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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

Quijote-PNG: Quasi-maximum Likelihood Estimation of Primordial Non-Gaussianity in the Nonlinear Halo Density Field

The Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 948:2 (2023) 135-135

Authors:

G Jung, D Karagiannis, M Liguori, M Baldi, WR Coulton, D Jamieson, L Verde, F Villaescusa-Navarro, BD Wandelt

Abstract:

International audienceWe study primordial non-Gaussian signatures in the redshift-space halo field on non-linear scales, using a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator based on optimally compressed power spectrum and modal bispectrum statistics. We train and validate the estimator on a suite of halo catalogues constructed from the Quijote-PNG N-body simulations, which we release to accompany this paper. We verify its unbiasedness and near optimality, for the three main types of primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG): local, equilateral, and orthogonal. We compare the modal bispectrum expansion with a $k$-binning approach, showing that the former allows for faster convergence of numerical derivatives in the computation of the score-function, thus leading to better final constraints. We find, in agreement with previous studies, that the local PNG signal in the halo-field is dominated by the scale-dependent bias signature on large scales and saturates at $k \sim 0.2~h\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, whereas the small-scale bispectrum is the main source of information for equilateral and orthogonal PNG. Combining power spectrum and bispectrum on non-linear scales plays an important role in breaking degeneracies between cosmological and PNG parameters; such degeneracies remain however strong for equilateral PNG. We forecast that PNG parameters can be constrained with $\Delta f_\mathrm{NL}^\mathrm{local} = 45$, $\Delta f_\mathrm{NL}^\mathrm{equil} = 570$, $\Delta f_\mathrm{NL}^\mathrm{ortho} = 110$, on a cubic volume of $1 \left({ {\rm Gpc}/{ {\rm h}}} \right)^3$, at $z = 1$, considering scales up to $k_\mathrm{max} = 0.5~\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$

The CAMELS Project: Public Data Release

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 265:2 (2023)

Authors:

F Villaescusa-Navarro, S Genel, D Anglés-Alcázar, LA Perez, P Villanueva-Domingo, D Wadekar, H Shao, FG Mohammad, S Hassan, E Moser, ET Lau, LF Machado Poletti Valle, A Nicola, L Thiele, Y Jo, OHE Philcox, BD Oppenheimer, M Tillman, CH Hahn, N Kaushal, A Pisani, M Gebhardt, AM Delgado, J Caliendo, C Kreisch, KWK Wong, WR Coulton, M Eickenberg, G Parimbelli, Y Ni, UP Steinwandel, V La Torre, R Dave, N Battaglia, D Nagai, DN Spergel, L Hernquist, B Burkhart, D Narayanan, B Wandelt, RS Somerville, GL Bryan, M Viel, Y Li, V Irsic, K Kraljic, F Marinacci, M Vogelsberger

Abstract:

The Cosmology and Astrophysics with Machine Learning Simulations (CAMELS) project was developed to combine cosmology with astrophysics through thousands of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and machine learning. CAMELS contains 4233 cosmological simulations, 2049 N-body simulations, and 2184 state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations that sample a vast volume in parameter space. In this paper, we present the CAMELS public data release, describing the characteristics of the CAMELS simulations and a variety of data products generated from them, including halo, subhalo, galaxy, and void catalogs, power spectra, bispectra, Lyα spectra, probability distribution functions, halo radial profiles, and X-rays photon lists. We also release over 1000 catalogs that contain billions of galaxies from CAMELS-SAM: a large collection of N-body simulations that have been combined with the Santa Cruz semianalytic model. We release all the data, comprising more than 350 terabytes and containing 143,922 snapshots, millions of halos, galaxies, and summary statistics. We provide further technical details on how to access, download, read, and process the data at https://camels.readthedocs.io.

