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DOE OSTI2026

The DESI DR1 peculiar velocity survey: growth rate measurements from the maximum likelihood fields method

We present the constraint on the growth rate of structure from the combination of DESI DR1 BGS sample, Fundamental Plane, and Tully-Fisher peculiar velocity catalogues using the maximum likelihood fields method. The combined catalogue contains 415,523 galaxy redshifts and 76,616 peculiar velocity measurements. To handle the large amount of data in the DESI DR1 peculiar velocity catalogue, we significantly improve the computational efficiency by rewriting the algorithm with JAX. After removing outliers and Tully-Fisher galaxies that are affected by systematics, we find fσ 8 = 0.483 -0.043 +0.080 (stat) ± 0.018(sys), consistent within 1σ with the power spectrum and correlation function analysis using the same dataset. Combining all three measurements with appropriate correlations, the consensus measurement is fσ 8 (z eff = 0.07) = 0.450±0.055, consistent with Planck +ΛCDM cosmology (fσ 8 = 0.449±0.008). Combining with the high redshift growth rate of structure measurements from DESI ShapeFit, the constraint on the growth index is γ = 0.58±0.11, consistent with GR.

cosmic flows↗
DOE OSTI2020

Seismotectonic evidence for subduction beneath the Eastern Greater Caucasus

SUMMARY We generated high-resolution 3-D seismic velocity models as well as a relocated earthquake catalogue across the eastern Greater Caucasus and Kura basins. This work was done using data from the recently upgraded Republic Seismological Survey Center's (RSSC) seismic network. We generated our tomographic images of crustal velocity structure in Azerbaijan using double-difference inversions (i.e. tomoDD and hypoDD). Earthquake catalogues from the RSSC between 2011 and 2016 were used; these catalogues include absolute arrival times of 103 288 P- and 120 952 S-wave traveltime picks for 7574 events recorded at 35 stations in Azerbaijan. Beginning with a layered, 1-D velocity model that was estimated using VELEST, we inverted simultaneously for relative location, Vp and Vs on a 3-D grid with dimensions 670 × 445 × 45 km, with a uniform grid spacing of 55 × 55 × 5 km for all of Azerbaijan. We observe that the relocated hypocentres cluster into two depth ranges, at the surface and at depth, that appear to correspond to major fault zones and the top of a subducting plate. Additionally, we note intermediate depth seismicity (∼50–60 km) beneath the Kura Basin, and a northward deepening of earthquake depths. Seismic velocities vary significantly throughout the study region; we observe very slow velocities throughout the Kura Basin between 5 and 15 km, and elevated velocities at 20–35 km. The wholesale velocity structure and seismic structure of Kura Basin strongly mirrors that of the Caspian Sea, which suggests that the geodynamics of the Caspian continue westwards into Azerbaijan. The key results of this study suggest that the northward subduction observed in the Caspian Sea continues beneath the Eastern Greater Caucasus, as well as provides evidence for active faulting along the southern margin of the mountain range.

Gunnels, Michael↗
DOE OSTI2020

Generating synthetic cosmological data with GalSampler

As part of the effort to meet the needs of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC) for accurate, realistically complex mock galaxy catalogues, in this work we have developed galsampler, an open-source python package that assists in generating large volumes of synthetic cosmological data. The key idea behind galsampler is to recast hydrodynamical simulations and semi-analytic models as physically motivated galaxy libraries. galsampler populates a new, larger volume halo catalogue with galaxies drawn from the baseline library; by using weighted sampling guided by empirical modelling techniques, galsampler inherits statistical accuracy from the empirical model and physically motivated complexity from the baseline library. We have recently used galsampler to produce the cosmoDC 2 extragalactic catalogue made for the LSST DESC Data Challenge 2 . Using cosmoDC 2 as a guiding example, we outline how galsampler can continue to support ongoing and near-future galaxy surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, WFIRST, and Euclid.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

