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At least 1,693 records · Page 94
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DOE OSTI2021

The TELPERION survey for distant [O iii ] clouds around luminous and hibernating AGN

ABSTRACT We present a narrow-band [O iii] imaging survey of 111 active galactic nucleus (AGN) hosts and 17 merging-galaxy systems, in search of distant extended emission-line regions (EELRs) around AGNs (either extant or faded). Our data reach deeper than detection from the broad-band SDSS data and cover a wider field than some early emission-line surveys used to study extended structure around AGNs. Spectroscopic follow-up confirms two new distant AGN-ionized clouds, in the merging systems NGC 235 and NGC 5514, projected at 26 and 75 kpc from the nuclei (respectively). We also recover the previously known region in NGC 7252. These results strengthen the connection between EELRs and tidal features; kinematically quiescent distant EELRs are virtually always photoionized tidal debris. We see them in ≈10 per cent of the galaxies in our sample with tidal tails. Energy budgets suggest that the AGN in NGC 5514 has faded by >3 times during the extra light traveltime ≈250 000 yr from the nucleus to the cloud and then to the observer; strong shock emission in outflows masks the optical signature of the AGN. For NGC 235 our data are consistent with but do not unequivocally require variation over ≈85 000 yr. In addition to these very distant ionized clouds, we find luminous and extensive line emission within four galaxies – IC 1481, ESO 362-G08, NGC 5514, and NGC 7679. Among these, IC 1481 shows apparent ionization cones, a rare combination with its LINER AGN spectrum. In NGC 5514, we measure a 7-kpc shell expanding at ≈370 km s−1 west of the nucleus.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Search for extended Lyman-α emission around 9k quasars at z = 2–3

ABSTRACT Enormous Lyα nebulae (ELANe) around quasars have provided unique insights into the formation of massive galaxies and their associations with super-massive black holes since their discovery. However, their detection remains highly limited. This paper introduces a systematic search for extended Lyα emission around 8683 quasars at z = 2.34–3.00 using a simple but very effective broad-band gri selection based on the Third Public Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. Although the broad-band selection detects only bright Lyα emission (≳ 1 × 10−17 erg s−1cm−2 arcsec−2) compared with narrow-band imaging and integral field spectroscopy, we can apply this method to far more sources than such common approaches. We first generated continuum g-band images without contributions from Lyα emission for host and satellite galaxies using r- and i-bands. Then, we established Lyα maps by subtracting them from observed g-band images with Lyα emissions. Consequently, we discovered extended Lyα emission (with masked area >40 arcsec2) for 7 and 32 out of 366 and 8317 quasars in the Deep and Ultra-deep (35 deg2) and Wide (890 deg2) layers, parts of which may be potential candidates of ELANe. However, none of them seem to be equivalent to the largest ELANe ever found. We detected higher fractions of quasars with large nebulae around more luminous or radio-loud quasars, supporting previous results. Future applications to the forthcoming big data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will help us detect more promising candidates. The source catalogue and obtained Lyα properties for all the quasar targets are accessible as online material.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Translation and rotation equivariant normalizing flow (TRENF) for optimal cosmological analysis

ABSTRACT Our Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, and its perturbations obey translation and rotation symmetry. In this work, we develop translation and rotation equivariant normalizing flow (TRENF), a generative normalizing flow (NF) model which explicitly incorporates these symmetries, defining the data likelihood via a sequence of Fourier space-based convolutions and pixel-wise non-linear transforms. TRENF gives direct access to the high dimensional data likelihood p(x|y) as a function of the labels y, such as cosmological parameters. In contrast to traditional analyses based on summary statistics, the NF approach has no loss of information since it preserves the full dimensionality of the data. On Gaussian random fields, the TRENF likelihood agrees well with the analytical expression and saturates the Fisher information content in the labels y. On non-linear cosmological overdensity fields from N-body simulations, TRENF leads to significant improvements in constraining power over the standard power spectrum summary statistic. TRENF is also a generative model of the data, and we show that TRENF samples agree well with the N-body simulations it trained on, and that the inverse mapping of the data agrees well with a Gaussian white noise both visually and on various summary statistics: when this is perfectly achieved the resulting p(x|y) likelihood analysis becomes optimal. Finally, we develop a generalization of this model that can handle effects that break the symmetry of the data, such as the survey mask, which enables likelihood analysis on data without periodic boundaries.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Constraining IGM enrichment and metallicity with the C iv forest correlation function

