and Mg II $R-L$ relations reported by previous studies. Our simulations verify the lag reliability of our nine measurements, and we estimate that the median false positive rate of the lag measurements is $4\%$.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey has obtained a set of spectroscopic measurements of galaxies to validate the final survey design and target selections. To assist in these tasks, we visually inspect (VI) DESI spectra of approximately 2,500 bright galaxies, 3,500 luminous red galaxies (LRGs), and 10,000 emission line galaxies (ELGs), to obtain robust redshift identifications. We then utilize the VI redshift information to characterize the performance of the DESI operation. Based on the VI catalogs, our results show that the final survey design yields samples of bright galaxies, LRGs, and ELGs with purity greater than $99\%$. Moreover, we demonstrate that the precision of the redshift measurements is approximately 10 km/s for bright galaxies and ELGs and approximately 40 km/s for LRGs. The average redshift accuracy is within 10 km/s for the three types of galaxies. The VI process also helps improve the quality of the DESI data by identifying spurious spectral features introduced by the pipeline. Finally, we show examples of unexpected real astronomical objects, such as Ly$\alpha$ emitters and strong lensing candidates, identified by VI. These results demonstrate the importance and utility of visually inspecting data from incoming and upcoming surveys, especially during their early operation phases.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: A key component of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey validation (SV) is a detailed visual inspection (VI) of the optical spectroscopic data to quantify key survey metrics. In this paper we present results from VI of the quasar survey using deep coadded SV spectra. We show that the majority (~70%) of the main-survey targets are spectroscopically confirmed as quasars, with ~16% galaxies, ~6% stars, and ~8% low-quality spectra lacking reliable features. A non-negligible fraction of the quasars are misidentified by the standard spectroscopic pipeline but we show that the majority can be recovered using post-pipeline "afterburner" quasar-identification approaches. We combine these "afterburners" with our standard pipeline to create a modified pipeline to improve the overall quasar yield. At the depth of the main DESI survey both pipelines achieve a good-redshift purity (reliable redshifts measured within 3000 km/s) of ~99%; however, the modified pipeline recovers ~94% of the visually inspected quasars, as compared to ~86% from the standard pipeline. We demonstrate that both pipelines achieve an median redshift precision and accuracy of ~100 km/s and ~70 km/s, respectively. We constructed composite spectra to investigate why some quasars are missed by the standard spectroscopic pipeline and find that they are more host-galaxy dominated (i.e., distant analogs of "Seyfert galaxies") and/or dust reddened than the standard-pipeline quasars. We also show example spectra to demonstrate the overall diversity of the DESI quasar sample and provide strong-lensing candidates where two targets contribute to a single spectrum.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: We perform a cosmic shear analysis in harmonic space using the first year of data collected by the Dark Energy Survey (DES-Y1). We measure the cosmic weak lensing shear power spectra using the Metacalibration catalogue and perform a likelihood analysis within the framework of CosmoSIS. We set scale cuts based on baryonic effects contamination and model redshift and shear calibration uncertainties as well as intrinsic alignments. We adopt as fiducial covariance matrix an analytical computation accounting for the mask geometry in the Gaussian term, including non-Gaussian contributions. A suite of 1200 lognormal simulations is used to validate the harmonic space pipeline and the covariance matrix. We perform a series of stress tests to gauge the robustness of the harmonic space analysis. Finally, we use the DES-Y1 pipeline in configuration space to perform a similar likelihood analysis and compare both results, demonstrating their compatibility in estimating the cosmological parameters $S_8$, $\sigma_8$ and $\Omega_m$. The methods implemented and validated in this paper will allow us to perform a consistent harmonic space analysis in the upcoming DES data.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: Current and future imaging surveys require photometric redshifts (photo-zs) to be estimated for millions of galaxies. Improving the photo-z quality is a major challenge but is needed to advance our understanding of cosmology. In this paper we explore how the synergies between narrow-band photometric data and large imaging surveys can be exploited to improve broadband photometric redshifts. We used a multi-task learning (MTL) network to improve broadband photo-z estimates by simultaneously predicting the broadband photo-z and the narrow-band photometry from the broadband photometry. The narrow-band photometry is only required in the training field, which also enables better photo-z predictions for the galaxies without narrow-band photometry in the wide field. This technique was tested with data from the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS) in the COSMOS field. We find that the method predicts photo-zs that are 13% more precise down to magnitude i_{AB} < 23; the outlier rate is also 40% lower when compared to the baseline network. Furthermore, MTL reduces the photo-z bias for high-redshift galaxies, improving the redshift distributions for tomographic bins with z>1. Applying this technique to deeper samples is crucial for future surveys such as \Euclid or LSST. For simulated data, training on a sample with i_{AB} <23, the method reduces the photo-z scatter by 16% for all galaxies with i_{AB}<25. We also studied the effects of extending the training sample with photometric galaxies using PAUS high-precision photo-zs, which reduces the photo-z scatter by 20% in the COSMOS field.