The completed SDSS-IV extended baryon oscillation spectroscopic survey: pairwise-inverse probability and angular correction for fibre collisions in clustering measurements

ABSTRACT The completed extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) catalogues contain redshifts of 344 080 quasars at 0.8 < z < 2.2, 174 816 luminous red galaxies between 0.6 < z < 1.0, and 173 736 emission-line galaxies over 0.6 < z < 1.1 in order to constrain the expansion history of the Universe and the growth rate of structure through clustering measurements. Mechanical limitations of the fibre-fed spectrograph on the Sloan telescope prevent two fibres being placed closer than 62 arcsec in a single pass of the instrument. These ‘fibre collisions’ strongly correlate with the intrinsic clustering of targets and can bias measurements of the two-point correlation function resulting in a systematic error on the inferred values of the cosmological parameters. We combine the new techniques of pairwise-inverse probability and the angular upweighting (PIP+ANG) to correct the clustering measurements for the effect of fibre collisions. Using mock catalogues, we show that our corrections provide unbiased measurements, within data precision, of both the projected $\rm {\mathit{ w}_p}\left(\mathit{ r}_p\right)$ and the redshift-space multipole ξ(ℓ = 0, 2, 4)(s) correlation functions down to $0.1\, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$, regardless of the tracer type. We apply the corrections to the eBOSS DR16 catalogues. We find that, on scales $s\gtrsim 20\, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$ for ξℓ, as used to make baryon acoustic oscillation and large-scale redshift-space distortion measurements, approximate methods such as nearest-neighbour upweighting are sufficiently accurate given the statistical errors of the data. Using the PIP method, for the first time for a spectroscopic program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we are able to successfully access the one-halo term in the clustering measurements down to $\sim 0.1\, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$ scales. Our results will therefore allow studies that use the small-scale clustering to strengthen the constraints on both cosmological parameters and the halo occupation distribution models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Observations of compact sources in galaxy clusters using MUSTANG2

Compact sources can cause scatter in the scaling relationships between the amplitude of the thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich Effect (tSZE) in galaxy clusters and cluster mass. Estimates of the importance of this scatter vary – largely due to limited data on sources in clusters at the frequencies at which tSZE cluster surveys operate. In this paper, we present 90 GHz compact source measurements from a sample of 30 clusters observed using the MUSTANG2 instrument on the Green Bank Telescope. We present simulations of how a source’s flux density, spectral index, and angular separation from the cluster’s centre affect the measured tSZE in clusters detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). By comparing the MUSTANG2 measurements with these simulations we calibrate an empirical relationship between 1.4 GHz flux densities from radio surveys and source contamination in ACT tSZE measurements. We find 3 per cent of the ACT clusters have more than a 20 per cent decrease in Compton-y but another 3 per cent have a 10 per cent increase in the Compton-y due to the matched filters used to find clusters. As sources affect the measured tSZE signal and hence the likelihood that a cluster will be detected, testing the level of source contamination in the tSZE signal using a tSZE-selected catalogue is inherently biased. We confirm this by comparing the ACT tSZE catalogue with optically and X-ray-selected cluster catalogues. Furthermore, there is a strong case for a large, high-resolution survey of clusters to better characterize their source population.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Galaxy blending effects in deep imaging cosmic shear probes of cosmology

ABSTRACT Upcoming deep imaging surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time will be confronted with challenges that come with increased depth. One of the leading systematic errors in deep surveys is the blending of objects due to higher surface density in the more crowded images; a considerable fraction of the galaxies which we hope to use for cosmology analyses will overlap each other on the observed sky. In order to investigate these challenges, we emulate blending in a mock catalogue consisting of galaxies at a depth equivalent to 1.3 yr of the full 10-yr Rubin Observatory that includes effects due to weak lensing, ground-based seeing, and the uncertainties due to extraction of catalogues from imaging data. The emulated catalogue indicates that approximately 12 per cent of the observed galaxies are ‘unrecognized’ blends that contain two or more objects but are detected as one. Using the positions and shears of half a billion distant galaxies, we compute shear–shear correlation functions after selecting tomographic samples in terms of both spectroscopic and photometric redshift bins. We examine the sensitivity of the cosmological parameter estimation to unrecognized blending employing both jackknife and analytical Gaussian covariance estimators. An ∼0.025 decrease in the derived structure growth parameter S8 = σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5 is seen due to unrecognized blending in both tomographies with a slight additional bias for the photo-z-based tomography. This bias is greater than the 2σ statistical error in measuring S8.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