ABSTRACT The distribution and abundance of metals in the diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) have implications for galaxy formation and evolution models, and has been argued to be sensitive to the Universe’s reionization history. However, reduced sensitivity in the near-IR implies that probing IGM metals at z > 4 is currently out of reach with the traditional method of detecting individual absorbers. We present a new technique based on clustering analysis that enables the detection of these weak IGM absorbers. We investigate the two-point correlation function (2PCF) of the ${\rm C\, {\small IV}}$ forest as a probe of IGM metallicity and enrichment topology by simulating the z = 4.5 IGM with models of inhomogeneous metal distributions. The 2PCF of the ${\rm C\, {\small IV}}$ forest demonstrates a clear peak at a characteristic separation corresponding to the doublet separation of the ${\rm C\, {\small IV}}$ line.The peak amplitude scales quadratically with metallicity, while enrichment topology affects both the shape and amplitude of the 2PCF. For models consistent with the distribution of metals at z ∼ 3, we find that we can constrain [C/H] to within 0.2 dex, log$\, M_{\rm {min}}$ to within 0.4 dex, and R to within 15 per cent. We show that CGM absorbers can be reliably identified and masked, thus recovering the underlying IGM signal. The auto-correlation of the metal-line forest presents a compelling avenue to constrain the IGM metallicity and enrichment topology with high precision at z > 4, thereby pushing such measurements into the Epoch of Reionization.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The XMM Cluster Survey analysis of the SDSS DR8 redMaPPer catalogue: implications for scatter, selection bias, and isotropy in cluster scaling relations

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present the X-ray analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR8 redMaPPer (SDSSRM) clusters using data products from the XMM Cluster Survey (XCS). In total, 1189 SDSSRM clusters fall within the XMM–Newton footprint. This has yielded 456 confirmed detections accompanied by X-ray luminosity (LX) measurements. Of these clusters, 381 have an associated X-ray temperature measurement (TX). This represents one of the largest samples of coherently derived cluster TX values to date. Our analysis of the X-ray observable to richness scaling relations has demonstrated that scatter in the TX–λ relation is roughly a third of that in the LX–λ relation, and that the LX–λ scatter is intrinsic, i.e. will not be significantly reduced with larger sample sizes. Analysis of the scaling relation between LX and TX has shown that the fits are sensitive to the selection method of the sample, i.e. whether the sample is made up of clusters detected ‘serendipitously’ compared to those deliberately targeted by XMM. These differences are also seen in the LX–λ relation and, to a lesser extent, in the TX–λ relation. Exclusion of the emission from the cluster core does not make a significant impact on the findings. A combination of selection biases is a likely, but yet unproven, reason for these differences. Finally, we have also used our data to probe recent claims of anisotropy in the LX–TX relation across the sky. We find no evidence of anistropy, but stress this may be masked in our analysis by the incomplete declination coverage of the SDSS.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Cosmic shear in harmonic space from the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Data: compatibility with configuration space results

ABSTRACT We perform a cosmic shear analysis in harmonic space using the first year of data collected by the Dark Energy Survey (DES-Y1). We measure the cosmic weak lensing shear power spectra using the metacalibration catalogue and perform a likelihood analysis within the framework of CosmoSIS. We set scale cuts based on baryonic effects contamination and model redshift and shear calibration uncertainties as well as intrinsic alignments. We adopt as fiducial covariance matrix an analytical computation accounting for the mask geometry in the Gaussian term, including non-Gaussian contributions. A suite of 1200 lognormal simulations is used to validate the harmonic space pipeline and the covariance matrix. We perform a series of stress tests to gauge the robustness of the harmonic space analysis. Finally, we use the DES-Y1 pipeline in configuration space to perform a similar likelihood analysis and compare both results, demonstrating their compatibility in estimating the cosmological parameters S8, σ8, and Ωm. We use the DES-Y1 metacalibration shape catalogue, with photometric redshifts estimates in the range of 0.2−1.3, divided in four tomographic bins finding σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5 = 0.766 ± 0.033 at 68 per cent CL. The methods implemented and validated in this paper will allow us to perform a consistent harmonic space analysis in the upcoming DES data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The impact and mitigation of broad-absorption-line quasars in Lyman α forest correlations

