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Black Hole

Lensing of space time around a black hole. At Oxford we study black holes observationally and theoretically on all size and time scales - it is some of our core work.

Credit: ALAIN RIAZUELO, IAP/UPMC/CNRS. CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE IMAGES.

Dr Harry Desmond

Visitor

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics
  • Particle astrophysics & cosmology

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
harry.desmond@physics.ox.ac.uk
Denys Wilkinson Building
  • About
  • Publications

No evidence for local H0 anisotropy from Tully鈥揊isher or supernova distances

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 546:2 (2026) staf2048

Authors:

Richard Stiskalek, Harry Desmond, Guilhem Lavaux

Abstract:

ABSTRACT Claims of local ($z \lesssim 0.05$) anisotropy in the Hubble constant have been made based on direct distance tracers such as Tully鈥揊isher galaxies and Type Ia supernovae. We revisit these using the CosmicFlows-4 Tully鈥揊isher W1 subsample, 2MTF and SFI++ Tully鈥揊isher catalogues, and the Pantheon+ supernova compilation (all restricted to $z < 0.05$), including a dipole in either the Tully鈥揊isher zero-point or the standardized supernova absolute magnitude. Our forward-modelling framework jointly calibrates the distance relation, marginalizes over distances, and accounts for peculiar velocities using a linear-theory reconstruction. We compare the anisotropic and isotropic model using the Bayesian evidence. In the CosmicFlows-4 sample, we infer a zero-point dipole of amplitude $0.087 \pm 0.019$ mag, or $4.1\pm 0.9$聽per cent when expressed as a dipole in the Hubble parameter. This is consistent with previous estimates but at higher significance: model comparison yields odds of $877\!:\!1$ in favour of including the zero-point dipole. In Pantheon+ we infer zero-point dipole amplitude of $0.049 \pm 0.013$ mag, or $2.3\pm 0.6$聽per cent when expressed as a dipole in the Hubble parameter. However, by allowing for a radially varying velocity dipole, we show that the anisotropic zero-point model captures local flow features (or possibly systematics) in the data rather than an actual linearly growing effective bulk flow caused by anisotropy in the zero-point or expansion rate. Crucially, inferring a more general bulk flow curve we find results fully consistent with expectations from the standard cosmological model.

The galaxy鈥揺nvironment connection revealed by constrained simulations

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 546:3 (2026) stag108

Authors:

Catherine Gallagher, Tariq Yasin, Richard Stiskalek, Harry Desmond, Matt J Jarvis

Abstract:

The evolution of galaxies is known to be connected to their position within the large-scale structure and their local environmental density. We investigate the relative importance of these using the underlying dark matter density field extracted from the Constrained Simulations in BORG (CSiBORG) suite of constrained cosmological simulations. We define cosmic web environment through both dark matter densities averaged on a scale up to 16 Mpc , and through cosmic web location identified by applying DisPerSE to the CSiBORG haloes. We correlate these environmental measures with the properties of observed galaxies in large surveys using optical data (from the NASA-Sloan Atlas) and 21-cm radio data (from ALFALFA). We find statistically significant correlations between environment and colour, neutral hydrogen gas () mass fraction, star formation rate, and S茅rsic index. Together, these correlations suggest that bluer, star-forming, rich, and disc-type galaxies tend to reside in lower density areas, further from filaments, while redder, more elliptical galaxies with lower star formation rates tend to be found in higher density areas, closer to filaments. We find analogous trends with the quenching of galaxies, but notably find that the quenching of low-mass galaxies has a greater dependence on environment than the quenching of high-mass galaxies. We find that the relationship between galaxy properties and the environmental density is stronger than that with distance to filament, suggesting that environmental density has a greater impact on the properties of galaxies than their location within the larger-scale cosmic web.

VALIDATING DIGITAL TWINS OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE WITH THE THERMAL SUNYAEV-ZEL鈥橠OVICH SIGNAL

Open Journal of Astrophysics 9 (2026)

Authors:

R Stiskalek, H Desmond

Abstract:

The thermal Sunyaev鈥揨el鈥檇ovich (tSZ) effect provides a powerful probe of the thermal pressure of ionised gas in galaxy clusters and the cosmic web; constrained simulations reconstruct the mass and velocity fields of the local Universe. We explore how these two may be mutually informative: the tSZ signal provides a benchmark for assessing the fidelity of constrained simulations, and constrained simulations contribute information on the positions, total masses and density profiles of cosmic web structures for use in tSZ studies. We focus on cluster predictions in the Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies (BORG) paradigm, introducing CSiBORG-Manticore, a new state-of-the-art suite of digital twins鈥攄ata-constrained posterior simulations whose initial conditions are inferred via Bayesian forward modelling. We develop a framework for scoring constrained simulations on their ability to match measured Planck Compton-y maps around clusters, and use it to demonstrate improvement from previous BORG reconstructions. We further validate halo masses against weak-lensing-calibrated X-ray masses from eROSITA. We also show how high-fidelity digital twins offer a practical route to extracting additional information from tSZ data through a novel calibration of the mass鈥搊bservable relation, and provide a complementary framework to purely statistical analyses of Compton-y maps. This paves the way for integrating the large-scale structure information inherent in constrained simulations into the study of CMB secondary anisotropies.

Introduction to Symbolic Regression in the Physical Sciences

(2025)

Authors:

Deaglan J Bartlett, Harry Desmond, Pedro G Ferreira, Gabriel Kronberger

The subtle statistics of the distance ladder: On the distance prior and selection effects

ArXiv 2511.03394 (2025)

Authors:

Harry Desmond, Richard Stiskalek, Jos茅 Antonio N谩jera, Indranil Banik

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