Quijote-PNG: The Information Content of the Halo Power Spectrum and Bispectrum

Astrophysical Journal 943:2 (2023)

Authors:

WR Coulton, F Villaescusa-Navarro, D Jamieson, M Baldi, G Jung, D Karagiannis, M Liguori, L Verde, BD Wandelt

Abstract:

We investigate how much can be learnt about four types of primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) from small-scale measurements of the halo field. Using the quijote-png simulations, we quantify the information content accessible with measurements of the halo power spectrum monopole and quadrupole, the matter power spectrum, the halo-matter cross spectrum, and the halo bispectrum monopole. This analysis is the first to include small, nonlinear scales, up to k max = 0.5 h Mpc − 1 , and to explore whether these scales can break degeneracies with cosmological and nuisance parameters making use of thousands of N-body simulations. We perform all the halo measurements in redshift space with a single sample comprised of all halos with mass >3.2 × 1013 h −1 M ⊙. For local PNG, measurements of the scale-dependent bias effect from the power spectrum using sample variance cancellation provide significantly tighter constraints than measurements of the halo bispectrum. In this case measurements of the small scales add minimal additional constraining power. In contrast, the information on equilateral and orthogonal PNG is primarily accessible through the bispectrum. For these shapes, small-scale measurements increase the constraining power of the halo bispectrum by up to 4×, though the addition of scales beyond k ≈ 0.3 h Mpc−1 improves constraints largely through reducing degeneracies between PNG and the other parameters. These degeneracies are even more powerfully mitigated through combining power spectrum and bispectrum measurements. However, even with combined measurements and small-scale information, equilateral non-Gaussianity remains highly degenerate with σ 8 and our bias model.

Quijote-PNG: Simulations of Primordial Non-Gaussianity and the Information Content of the Matter Field Power Spectrum and Bispectrum

The Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 943:1 (2023) 64-64

Authors:

WR Coulton, F Villaescusa-Navarro, D Jamieson, M Baldi, G Jung, D Karagiannis, M Liguori, L Verde, BD Wandelt

Abstract:

Primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) is one of the most powerful probes of the early universe, and measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe have the potential to transform our understanding of this area. However, relating measurements of the late-time universe to the primordial perturbations is challenging due to the nonlinear processes that govern the evolution of the universe. To help address this issue, we release a large suite of N-body simulations containing four types of PNG: QUIJOTE-PNG. These simulations were designed to augment the QUIJOTE suite of simulations that explored the impact of various cosmological parameters on large-scale structure observables. Using these simulations, we investigate how much information on PNG can be extracted by extending power spectrum and bispectrum measurements beyond the perturbative regime at z = 0.0. This is the first joint analysis of the PNG and cosmological information content accessible with power spectrum and bispectrum measurements of the nonlinear scales. We find that the constraining power improves significantly up to kmax 0.3 Mpc h » -1 , with diminishing returns beyond as the statistical probes signal-to-noise ratios saturate. This saturation emphasizes the importance of accurately modeling all the contributions to the covariance matrix. Further, we find that combining the two probes is a powerful method of breaking the degeneracies with the ΛCDM parameters

An exploration of the properties of cluster profiles for the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 517:1 (2022) 420-436

Authors:

BKK Lee, WR Coulton, L Thiele, S Ho

Abstract:

With the advent of high-resolution, low-noise CMB measurements, the ability to extract cosmological information from thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect will be limited not by statistical uncertainties but rather by systematic and theoretical uncertainties. The theoretical uncertainty is driven by the lack of knowledge about the electron pressure and density. Thus, we explore the electron pressure and density distributions in the IllustrisTNG hydrodynamical simulations, and we demonstrate that the cluster properties exhibit a strong dependence on the halo concentration - providing some of the first evidence of cluster assembly bias in the electron pressure and density. Further, our work shows evidence for a broken power-law mass dependence, with lower pressure in lower mass haloes than previous work and a strong evolution with mass of the radial correlations in the electron density and pressure. Both of these effects highlight the differing impact of active galactic nuclei and supernova feedback on the gas in galaxy groups compared to massive clusters. We verified that we see qualitatively similar features in the SIMBA hydrodynamical simulations, suggesting these effects could be generic features. Finally, we provide a parametric formula for the electron pressure and density profile as a function of dark matter halo mass, halo concentration, and redshift. Despite our extensions, the best-fitting formulae are not able to fully capture the features seen in certain mass, radius, and redshift regimes, thereby highlighting the challenges of precision modelling gas profiles.

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