ABSTRACT Correlations in and with the flux transmission of the Lyman α (Ly α) forest in the spectra of high-redshift quasars are powerful cosmological tools, yet these measurements can be compromised if the intrinsic quasar continuum is significantly uncertain. One particularly problematic case is broad-absorption-line (BAL) quasars, which exhibit blueshifted absorption associated with many spectral features that are consistent with outflows of up to ∼0.1c. As these absorption features can both fall in the forest region and be difficult to distinguish from Ly α absorption, cosmological analyses eliminate the ∼12–16 per cent of quasars that exhibit BALs. In this paper, we explore an alternate approach that includes BALs in the Ly α autocorrelation function, with the exception of the expected locations of the BAL absorption troughs. This procedure returns over 95 per cent of the path-length that is lost by the exclusion of BALs, as well as increasing the density of sightlines. We show that including BAL quasars reduces the fractional uncertainty in the covariance matrix and correlation function by 12 per cent and does not significantly change the shape of the correlation function relative to analyses that exclude BAL quasars. We also evaluate different definitions of BALs, masking strategies, and potential differences in the quasar continuum in the forest region for BALs with different amounts of absorption.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Prospects for future studies using deep imaging: analysis of individual Galactic cirrus filaments

The presence of Galactic cirrus is an obstacle for studying both faint objects in our Galaxy and low surface brightness extragalactic structures. With the aim of studying individual cirrus filaments in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 data, we develop techniques based on machine learning and neural networks that allow one to isolate filaments from foreground and background sources in the entirety of Stripe 82 with a precision similar to that of the human expert. Our photometric study of individual filaments indicates that only those brighter than 26 mag arcsec −2 in the SDSS r band are likely to be identified in SDSS Stripe 82 data by their distinctive colours in the optical bands. We also show a significant impact of data processing (e.g. flat-fielding, masking of bright stars, and sky subtraction) on colour estimation. Analysing the distribution of filaments’ colours with the help of mock simulations, we conclude that most filaments have colours in the following ranges: 0.55 ≤g − r ≤ 0.73 and 0.01 ≤ r − i ≤ 0.33. Our work provides a useful framework for an analysis of all types of low surface brightness features (cirri, tidal tails, stellar streams, etc.) in existing and future deep optical surveys. For practical purposes, we provide the catalogue of dust filaments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Sky subtraction in an era of low surface brightness astronomy

ABSTRACT The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Wide-Fast Deep sky survey will reach unprecedented surface brightness depths over tens of thousands of square degrees. Surface brightness photometry has traditionally been a challenge. Current algorithms which combine object detection with sky estimation systematically oversubtract the sky, biasing surface brightness measurements at the faint end and destroying or severely compromising low surface brightness light. While it has recently been shown that properly accounting for undetected faint galaxies and the wings of brighter objects can in principle recover a more accurate sky estimate, this has not yet been demonstrated in practice. Obtaining a consistent spatially smooth underlying sky estimate is particularly challenging in the presence of representative distributions of bright and faint objects. In this paper, we use simulations of crowded and uncrowded fields designed to mimic Hyper Suprime-Cam data to perform a series of tests on the accuracy of the recovered sky. Dependence on field density, galaxy type, and limiting flux for detection are all considered. Several photometry packages are utilized: source extractor, gnuastro, and the LSST science pipelines. Each is configured in various modes, and their performance at extreme low surface brightness analysed. We find that the combination of the source extractor software package with novel source model masking techniques consistently produce extremely faint output sky estimates, by up to an order of magnitude, as well as returning high fidelity output science catalogues.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2023

Polarization fraction of Planck Galactic cold clumps and forecasts for the Simons Observatory