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: Hot, ionized gas leaves an imprint on the cosmic microwave background via the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. The cross-correlation of gravitational lensing (which traces the projected mass) with the tSZ effect (which traces the projected gas pressure) is a powerful probe of the thermal state of ionized baryons throughout the Universe, and is sensitive to effects such as baryonic feedback. In a companion paper (Gatti et al. 2021), we present tomographic measurements and validation tests of the cross-correlation between galaxy shear measurements from the first three years of observations of the Dark Energy Survey, and tSZ measurements from a combination of Atacama Cosmology Telescope and ${\it Planck}$ observations. In this work, we use the same measurements to constrain models for the pressure profiles of halos across a wide range of halo mass and redshift. We find evidence for reduced pressure in low mass halos, consistent with predictions for the effects of feedback from active galactic nuclei. We infer the hydrostatic mass bias ($B \equiv M_{500c}/M_{\rm SZ}$) from our measurements, finding $B = 1.8\pm0.1$ when adopting the ${\it Planck}$-preferred cosmological parameters. We additionally find that our measurements are consistent with a non-zero redshift evolution of $B$, with the correct sign and sufficient magnitude to explain the mass bias necessary to reconcile cluster count measurements with the ${\it Planck}$-preferred cosmology. Our analysis introduces a model for the impact of intrinsic alignments (IA) of galaxy shapes on the shear-tSZ correlation. We show that IA can have a significant impact on these correlations at current noise levels.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: We constrain cosmological and galaxy-bias parameters using the combination of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements from the Dark Energy Survey Year-3 data. We describe our modeling framework, and choice of scales analyzed, validating their robustness to theoretical uncertainties in small-scale clustering by analyzing simulated data. Using a linear galaxy bias model and redMaGiC galaxy sample, we obtain constraints on the matter density to be $\Omega_{\rm m} = 0.325^{+0.033}_{-0.034}$. We also implement a non-linear galaxy bias model to probe smaller scales that includes parameterization based on hybrid perturbation theory and find that it leads to a 17% gain in cosmological constraining power. We perform robustness tests of our methodology pipeline and demonstrate the stability of the constraints to changes in the theoretical model. Using the redMaGiC galaxy sample as foreground lens galaxies, we find the galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements to exhibit significant signals akin to de-correlation between galaxies and mass on large scales, which is not expected in any current models. This likely systematic measurement error biases our constraints on galaxy bias and the $S_8$ parameter. We find that a scale-, redshift- and sky-area-independent phenomenological de-correlation parameter can effectively capture the impact of this systematic error. We trace the source of this de-correlation to a color-dependent photometric issue and minimize its impact on our result by changing the selection criteria of redMaGiC galaxies. Using this new sample, our constraints on the $S_8$ parameter are consistent with previous studies, and we find a small shift in the $\Omega_{\rm m}$ constraints compared to the fiducial redMaGiC sample. We constrain the mean host halo mass of the redMaGiC galaxies in this new sample to be approximately $1.6 \times 10^{13} M_{\odot}/h$.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: Two of the most sensitive probes of the large scale structure of the universe are the clustering of galaxies and the tangential shear of background galaxy shapes produced by those foreground galaxies, so-called galaxy-galaxy lensing. Combining the measurements of these two two-point functions leads to cosmological constraints that are independent of the galaxy bias factor. The optimal choice of foreground, or lens, galaxies is governed by the joint, but conflicting requirements to obtain accurate redshift information and large statistics. We present cosmological results from the full 5000 sq. deg. of the Dark Energy Survey first three years of observations (Y3) combining those two-point functions, using for the first time a magnitude-limited lens sample (MagLim) of 11 million galaxies especially selected to optimize such combination, and 100 million background shapes. We consider two cosmological models, flat $\Lambda$CDM and $w$CDM. In $\Lambda$CDM we obtain for the matter density $\Omega_m = 0.320^{+0.041}_{-0.034}$ and for the clustering amplitude $S_8 = 0.778^{+0.037}_{-0.031}$, at 68% C.L. The latter is only 1$\sigma$ smaller than the prediction in this model informed by measurements of the cosmic microwave background by the Planck satellite. In $w$CDM we find $\Omega_m = 0.32^{+0.044}_{-0.046}$, $S_8=0.777^{+0.049}_{-0.051}$, and dark energy equation of state $w=-1.031^{+0.218}_{-0.379}$. We find that including smaller scales while marginalizing over non-linear galaxy bias improves the constraining power in the $\Omega_m-S_8$ plane by $31$% and in the $\Omega_m-w$ plane by $41$% while yielding consistent cosmological parameters from those in the linear bias case. These results are combined with those from cosmic shear in a companion paper to present full DES-Y3 constraints from the three two-point functions (3x2pt).
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Abstract: This work, together with its companion paper, Secco and Samuroff et al. (2021), presents the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 cosmic shear measurements and cosmological constraints based on an analysis of over 100 million source galaxies. With the data spanning 4143 deg$^2$ on the sky, divided into four redshift bins, we produce the highest significance measurement of cosmic shear to date, with a signal-to-noise of 40. We conduct a blind analysis in the context of the $\Lambda$CDM model and find a 3% constraint of the clustering amplitude, $S_8\equiv \sigma_8 (\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.5} = 0.759^{+0.025}_{-0.023}$. A $\Lambda$CDM-Optimized analysis, which safely includes smaller scale information, yields a 2% precision measurement of $S_8= 0.772^{+0.018}_{-0.017}$ that is consistent with the fiducial case. The two low-redshift measurements are statistically consistent with the Planck Cosmic Microwave Background result, however, both recovered $S_8$ values are lower than the high-redshift prediction by $2.3\sigma$ and $2.1\sigma$ ($p$-values of 0.02 and 0.05), respectively. The measurements are shown to be internally consistent across redshift bins, angular scales and correlation functions. The analysis is demonstrated to be robust to calibration systematics, with the $S_8$ posterior consistent when varying the choice of redshift calibration sample, the modeling of redshift uncertainty and methodology. Similarly, we find that the corrections included to account for the blending of galaxies shifts our best-fit $S_8$ by $0.5\sigma$ without incurring a substantial increase in uncertainty. We examine the limiting factors for the precision of the cosmological constraints and find observational systematics to be subdominant to the modeling of astrophysics. Specifically, we identify the uncertainties in modeling baryonic effects and intrinsic alignments as the limiting systematics.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review