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At least 163 records · Page 9

A synthetic Roman Space Telescope High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey: supernovae in the deep field

ABSTRACT NASA will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (hereafter Roman) in the second half of this decade, which will allow for a generation-defining measurement of dark energy through multiple probes, including Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). To improve decisions on survey strategy, we have created the first simulations of realistic Roman images that include artificial SNe Ia injected as point sources in the images. Our analysis combines work done on Roman simulations for weak gravitational lensing studies as well as catalogue-level simulations of SN Ia samples. We have created a time series of images over 2 yr containing ∼1050 SNe Ia, covering a 1 deg2 subarea of a planned 5 deg2 deep survey. We have released these images publicly for community use along with input catalogues of all injected sources. We create secondary products from these images by generating coadded images and demonstrating recovery of transient sources using image subtraction. We perform first-use analyses on these images in order to measure galaxy detection efficiency, point source detection efficiency, and host-galaxy association biases. The simulated images can be found here at https://roman.ipac.caltech.edu/sims/SN_Survey_Image_sim.html.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Simulating image coaddition with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – II. Analysis of the simulated images and implications for weak lensing

One challenge for applying current weak lensing analysis tools to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is that individual images will be undersampled. Our companion paper presented an initial application of Imcom – an algorithm that builds an optimal mapping from input to output pixels to reconstruct a fully sampled combined image – on the Roman image simulations. In this paper, we measure the output noise power spectra, identify the sources of the major features in the power spectra, and show that simple analytic models that ignore sampling effects underestimate the power spectra of the coadded noise images. We compute the moments of both idealized injected stars and fully simulated stars in the coadded images, and their one- and two-point statistics. We show that the idealized injected stars have root-mean-square ellipticity errors (1–6) × 10 -4 per component depending on the band; the correlation functions are ≥2 orders of magnitude below requirements, indicating that the image combination step itself is using a small fraction of the overall Roman second moment error budget, although the fourth moments are larger and warrant further investigation. The stars in the simulated sky images, which include blending and chromaticity effects, have correlation functions near the requirement level (and below the requirement level in a wide-band image constructed by stacking all four filters). We evaluate the noise-induced biases in the ellipticities of injected stars, and explain the resulting trends with an analytical model. We conclude by enumerating the next steps in developing an image coaddition pipeline for Roman.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Simulating image coaddition with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – I. Simulation methodology and general results

The upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will carry out a wide-area survey in the near-infrared. A key science objective is the measurement of cosmic structure via weak gravitational lensing. Roman data will be undersampled, which introduces new challenges in the measurement of source galaxy shapes; a potential solution is to use linear algebra-based coaddition techniques such as imcom that combine multiple undersampled images to produce a single oversampled output mosaic with a desired ‘target’ point spread function (PSF). We present here an initial application of imcom to 0.64 square degrees of simulated Roman data, based on the Roman branch of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) Data Challenge 2 (DC2) simulation. We show that imcom runs successfully on simulated data that includes features such as plate scale distortions, chip gaps, detector defects, and cosmic ray masks. We simultaneously propagate grids of injected sources and simulated noise fields as well as the full simulation. We quantify the residual deviations of the PSF from the target (the ‘leakage’), as well as noise properties of the output images; we discuss how the overall tiling pattern as well as Moiré patterns appear in the final leakage and noise maps. We include appendices on interpolation algorithms and the interaction of undersampling with image processing operations that may be of broader applicability. The companion paper (‘Paper II’) explores the implications for weak lensing analyses.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Atacama cosmology telescope: flux upper limits from a targeted search for extragalactic transients

ABSTRACT We have performed targeted searches of known extragalactic transient events at millimetre wavelengths using nine seasons (2013–2021) of 98, 150, and 229 GHz Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) observations that mapped ∼40 per cent of the sky for most of the data volume. Our data cover 88 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), 12 tidal disruption events (TDEs), and 203 other transients, including supernovae (SNe). We stack our ACT observations to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the maps. In all cases but one, we do not detect these transients in the ACT data. The single candidate detection (event AT2019ppm), seen at ∼5σ significance in our data, appears to be due to active galactic nuclei activity in the host galaxy coincident with a transient alert. For each source in our search we provide flux upper limits. For example, the medians for the 95 per cent confidence upper limits at 98 GHz are 15, 18, and 16 mJy for GRBs, SNe, and TDEs, respectively, in the first month after discovery. The projected sensitivity of future wide-area cosmic microwave background surveys should be sufficient to detect many of these events using the methods described in this paper.