SDSS-IV MaStar: [α/Fe] for the MaNGA Stellar Library from synthetic model spectra

ABSTRACT We calculate the α-enhancement ratio [α/Fe] for the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) Stellar Library (MaStar) while also fitting for the fundamental atmospheric parameters effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity – Teff, log g, [Fe/H]. This approach builds upon a previous catalogue of stellar parameters, whereby only the fundamental atmospheric parameters are fit with solar-scaled models. Here, we use the same Markov Chain Monte Carlo method with the additional free parameter [α/Fe]. Using the full spectral fitting code pPXF, we are able to fit multiple lines sensitive to [α/Fe] for a more robust measurement. Quality flags based on the convergence of the sampler, errors in [α/Fe] and a cut in the χ2 of the model fit are used to clean the final catalogue, returning 17 214 spectra and values in the range of −0.25 < [α/Fe] < 0.48. Comparing our calculated [α/Fe] with literature values reveals a degeneracy in cool stars with log g ≥ ∼4; this comparison is then used to create an alternative and calibrated parameter set. We also plot the final catalogue in an [Fe/H] versus [α/Fe] diagram and recover the expected result of increasing [α/Fe] with decreasing [Fe/H] for Milky Way disc-halo stars. We apply our method to a subsample of spectra of uniform resolution and higher signal to noise that finds that our results are independent of this higher signal to noise. In the context of stellar population models, we are able to cover a parameter space for the creation of intermediate to old age models at solar-scaled [α/Fe], high [Fe/H] and enhanced [α/Fe], low [Fe/H].

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Angular systematics-free cosmological analysis of galaxy clustering in configuration space

ABSTRACT Galaxy redshift surveys are subject to incompleteness and inhomogeneous sampling due to the various constraints inherent to spectroscopic observations. This can introduce systematic errors on the summary statistics of interest, which need to be mitigated in cosmological analysis to achieve high accuracy. Standard practices involve applying weighting schemes based on completeness estimates across the survey footprint, possibly supplemented with additional weighting schemes accounting for density-dependent effects. In this work, we concentrate on pure angular systematics and describe an alternative approach consisting in analysing the galaxy two-point correlation function where angular modes are nulled. By construction, this procedure removes all possible known and unknown sources of angular observational systematics, but also part of the cosmological signal. We use a modified Landy–Szalay estimator for the two-point correlation function that relies on an additional random catalogue where angular positions are randomly drawn from the galaxy catalogue, and provide an analytical model to describe this modified statistic. We test the model by performing an analysis of the full anisotropic clustering in mock catalogues of luminous red and emission-line galaxies at 0.43 < z < 1.1. We find that the model fully accounts for the modified correlation function in redshift space, without introducing new nuisance parameters. The derived cosmological parameters from the analysis of baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions display slightly larger statistical uncertainties, mostly for the growth rate of structure parameter fσ8 that exhibits a $50{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ statistical error increase, but free from angular systematic error.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Carbon-enhanced metal-poor star candidates from BP/RP spectra in Gaia DR3

