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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.

Will Coulton

Ernest Rutherford Fellow

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics
  • Particle astrophysics & cosmology

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  • Cosmology
will.coulton@physics.ox.ac.uk
Denys Wilkinson Building, room 532B
  • About
  • Publications

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Reionization kSZ trispectrum methodology and limits

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 532:4 (2024) 4247-4260

Authors:

N MacCrann, FJ Qu, T Namikawa, B Bolliet, H Cai, E Calabrese, SK Choi, W Coulton, O Darwish, S Ferraro, Y Guan, JC Hill, M Hilton, R Hlozek, D Kramer, MS Madhavacheril, K Moodley, N Sehgal, BD Sherwin, C Sifón, ST Staggs, H Trac, A Van Engelen, EM Vavagiakis

Abstract:

Patchy reionization generates kinematic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (kSZ) anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Large-scale velocity perturbations along the line of sight modulate the small-scale kSZ power spectrum, leading to a trispectrum (or four-point function) in the CMB that depends on the physics of reionization. We investigate the challenges in detecting this trispectrum and use tools developed for CMB lensing, such as realization-dependent bias subtraction and cross-correlation based estimators, to counter uncertainties in the instrumental noise and assumed CMB power spectrum. We also find that both lensing and extragalactic foregrounds can impart larger trispectrum contributions than the reionization kSZ signal. We present a range of mitigation methods for both of these sources of contamination, validated on microwave-sky simulations. We use ACT DR6 and Planck data to calculate an upper limit on the reionization kSZ trispectrum from a measurement dominated by foregrounds. The upper limit is about 50 times the signal predicted from recent simulations.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Mitigating the Impact of Extragalactic Foregrounds for the DR6 Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Analysis

The Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 966:1 (2024) 138

Authors:

Niall MacCrann, Blake D Sherwin, Frank J Qu, Toshiya Namikawa, Mathew S Madhavacheril, Irene Abril-Cabezas, Rui An, Jason E Austermann, Nicholas Battaglia, Elia S Battistelli, James A Beall, Boris Bolliet, J Richard Bond, Hongbo Cai, Erminia Calabrese, William R Coulton, Omar Darwish, Shannon M Duff, Adriaan J Duivenvoorden, Jo Dunkley, Gerrit S Farren, Simone Ferraro, Joseph E Golec, Yilun Guan, Dongwon Han, Carlos Hervías-Caimapo, J Colin Hill, Matt Hilton, Renée Hložek, Johannes Hubmayr, Joshua Kim, Zack Li, Arthur Kosowsky, Thibaut Louis, Jeff McMahon, Gabriela A Marques, Kavilan Moodley, Sigurd Naess, Michael D Niemack, Lyman Page, Bruce Partridge, Emmanuel Schaan, Neelima Sehgal, Cristóbal Sifón, Edward J Wollack, Maria Salatino, Joel N Ullom, Jeff Van Lanen, Alexander Van Engelen, Lukas Wenzl

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: High-resolution component-separated maps across one third of the sky

Physical Review D American Physical Society (APS) 109:6 (2024) 063530

Authors:

William Coulton, Mathew S Madhavacheril, Adriaan J Duivenvoorden, J Colin Hill, Irene Abril-Cabezas, Peter AR Ade, Simone Aiola, Tommy Alford, Mandana Amiri, Stefania Amodeo, Rui An, Zachary Atkins, Jason E Austermann, Nicholas Battaglia, Elia Stefano Battistelli, James A Beall, Rachel Bean, Benjamin Beringue, Tanay Bhandarkar, Emily Biermann, Boris Bolliet, J Richard Bond, Hongbo Cai, Erminia Calabrese, Victoria Calafut, Valentina Capalbo, Felipe Carrero, Grace E Chesmore, Hsiao-mei Cho, Steve K Choi, Susan E Clark, Rodrigo Córdova Rosado, Nicholas F Cothard, Kevin Coughlin, Kevin T Crowley, Mark J Devlin, Simon Dicker, Peter Doze, Cody J Duell, Shannon M Duff, Jo Dunkley, Rolando Dünner, Valentina Fanfani, Max Fankhanel, Gerrit Farren, Simone Ferraro, Rodrigo Freundt, Brittany Fuzia, Patricio A Gallardo, Xavier Garrido, Jahmour Givans, Vera Gluscevic, Joseph E Golec, Yilun Guan, Mark Halpern, Dongwon Han, Matthew Hasselfield, Erin Healy, Shawn Henderson, Brandon Hensley, Carlos Hervías-Caimapo, Gene C Hilton, Matt Hilton, Adam D Hincks, Renée Hložek, Shuay-Pwu Patty Ho, Zachary B Huber, Johannes Hubmayr, Kevin M Huffenberger, John P Hughes, Kent Irwin, Giovanni Isopi, Hidde T Jense, Ben Keller, Joshua Kim, Kenda Knowles, Brian J Koopman, Arthur Kosowsky, Darby Kramer, Aleksandra Kusiak, Adrien La Posta, Victoria Lakey, Eunseong Lee, Zack Li, Yaqiong Li, Michele Limon, Martine Lokken, Thibaut Louis, Marius Lungu, Niall MacCrann, Amanda MacInnis, Diego Maldonado, Felipe Maldonado, Maya Mallaby-Kay, Gabriela A Marques, Joshiwa van Marrewijk, Fiona McCarthy, Jeff McMahon, Yogesh Mehta, Felipe Menanteau, Kavilan Moodley, Thomas W Morris, Tony Mroczkowski, Sigurd Naess, Toshiya Namikawa, Federico Nati, Laura Newburgh, Andrina Nicola, Michael D Niemack, Michael R Nolta, John Orlowski-Scherer, Lyman A Page, Shivam Pandey, Bruce Partridge, Heather Prince, Roberto Puddu, Frank J Qu, Federico Radiconi, Naomi Robertson, Felipe Rojas, Tai Sakuma, Maria Salatino, Emmanuel Schaan, Benjamin L Schmitt, Neelima Sehgal, Shabbir Shaikh, Blake D Sherwin, Carlos Sierra, Jon Sievers, Cristóbal Sifón, Sara Simon, Rita Sonka, David N Spergel, Suzanne T Staggs, Emilie Storer, Eric R Switzer, Niklas Tampier, Robert Thornton, Hy Trac, Jesse Treu, Carole Tucker, Joel Ullom, Leila R Vale, Alexander Van Engelen, Jeff Van Lanen, Cristian Vargas, Eve M Vavagiakis, Kasey Wagoner, Yuhan Wang, Lukas Wenzl, Edward J Wollack, Zhilei Xu, Fernando Zago, Kaiwen Zheng