Hervías-Caimapo, Carlos↗

Discovery of a z ∼ 0.8 ultra steep spectrum radio halo in the MeerKAT-South Pole Telescope Survey

Radio haloes are diffuse synchrotron sources that trace the turbulent intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters. However, their origin remains unknown. Two main formation models have been proposed: the hadronic model, in which relativistic electrons are continuously injected by cosmic-ray protons; and the leptonic turbulent re-acceleration model, where cluster mergers re-energize electrons in situ. A key discriminant between the two models would be the existence of ultra-steep spectrum radio haloes (USSRHs), which can only be produced through turbulent re-acceleration. Here, we report the discovery of an USSRH in the galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ2337–5942 at redshift $z = 0.78$ in the MeerKAT-South Pole Telescope 100 deg$^2$ UHF (0.58–1.09 GHz) survey. This discovery is noteworthy for two primary reasons: it is the highest redshift USSRH system to date; and the close correspondence of the radio emission with the thermal ICM as traced by Chandra X-ray observations, further supporting the leptonic re-acceleration model. The halo is underluminous for its mass, consistent with a minor merger origin, which produces steep-spectrum, lower luminosity haloes. This result demonstrates the power of wide-field, high-fidelity, low-frequency ($\lesssim 1$ GHz) surveys like the MeerKAT-SPT 100 deg$^2$ programme to probe the origin and evolution of radio haloes over cosmic time, ahead of the Square Kilometre Array.

X-rays: galaxies↗

Polarization whorls from M87* at the event horizon telescope

The event horizon telescope (EHT) is anticipated to soon produce polarimetric images of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the neighbouring galaxy M87. There are indications that this black hole is rapidly spinning. General relativity predicts that such a high-spin black hole has an emergent conformal symmetry near its event horizon. In this paper, we use this symmetry to analytically predict the polarized near-horizon emissions to be seen at the EHT and find a distinctive pattern of whorls aligned with the spin.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Revealing the strength of three-nucleon interactions with the proposed Einstein Telescope

Nuclear systems, ranging from atomic nuclei to dense matter probed in neutron stars, are governed by strong interactions. Three-nucleon forces have been found to be a crucial ingredient for the reliable description of these systems. Here, in this work, we explore how astrophysical data on neutron stars and their mergers from current and next-generation observatories will enable us to distinguish nuclear Hamiltonians. In particular, we investigate two different nuclear Hamiltonians that have been adjusted to reproduce two-nucleon scattering data and properties of light nuclei, but differ in the three-nucleon interactions among neutrons. We find that no significant constraints can be obtained from current data, but that the proposed Einstein Telescope could provide strong evidence to distinguish among these Hamiltonians.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on cosmic birefringence

We present new constraints on anisotropic birefringence of the cosmic microwave background polarization using two seasons of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope covering 456 square degrees of sky. The birefringence power spectrum, measured using a curved-sky quadratic estimator, is consistent with zero. Our results provide the tightest current constraint on birefringence over a range of angular scales between 5 arc minutes and 9°. Here, we improve previous upper limits on the amplitude of a scale-invariant birefringence power spectrum by a factor of between 2 and 3. Assuming a nearly massless axion field during inflation, our result is equivalent to a 2σ upper limit on the Chern-Simons coupling constant between axions and photons of g αγ < 4.0 × 10 –2 /H I , where H I is the inflationary Hubble scale.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Component-separated maps of CMB temperature and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect

Optimal analyses of many signals in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) require map-level extraction of individual components in the microwave sky, rather than measurements at the power spectrum level alone. To date, nearly all map-level component separation in CMB analyses has been performed exclusively using satellite data. In this paper, we implement a component separation method based on the internal linear combination (ILC) approach which we have designed to optimally account for the anisotropic noise (in the 2D Fourier domain) often found in ground-based CMB experiments. Using this method, we combine multi-frequency data from the Planck satellite and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) to construct the first wide-area, arcminute-resolution component-separated maps (≈ 2100 sq. deg.) of the CMB temperature anisotropy and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect sourced by the inverse-Compton scattering of CMB photons off hot, ionized gas. Our ILC pipeline allows for explicit deprojection of various contaminating signals, including a modified blackbody approximation of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) spectral energy distribution. The cleaned CMB maps will be a useful resource for CMB lensing reconstruction, kinematic SZ cross-correlations, and primordial non-Gaussianity studies. Here, the tSZ maps will be used to study the pressure profiles of galaxies, groups, and clusters through cross-correlations with halo catalogs, with dust contamination controlled via CIB deprojection. The data products described in this paper are available on LAMBDA.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Cosmology requirements on supernova photometric redshift systematics for the Rubin LSST and Roman Space Telescope