ABSTRACT Carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars comprise almost a third of stars with [Fe/H] < −2, although their origins are still poorly understood. It is highly likely that one sub-class (CEMP-s stars) is tied to mass-transfer events in binary stars, while another sub-class (CEMP-no stars) are enriched by the nucleosynthetic yields of the first generations of stars. Previous studies of CEMP stars have primarily concentrated on the Galactic halo, but more recently they have also been detected in the thick disc and bulge components of the Milky Way. Gaia DR3 has provided an unprecedented sample of over 200 million low-resolution (R ≈ 50) spectra from the BP and RP photometers. Training on the CEMP catalogue from the SDSS/SEGUE database, we use XGBoost to identify the largest all-sky sample of CEMP candidate stars to date. In total, we find 58 872 CEMP star candidates, with an estimated contamination rate of 12 per cent. When comparing to literature high-resolution catalogues, we positively identify 60–68 per cent of the CEMP stars in the data, validating our results and indicating a high completeness rate. Our final catalogue of CEMP candidates spans from the inner to outer Milky Way, with distances as close as r ∼ 0.8 kpc from the Galactic centre, and as far as r > 30 kpc. Future higher resolution spectroscopic follow-up of these candidates will provide validations of their classification and enable investigations of the frequency of CEMP-s and CEMP-no stars throughout the Galaxy, to further constrain the nature of their progenitors.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Red supergiant candidates for multimessenger monitoring of the next Galactic supernova

ABSTRACT We compile a catalogue of 578 highly probable and 62 likely red supergiants (RSGs) of the Milky Way, which represents the largest list of Galactic RSG candidates designed for continuous follow-up efforts to date. We match distances measured by Gaia DR3, 2MASS photometry, and a 3D Galactic dust map to obtain luminous bright late-type stars. Determining the stars’ bolometric luminosities and effective temperatures, we compare to Geneva stellar evolution tracks to determine likely RSG candidates, and quantify contamination using a catalogue of Galactic AGB in the same luminosity-temperature space. We add details for common or interesting characteristics of RSG, such as multistar system membership, variability, and classification as a runaway. As potential future core-collapse supernova progenitors, we study the ability of the catalogue to inform the Supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS) coincidence network made to automate pointing, and show that for 3D position estimates made possible by neutrinos, the number of progenitor candidates can be significantly reduced, improving our ability to observe the progenitor pre-explosion and the early phases of core-collapse supernovae.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2025

sOPTICS: a modified density-based algorithm for identifying galaxy groups/clusters and brightest cluster galaxies

A direct approach to studying the galaxy–halo connection is to analyse groups and clusters of galaxies that trace the underlying dark matter haloes, emphasizing the importance of identifying galaxy clusters and their associated brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). In this work, we test and propose a robust density-based clustering algorithm that outperforms the traditional Friends-of-Friends (FoF) algorithm in the currently available galaxy group/cluster catalogues. Our new approach is a modified version of the Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering Structure (OPTICS) algorithm, which accounts for line-of-sight positional uncertainties due to redshift space distortions by incorporating a scaling factor, and is thereby referred to as sOPTICS. When tested on both a galaxy group catalogue based on semi-analytic galaxy formation simulations and observational data, our algorithm demonstrated robustness to outliers and relative insensitivity to hyperparameter choices. In total, we compared the results of eight clustering algorithms. The proposed density-based clustering method, sOPTICS, outperforms FoF in accurately identifying giant galaxy clusters and their associated BCGs in various environments with higher purity and recovery rate, also successfully recovering 115 BCGs out of 118 reliable BCGs from a large galaxy sample. Furthermore, when applied to an independent observational catalogue without extensive re-tuning, sOPTICS maintains high recovery efficiency, confirming its flexibility and effectiveness for large-scale astronomical surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Radio AGN selection in LoTSS DR2