ABSTRACT We measure the mean-squared polarization fraction of a sample of 6282 Galactic cold clumps at 353 GHz, consisting of Planck Galactic cold clump (PGCC) catalogue category 1 objects [flux densities measured with signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) > 4]. At 353 GHz, we find the mean-squared polarization fraction, which we define as the mean-squared polarization divided by the mean-squared intensity, to be (4.79 ± 0.44) × 10−4 equation to an $11\, \sigma$ detection of polarization. We test if the polarization fraction depends on the clumps’ physical properties, including flux density, luminosity, Galactic latitude, and physical distance. We see a trend towards increasing polarization fraction with increasing Galactic latitude, but find no evidence that polarization depends on the other tested properties. The Simons Observatory, with angular resolution of order 1 arcmin and noise levels between 22 and $54\, \mu$K−arcmin at high frequencies, will substantially enhance our ability to determine the magnetic field structure in Galactic cold clumps. At $\ge 5\, \sigma$ significance, we predict the Simons Observatory will detect at least ∼12 000 cold clumps in intensity and ∼430 cold clumps in polarization. This number of polarization detections would represent a two orders of magnitude increase over the current Planck results. We also release software that can be used to mask these Galactic cold clumps in other analyses.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Broad absorption line quasars in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Early Data Release

Broad absorption line (BAL) quasars are characterized by gas clouds that absorb flux at the wavelength of common quasar spectral features, although blueshifted by velocities that can exceed $0.1c$. BAL features are interesting as signatures of significant feedback, yet they can also compromise cosmological studies with quasars by distorting the shape of the most prominent quasar emission lines, impacting redshift accuracy and measurements of the matter density distribution traced by the Lyman $\alpha$ forest. We present a catalogue of BAL quasars discovered in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey Early Data Release, which were observed as part of DESI Survey Validation, as well as the first two months of the main survey. We describe our method to automatically identify BAL quasars in DESI data, the quantities we measure for each BAL, and investigate the completeness and purity of this method with mock DESI observations. We mask the wavelengths of the BAL features and re-evaluate each BAL quasar redshift, finding new redshifts which are $243\, {\rm km}\, {\rm s}^{-1}$ smaller on average for the BAL quasar sample. These new, more accurate redshifts are important to obtain the best measurements of quasar clustering, especially at small scales. Finally, we present some spectra of rarer classes of BALs that illustrate the potential of DESI data to identify such populations for further study.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

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↗
DOE OSTI2024

Dark energy survey year 3 results: likelihood-free, simulation-based w CDM inference with neural compression of weak-lensing map statistics

We present simulation-based cosmological wcold dark matter (wCDM) inference using dark energy survey year 3 weak-lensing maps, via neural data compression of weak-lensing map summary statistics: power spectra, peak counts, and direct map-level compression/inference with convolutional neural networks (CNN). Using simulation-based inference, also known as likelihood-free or implicit inference, we use forward-modelled mock data to estimate posterior probability distributions of unknown parameters. This approach allows all statistical assumptions and uncertainties to be propagated through the forward-modelled mock data; these include sky masks, non-Gaussian shape noise, shape measurement bias, source galaxy clustering, photometric redshift uncertainty, intrinsic galaxy alignments, non-Gaussian density fields, neutrinos, and non-linear summary statistics. We include a series of tests to validate our inference results. This paper also describes the Gower Street simulation suite: 791 full-sky pkdgrav3 dark matter simulations, with cosmological model parameters sampled with a mixed active-learning strategy, from which we construct over 3000 mock dark energy survey lensing data sets. For wCDM inference, for which we allow –1 < w < –$\frac{1}{3}$⁠, our most constraining result uses power spectra combined with map-level (CNN) inference. Using gravitational lensing data only, this map-level combination gives Ω m = 0.283$^{+0.020}_{–0.027}$⁠, S 8 = 0.804$^{+0.025}_{–0.017⁠}$, and w < –0.80 (with a 68 per cent credible interval); compared to the power spectrum inference, this is more than a factor of two improvement in dark energy parameter (Ω⁠ DE , w⁠) precision.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Dark energy survey year 3 results: cosmology from galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in harmonic space