Some million type Ia supernovae (SN) will be discovered and monitored during upcoming wide area time domain surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). For cosmological use, accurate redshifts are needed among other characteristics; however the vast majority of the SN will not have spectroscopic redshifts, even for their host galaxies, only photometric redshifts. We assess the redshift systematic control necessary for robust cosmology. Based on the photometric vs true redshift relation generated by machine learning applied to a simulation of 500,000 galaxies as observed with LSST quality, we quantify requirements on systematics in the mean relation and in the outlier fraction and deviance so as not to bias dark energy cosmological inference. Certain redshift ranges are particularly sensitive, motivating spectroscopic followup of SN at z ≲ 0.2 and around z ≈ 0.5–0.6 . Including Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope near infrared bands in the simulation, we reanalyze the constraints, finding improvements at high redshift but little at the low redshifts where systematics lead to strong cosmology bias. We identify a complete spectroscopic survey of SN host galaxies for z≲0.2 as a highly favored element for robust SN cosmology.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Combined kinematic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich measurements from BOSS CMASS and LOWZ halos

The scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off the free-electron gas in galaxies and clusters leaves detectable imprints on high resolution CMB maps: the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effects (tSZ and kSZ respectively). We use combined microwave maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope DR5 and Planck in combination with the CMASS (mean redshift $\langle z \rangle$ = 0.55 and host halo mass $\langle M_{vir} \rangle$ = 3 × 10 13 M ⊙ ) and LOWZ ( $\langle z \rangle$ = 0.31 , $\langle M_{vir} \rangle$ = 5 × 10 13 M ⊙ ) galaxy catalogs from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS DR10 and DR12), to study the gas associated with these galaxy groups. Using individual reconstructed velocities, we perform a stacking analysis and reject the no-kSZ hypothesis at 6.5σ, the highest significance to date. This directly translates into a measurement of the electron number density profile, and thus of the gas density profile. Despite the limited signal to noise, the measurement shows at high significance that the gas density profile is more extended than the dark matter density profile, for any reasonable baryon abundance (formally > 90 σ for the cosmic baryon abundance). We simultaneously measure the tSZ signal, i.e., the electron thermal pressure profile of the same CMASS objects, and reject the no-tSZ hypothesis at 10σ. We combine tSZ and kSZ measurements to estimate the electron temperature to 20% precision in several aperture bins, and find it comparable to the virial temperature. In a companion paper, we analyze these measurements to constrain the gas thermodynamics and the properties of feedback inside galaxy groups. We present the corresponding LOWZ measurements in this paper, ruling out a null kSZ (tSZ) signal at 2.9 (13.9) σ , and leave their interpretation to future work. This paper and the companion paper demonstrate that current CMB experiments can detect and resolve gas profiles in low mass halos and at high redshifts, which are the most sensitive to feedback in galaxy formation and the most difficult to measure any other way. They will be a crucial input to cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, thus improving our understanding of galaxy formation. These precise gas profiles are already sufficient to reduce the main limiting theoretical systematic in galaxy-galaxy lensing: baryonic uncertainties. Future such measurements will thus unleash the statistical power of weak lensing from the Rubin, Euclid and Roman observatories. Finally, our stacking software ThumbStackis publicly available and directly applicable to future Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Detection of the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect with SDSS DR15 galaxies

