Engineering topics
Pietroni, Massimo
Publications and source records attributed to Pietroni, Massimo.
A robust BAO extractor
We define a procedure to extract the oscillating part of a given nonlinear Power Spectrum, and derive an equation describing its evolution including the leading effects at all scales. The intermediate scales are taken into account by standard perturbation theory, the long range (IR) displacements are included by using consistency relations, and the effect of small (UV) scales is included via effective coefficients computed in simulations. We show that the UV effects are irrelevant in the evolution of the oscillating part, while they play a crucial role in reproducing the smooth component. Our 'extractor' operator can be applied to simulations and real data in order to extract the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) without any fitting function and nuisance parameter. We conclude that the nonlinear evolution of BAO can be accurately reproduced at all scales down to 0 z = by our fast analytical method, without any need of extra parameters fitted from simulations.
Galilean invariant resummation schemes of cosmological perturbations
Many of the methods proposed so far to go beyond Standard Perturbation Theory break invariance under time-dependent boosts (denoted here as extended Galilean Invariance, or GI). This gives rise to spurious large scale effects which spoil the small scale predictions of these approximation schemes. By using consistency relations we derive fully non-perturbative constraints that GI imposes on correlation functions. We then introduce a method to quantify the amount of GI breaking of a given scheme, and to correct it by properly tailored counterterms. Finally, we formulate resummation schemes which are manifestly GI, discuss their general features, and implement them in the so called Time-Flow, or TRG, equations.
The effect of massive neutrinos on the BAO peak
We study the impact of neutrino masses on the shape and height of the BAO peak of the matter correlation function, both in real and redshift space. In order to describe the nonlinear evolution of the BAO peak we run N-body simulations and compare them with simple analytic formulae. We show that the evolution with redshift of the correlation function and its dependence on the neutrino masses is well reproduced in a simplified version of the Zel'dovich approximation, in which the mode-coupling contribution to the power spectrum is neglected. While in linear theory the BAO peak decreases for increasing neutrino masses, the effect of nonlinear structure formation goes in the opposite direction, since the peak broadening by large scale flows is less effective. As a result of this combined effect, the peak decreases by ∼ 0.6 % for ∑ m{sub ν} = 0.15 eV and increases by ∼1.2% for ∑ m{sub ν} = 0.3 eV, with respect to a massless neutrino cosmology with equal value of the other cosmological parameters. We extend our analysis to redshift space and to halos, and confirm the agreement between simulations and the analytic formulae. We argue that all analytical approaches having the Zel'dovich propagator in their lowest order approximation should give comparable performances, irrespectively to their formulation in Lagrangian or in Eulerian space.
A coarse grained perturbation theory for the Large Scale Structure, with cosmology and time independence in the UV
Standard cosmological perturbation theory (SPT) for the Large Scale Structure (LSS) of the Universe fails at small scales (UV) due to strong nonlinearities and to multistreaming effects. In ref. [1] a new framework was proposed in which the large scales (IR) are treated perturbatively while the information on the UV, mainly small scale velocity dispersion, is obtained by nonlinear methods like N-body simulations. Here we develop this approach, showing that it is possible to reproduce the fully nonlinear power spectrum (PS) by combining a simple (and fast) 1-loop computation for the IR scales and the measurement of a single, dominant, correlator from N-body simulations for the UV ones. We measure this correlator for a suite of seven different cosmologies, and we show that its inclusion in our perturbation scheme reproduces the fully non-linear PS with percent level accuracy, for wave numbers up to k∼ 0.4 h Mpc{sup -1} down to 0z=. We then show that, once this correlator has been measured in a given cosmology, there is no need to run a new simulation for a different cosmology in the suite. Indeed, by rescaling this correlator by a proper function computable in SPT, the reconstruction procedure works also for the other cosmologies and for all redshifts, with comparable accuracy. Finally, we clarify the relation of this approach to the Effective Field Theory methods recently proposed in the LSS context.
Ward identities and consistency relations for the large scale structure with multiple species
We present fully nonlinear consistency relations for the squeezed bispectrum of Large Scale Structure. These relations hold when the matter component of the Universe is composed of one or more species, and generalize those obtained in [1,2] in the single species case. The multi-species relations apply to the standard dark matter + baryons scenario, as well as to the case in which some of the fields are auxiliary quantities describing a particular population, such as dark matter halos or a specific galaxy class. If a large scale velocity bias exists between the different populations new terms appear in the consistency relations with respect to the single species case. As an illustration, we discuss two physical cases in which such a velocity bias can exist: (1) a new long range scalar force in the dark matter sector (resulting in a violation of the equivalence principle in the dark matter-baryon system), and (2) the distribution of dark matter halos relative to that of the underlying dark matter field.
Galilean invariance and the consistency relation for the nonlinear squeezed bispectrum of large scale structure
We discuss the constraints imposed on the nonlinear evolution of the Large Scale Structure (LSS) of the universe by galilean invariance, the symmetry relevant on subhorizon scales. Using Ward identities associated to the invariance, we derive fully nonlinear consistency relations between statistical correlators of the density and velocity perturbations, such as the power spectrum and the bispectrum. These relations are valid up to O(f{sub NL}{sup 2}) corrections. We then show that most of the semi-analytic methods proposed so far to resum the perturbative expansion of the LSS dynamics fail to fulfill the constraints imposed by galilean invariance, and are therefore susceptible to non-physical infrared effects. Finally, we identify and discuss a nonperturbative semi-analytical scheme which is manifestly galilean invariant at any order of its expansion.