ABSTRACT The wide-area component of the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) is currently the largest radio survey ever carried out, and a large fraction of the 4.5 million radio sources it contains have been optically identified with galaxies or quasars with spectroscopic or photometric redshifts. Identification of radio-luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN) from this LoTSS source catalogue is not only important from the point of view of understanding the accretion history of the universe, but also enables a wide range of other science. However, at present the vast majority of the optical identifications lack spectroscopic information or well-sampled spectral energy distributions. We show that colour and absolute magnitude information from the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) allows for the robust and efficient selection of radio AGN candidates, generating a radio AGN candidate sample of around 600 000 objects with flux density $> 1.1$ mJy, spanning 144-MHz luminosities between $10^{21}$ and $10^{29}$ W Hz$^{-1}$. We use the catalogue to constrain the total sky density of radio-luminous AGN and the evolution of their luminosity function between $z=0$ and $z\approx 1$, and show that the typical mass of their host galaxies, around $10^{11} {\rm M}_\odot$, is essentially independent of radio luminosity above around $L_{144} \approx 10^{24}$ W Hz$^{-1}$. Combining with Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) data, we show that the core prominences, radio spectral indices and variability of extended sources from the sample are qualitatively consistent with the expectations from unified models. A catalogue of the radio AGN candidates is released with this paper.

Hardcastle, M. J. (ORCID:0000000342231117)↗
DOE OSTI2020

The LSST DESC data challenge 1: generation and analysis of synthetic images for next-generation surveys

Data Challenge 1 (DC1) is the first synthetic data set produced by the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). DC1 is designed to develop and validate data reduction and analysis and to study the impact of systematic effects that will affect the LSST data set. DC1 is comprised of r -band observations of 40 deg 2 to 10 yr LSST depth. In this paper, we present each stage of the simulation and analysis process: (a) generation, by synthesizing sources from cosmological N -body simulations in individual sensor-visit images with different observing conditions; (b) reduction using a development version of the LSST Science Pipelines; and (c) matching to the input cosmological catalogue for validation and testing. We verify that testable LSST requirements pass within the fidelity of DC1. We establish a selection procedure that produces a sufficiently clean extragalactic sample for clustering analyses and we discuss residual sample contamination, including contributions from inefficiency in star–galaxy separation and imperfect deblending. We compute the galaxy power spectrum on the simulated field and conclude that: (i) survey properties have an impact of 50 per cent of the statistical uncertainty for the scales and models used in DC1; (ii) a selection to eliminate artefacts in the catalogues is necessary to avoid biases in the measured clustering; and (iii) the presence of bright objects has a significant impact (2σ–6σ) in the estimated power spectra at small scales (ℓ > 1200), highlighting the impact of blending in studies at small angular scales in LSST.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Clusters of galaxies up to z = 1.5 identified from photometric data of the Dark Energy Survey and unWISE

ABSTRACT Using photometric data from the Dark Energy Survey and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, we estimate photometric redshifts for 105 million galaxies using the nearest-neighbour algorithm. From such a large data base, 151 244 clusters of galaxies are identified in the redshift range of 0.1 < z ≲ 1.5 based on the overdensity of the total stellar mass of galaxies within a given photometric redshift slice, among which 76 826 clusters are newly identified and 30 477 clusters have a redshift z > 1. We cross-match these clusters with those in the catalogues identified from the X-ray surveys and the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect by the Planck, South Pole Telescope and Atacama Cosmology Telescope surveys, and get the redshifts for 45 X-ray clusters and 56 SZ clusters. More than 95 per cent SZ clusters in the sky region have counterparts in our catalogue. We find multiple optical clusters in the line of sight towards about 15 per cent of SZ clusters.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Data-driven selection and spectral classification of white dwarf stars

The next generation of spectroscopic surveys is expected to provide spectra for hundreds of thousands of white dwarf (WD) candidates in the upcoming years. Currently, spectroscopic classification of white dwarfs is mostly done by visual inspection, requiring substantial amounts of expert attention. We propose a data-driven pipeline for fast, automatic selection, and spectroscopic classification of WD candidates, trained using spectroscopically confirmed objects with available Gaia astrometry, photometry, and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectra with signal-to-noise ratios ≥9. The pipeline selects WD candidates with improved accuracy and completeness over existing algorithms, classifies their primary spectroscopic type with ≥ 90 % accuracy, and spectroscopically detects main sequence companions with similar performance. We apply our pipeline to the Gaia Data Release 3 cross-matched with the SDSS Data Release 17 (DR17), identifying 424 096 high-confidence WD candidates and providing the first catalogue of automated and quantifiable classification for 36 523 WD spectra. Both the catalogue and pipeline are made available online. Such a tool will prove particularly useful for the undergoing SDSS-V survey, allowing for rapid classification of thousands of spectra at every data release.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Identification and properties of isolated field elliptical galaxies from CFHTLS-W1