We present a 5.4$\sigma$ detection of the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect using Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and $\it{Planck}$ CMB observations in combination with Luminous Red Galaxy samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR15 catalog. Results are obtained using three ACT CMB maps: co-added 150 GHz and 98 GHz maps, combining observations from 2008-2018 (ACT DR5), which overlap with SDSS DR15 over 3,700 sq. deg., and a component-separated map using night-time only observations from 2014-2015 (ACT DR4), overlapping with SDSS DR15 over 2,089 sq. deg. Comparisons of the results from these three maps provide consistency checks in relation to potential frequency-dependent foreground contamination. A total of 343,647 galaxies are used as tracers to identify and locate galaxy groups and clusters from which the kSZ signal is extracted using aperture photometry. We consider the impact of various aperture photometry assumptions and covariance estimation methods on the signal extraction. Theoretical predictions of the pairwise velocities are used to obtain best-fit, mass-averaged, optical depth estimates for each of five luminosity-selected tracer samples. A comparison of the kSZ-derived optical depth measurements obtained here to those derived from the thermal SZ effect for the same sample is presented in a companion paper.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Probing the baryon content of SDSS DR15 galaxies with the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effects

We present high signal-to-noise measurements (up to 12$\sigma$) of the average thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect from optically selected galaxy groups and clusters and estimate their baryon content within a 2.1$^\prime$ radius aperture. Sources from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) DR15 catalog overlap with 3,700 sq. deg. of sky observed by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2008 to 2018 at 150 and 98 GHz (ACT DR5), and 2,089 sq. deg. of internal linear combination component-separated maps combining ACT and $\it{Planck}$ data (ACT DR4). The corresponding optical depths, $\bar{\tau}$, which depend on the baryon content of the halos, are estimated using results from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations assuming an AGN feedback radiative cooling model. We estimate the mean mass of the halos in multiple luminosity bins, and compare the tSZ-based $\bar{\tau}$ estimates to theoretical predictions of the baryon content for a Navarro-Frenk-White profile. We do the same for $\bar{\tau}$ estimates extracted from fits to pairwise baryon momentum measurements of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (kSZ) for the same data set obtained in a companion paper. We find that the $\bar{\tau}$ estimates from the tSZ measurements in this work and the kSZ measurements in the companion paper agree within $1\sigma$ for two out of the three disjoint luminosity bins studied, while they differ by 2-3$\sigma$ in the highest luminosity bin. The optical depth estimates account for one third to all of the theoretically predicted baryon content in the halos across luminosity bins. Potential systematic uncertainties are discussed. The tSZ and kSZ measurements provide a step towards empirical Compton-$\bar{y}$-$\bar{\tau}$ relationships to provide new tests of cluster formation and evolution models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays: Pathfinder experiment for a next-generation neutrino observatory

The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays (RET-CR) is a recently funded experiment designed to detect the englacial cascade of a cosmic ray-initiated air shower via in-ice radar, toward the goal of a full-scale, next-generation experiment to detect ultrahigh energy neutrinos in polar ice. For cosmic rays with a primary energy greater than 10 PeV, roughly 10% of an air shower’s energy reaches the surface of a high elevation ice sheet (≳2 ˙km) concentrated into a radius of roughly 10 cm. This penetrating shower core creates an in-ice cascade orders of magnitude more dense than the preceding in-air cascade. Additionally, this dense cascade can be detected via the radar echo technique, where transmitted radio waves are reflected from the ionization deposit left in the wake of the cascade. RET-CR will test the radar echo method in nature, with the in-ice cascade of a cosmic ray-initiated air shower serving as a test beam. In this work, we present the projected event rate and sensitivity based upon a three part simulation using corsika, geant4, and radioscatter. RET-CR expects ~1 radar echo event per day.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on prerecombination early dark energy