Cosmology from weak lensing peaks and minima with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey first-year data

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 528:3 (2024) 4513-4527

Authors:

GA Marques, J Liu, M Shirasaki, L Thiele, D Grandón, KM Huffenberger, S Cheng, J Harnois-Déraps, K Osato, WR Coulton

Abstract:

We present cosmological constraints derived from peak counts, minimum counts, and the angular power spectrum of the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam first-year (HSC Y1) weak lensing shear catalogue. Weak lensing peak and minimum counts contain non-Gaussian information and hence are complementary to the conventional two-point statistics in constraining cosmology. In this work, we forward-model the three summary statistics and their dependence on cosmology, using a suite of N-body simulations tailored to the HSC Y1 data. We investigate systematic and astrophysical effects including intrinsic alignments, baryon feedback, multiplicative bias, and photometric redshift uncertainties. We mitigate the impact of these systematics by applying cuts on angular scales, smoothing scales, signal-to-noise ratio bins, and tomographic redshift bins. By combining peaks, minima, and the power spectrum, assuming a flat-∧CDM model, we obtain (Formula Presented) a 35 per cent tighter constraint than that obtained from the angular power spectrum alone. Our results are in agreement with other studies using HSC weak lensing shear data, as well as with Planck 2018 cosmology and recent CMB lensing constraints from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the DR6 CMB Lensing Power Spectrum and Its Implications for Structure Growth

The Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 962:2 (2024) 112-112

Authors:

Frank J Qu, Blake D Sherwin, Mathew S Madhavacheril, Dongwon Han, Kevin T Crowley, Irene Abril-Cabezas, Peter AR Ade, Simone Aiola, Tommy Alford, Mandana Amiri, Stefania Amodeo, Rui An, Zachary Atkins, Jason E Austermann, Nicholas Battaglia, Elia Stefano Battistelli, James A Beall, Rachel Bean, Benjamin Beringue, Tanay Bhandarkar, Emily Biermann, Boris Bolliet, J Richard Bond, Hongbo Cai, Erminia Calabrese, William Coulton

Abstract:

Abstract We present new measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing over 9400 deg2 of the sky. These lensing measurements are derived from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) CMB data set, which consists of five seasons of ACT CMB temperature and polarization observations. We determine the amplitude of the CMB lensing power spectrum at 2.3% precision (43σ significance) using a novel pipeline that minimizes sensitivity to foregrounds and to noise properties. To ensure that our results are robust, we analyze an extensive set of null tests, consistency tests, and systematic error estimates and employ a blinded analysis framework. Our CMB lensing power spectrum measurement provides constraints on the amplitude of cosmic structure that do not depend on Planck or galaxy survey data, thus giving independent information about large-scale structure growth and potential tensions in structure measurements. The baseline spectrum is well fit by a lensing amplitude of A lens = 1.013 ± 0.023 relative to the Planck 2018 CMB power spectra best-fit ΛCDM model and A lens = 1.005 ± 0.023 relative to the ACT DR4 + WMAP best-fit model. From our lensing power spectrum measurement, we derive constraints on the parameter combination S 8 CMBL ≡ σ 8 Ω m / 0.3 0.25 of S 8 CMBL = 0.818 ± 0.022 from ACT DR6 CMB lensing alone and S 8 CMBL = 0.813 ± 0.018 when combining ACT DR6 and Planck NPIPE CMB lensing power spectra. These results are in excellent agreement with ΛCDM model constraints from Planck or ACT DR4 + WMAP CMB power spectrum measurements. Our lensing measurements from redshifts z ∼ 0.5–5 are thus fully consistent with ΛCDM structure growth predictions based on CMB anisotropies probing primarily z ∼ 1100. We find no evidence for a suppression of the amplitude of cosmic structure at low redshifts.

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