We present a catalogue of isolated field elliptical (IfE) galaxies drawn from the W1 field of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). 228 IfEs were identified from a flux-limited (r < 21.8) galaxy catalogue which corresponds to a density of 3 IfE/sq.deg. For comparison we consider a sample of elliptical galaxies living in dense environments, based on identification of the brightest cluster galaxies (BGCs) in the same survey. Using the same dataset for the comparison sample ensures a uniform selection, including in the redshift range as IfEs (i.e. 0.1 < z <0.9). A comparison of elliptical galaxies in different environments reveals that IfEs and BCGs have similar behaviours in their colours, star formation activities, and scaling relations of mass–size and size–luminosity. IfEs and BCGs have similar slopes in the scaling relations with respect to cluster ellipticals within the $ -24 \leq M_{r} \leq -22 $ magnitude and $10.2 < \textrm{log}(M_{*}/ \textrm M_\odot)\leq12.0 $ mass ranges. Three IfEs identified in this study can be associated with fossil groups found in the same survey area which gives clues for future studies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The Pantheon+ analysis: Improving the redshifts and peculiar velocities of Type Ia supernovae used in cosmological analyses

We examine the redshifts of a comprehensive set of published Type Ia supernovae, and provide a combined, improved catalogue with updated redshifts. We improve on the original catalogues by using the most up-to-date heliocentric redshift data available; ensuring all red shifts have uncertainty estimates; using the exact formulae to convert heliocentric redshifts into the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) frame; and utilising an improved peculiar velocity model that calculates local motions in redshift-space and more realistically accounts for the external bulk flow at high-redshifts. We review 2607 supernova redshifts; 2285 are from unique supernovae and 322 are from repeat observations of the same supernova. In total, we updated 990 unique heliocentric redshifts, and found 5 cases of missing or incorrect heliocentric corrections, 44 incorrect or missing supernova coordinates, 230 missing heliocentric or CMB frame redshifts, and 1200 missing redshift uncertainties. The absolute corrections range between 10 -8 ≤ Δz ≤ 0.038, and RMS(Δz) ~ 3 × 10 -3 . The sign of the correction was essentially random, so the mean and median corrections are small: 4 × 10 -4 and 4 × 10 -6 respectively. We examine the impact of these improvements for H 0 and the dark energy equation of state w and find that the cosmological results change by ΔH 0 = -0.12 km s -1 Mpc -1 and Δw = 0.003, both significantly smaller than previously reported uncertainties for H 0 of 1.0 km s -1 Mpc -1 and w of 0.04 respectively.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Prokaryotic viruses impact functional microorganisms in nutrient removal and carbon cycle in wastewater treatment plants

As one of the largest biotechnological applications, activated sludge (AS) systems in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) harbor enormous viruses, with 10-1,000-fold higher concentrations than in natural environments. However, the compositional variation and host-connections of AS viruses remain poorly explored. Here, we report a catalogue of ~50,000 prokaryotic viruses from six WWTPs, increasing the number of described viral species of AS by 23-fold, and showing the very high viral diversity which is largely unknown (98.4-99.6% of total viral contigs). Most viral genera are represented in more than one AS system with 53 identified across all. Viral infection widely spans 8 archaeal and 58 bacterial phyla, linking viruses with aerobic/anaerobic heterotrophs, and other functional microorganisms controlling nitrogen/phosphorous removal. Notably, Mycobacterium, notorious for causing AS foaming, is associated with 402 viral genera. Our findings expand the current AS virus catalogue and provide reference for the phage treatment to control undesired microorganisms in WWTPs.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