The early dark energy (EDE) scenario aims to increase the value of the Hubble constant (H0) inferred from cosmic microwave background (CMB) data over that found in the standard cosmological model (Λ CDM ), via the introduction of a new form of energy density in the early Universe. The EDE component briefly accelerates cosmic expansion just prior to recombination, which reduces the physical size of the sound horizon imprinted in the CMB. Previous work has found that nonzero EDE is not preferred by Planck CMB power spectrum data alone, which yield a 95% confidence level (C.L.) upper limit f EDE < 0.087 on the maximal fractional contribution of the EDE field to the cosmic energy budget. In this paper, we fit the EDE model to CMB data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 4. We find that a combination of ACT, large-scale Planck TT (similar to WMAP), Planck CMB lensing, and BAO data prefers the existence of EDE at >99.7 % C .L . : f EDE = 0.091$^{+0.020}_{-0.036}$, with H 0 = 70.9$^{+1.0}_{-2.0}$ km/s/Mpc (both 68% C.L.). From a model-selection standpoint, we find that EDE is favored over Λ CDM by these data at roughly 3 σ significance. In contrast, a joint analysis of the full Planck and ACT data yields no evidence for EDE, as previously found for Planck alone. We show that the preference for EDE in ACT alone is driven by its TE and EE power spectrum data. The tight constraint on EDE from Planck alone is driven by its high-ℓ TT power spectrum data. Understanding whether these differing constraints are physical in nature, due to systematics, or simply a rare statistical fluctuation is of high priority. Here, the best-fit EDE models to ACT and Planck exhibit coherent differences across a wide range of multipoles in TE and EE, indicating that a powerful test of this scenario is anticipated with near-future data from ACT and other ground-based experiments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

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

Observations of the millimeter sky contain valuable information on a number of signals, including the blackbody cosmic microwave background (CMB), Galactic emissions, and the Compton-y distortion due to the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect. Extracting new insight into cosmological and astrophysical questions often requires combining multiwavelength observations to spectrally isolate one component. Here, in this work, we present a new arc-minute-resolution Compton-y map, which traces out the line-of-sight-integrated electron pressure, as well as maps of the CMB in intensity and E-mode polarization, across a third of the sky (around 13,000 deg 2 ). We produce these through a joint analysis of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 4 and 6 at frequencies of roughly 93, 148, and 225 GHz, together with data from the Planck satellite at frequencies between 30 and 545 GHz. We present detailed verification of an internal linear combination pipeline implemented in a needlet frame that allows us to efficiently suppress Galactic contamination and account for spatial variations in the ACT instrument noise. These maps provide a significant advance, in noise levels and resolution, over the existing Planck component-separated maps and will enable a host of science goals including studies of cluster and galaxy astrophysics, inferences of the cosmic velocity field, primordial non-Gaussianity searches, and gravitational lensing reconstruction of the CMB.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Dark matter discovery potential of the Advanced Particle-Astrophysics Telescope

Gamma-ray observations of Milky Way dwarf galaxies have been used to place stringent constraints on the dark matter’s annihilation cross section. Here, in this paper, we evaluate the sensitivity of the proposed Advanced Particle-Astrophysics Telescope (APT) to dark matter in these systems, finding that such an instrument would be capable of constraining thermal relics with masses as large as m X ~ 600 GeV. Furthermore, in dark matter scenarios motivated by the observed Galactic Center gamma-ray excess, we predict that APT would detect several dwarf galaxies with high significance. Such observations could be used to test the predicted proportionality between the gamma-ray fluxes and J-factors of individual dwarf galaxies, providing us with an unambiguous test of the origin of the Galactic Center excess.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Masses of Sunyaev-Zel’dovich galaxy clusters detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Stacked lensing measurements with Subaru HSC year 3 data

We present a stacked lensing analysis of 96 galaxy clusters selected by the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We select foreground galaxy clusters with a 5 σ -level SZ threshold in CMB observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, while we define background source galaxies for the lensing analysis with secure photometric redshift cuts in Year 3 data of the Subaru Hyper Suprime Cam survey. We detect the stacked lensing signal in the range of 0.1 < R [ h - 1 Mpc ] < 100 in each of three cluster redshift bins, 0.092 < z ≤ 0.445 , 0.445 < z ≤ 0.695 , and 0.695 < z ≤ 1.180 , with 32 galaxy clusters in each bin. The cumulative signal-to-noise ratios of the lensing signal are 14.6, 12.0, and 6.6, respectively. Using a halo-based forward model, we then constrain statistical relationships between the mass inferred from the SZ observation (i.e. SZ mass) and the total mass derived from our stacked lensing measurements. At the average SZ mass in the cluster sample ( 2.1 - 2.4 × 10 14 h - 1 M ⊙ ), our likelihood analysis shows that the average total mass differs from the SZ counterpart by a factor of 1.3 ± 0.2 , 1.6 ± 0.2 , and 1.6 ± 0.3 (68%) in the aforementioned redshift ranges, respectively. Our limits are consistent with previous lensing measurements, and we find that the cluster modeling choices can introduce a 1 σ -level difference in our parameter inferences.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