We present the joint tomographic analysis of galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering in harmonic space (HS), using galaxy catalogues from the first three years of observations by the Dark Energy Survey (DES Y3). We utilize the redMaGiC and MagLim catalogues as lens galaxies and the metacalibration catalogue as source galaxies. The measurements of angular power spectra are performed using the pseudo-$C_\ell$ method, and our theoretical modelling follows the fiducial analyses performed by DES Y3 in configuration space, accounting for galaxy bias, intrinsic alignments, magnification bias, shear magnification bias and photometric redshift uncertainties. We explore different approaches for scale cuts based on non-linear galaxy bias and baryonic effects contamination. Our fiducial covariance matrix is computed analytically, accounting for mask geometry in the Gaussian term, and including non-Gaussian contributions and super-sample covariance terms. To validate our HS pipelines and covariance matrix, we used a suite of 1800 log-normal simulations. We also perform a series of stress tests to gauge the robustness of our HS analysis. In the $\Lambda$CDM model, the clustering amplitude $S_8 =\sigma _8(\Omega _m/0.3)^{0.5}$ is constrained to $S_8 = 0.704\pm 0.029$ and $S_8 = 0.753\pm 0.024$ (68 per cent C.L.) for the redMaGiC and MagLim catalogues, respectively. For the wCDM, the dark energy equation of state is constrained to $w = -1.28 \pm 0.29$ and $w = -1.26^{+0.34}_{-0.27}$, for redMaGiC and MagLim catalogues, respectively. These results are compatible with the corresponding DES Y3 results in configuration space and pave the way for HS analyses using the DES Y6 data.

(cosmology:) cosmological parameters↗
DOE OSTI2026

Mass dependence of halo baryon fractions from the kinetic Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect

ABSTRACT We detect the kinetic Sunyaev–Zeldovich imprint of peculiar motions of galaxy groups and clusters, using the photometric Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Legacy Surveys together with cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). We develop a comprehensive forward model based on the AbacusSummit cosmological simulations: Mock galaxy group catalogues and synthetic kinetic Sunyaev–Zeldovich (kSZ) maps are generated, together with a reconstructed peculiar velocity field that allows for photo-z errors, redshift-space distortions, and survey masks. We investigate possible contamination from the cosmic infrared background (CIB), finding that CIB effects are subdominant to the kSZ signal in the relevant ACT frequency channel. We then predict the kSZ signal expected when stacking CMB temperature maps around groups, taking account of their estimated radial velocities. Comparing the model with observations, we are able to constrain the total baryon fraction within haloes, as well as their internal gas profiles. We find evidence for mass dependence of the halo baryon fraction within the virial radius. The gas fraction in massive groups is consistent with the universal baryon fraction, but low-mass groups ($10^{12.5} \lesssim M\, /\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{M}_\odot \lesssim 10^{14}$) are depleted to $0.38 \pm 0.11$ times the universal baryon fraction. We find this low virial baryon fraction to be consistent with an extended gas profile, for which the total baryon content reaches the universal value well beyond the virial radius. This conclusion is consistent with previous analyses using X-ray, kSZ, and weak lensing, and plausibly reflects energetic feedback processes from the galaxies in these haloes.

Roper, Finn A [Institute for Astronomy, University↗
DOE OSTI2015

SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey data release 12: Galaxy target selection and large-scale structure catalogues

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III project, has provided the largest survey of galaxy redshifts available to date, in terms of both the number of galaxy redshifts measured by a single survey, and the effective cosmological volume covered. Key to analysing the clustering of these data to provide cosmological measurements is understanding the detailed properties of this sample. Potential issues include variations in the target catalogue caused by changes either in the targeting algorithm or properties of the data used, the pattern of spectroscopic observations, the spatial distribution of targets for which redshifts were not obtained, and variations in the target sky density due to observational systematics. We document here the target selection algorithms used to create the galaxy samples that comprise BOSS. We also present the algorithms used to create large-scale structure catalogues for the final Data Release (DR12) samples and the associated random catalogues that quantify the survey mask. The algorithms are an evolution of those used by the BOSS team to construct catalogues from earlier data, and have been designed to accurately quantify the galaxy sample. Furthermore, the code used, designated mksample, is released with this paper.

(cosmology:) large-scale structure of Universe↗
DOE OSTI2015

redMaPPer – III. A detailed comparison of the Planck 2013 and SDSS DR8 redMaPPer cluster catalogues

We compare the Planck Sunyaev–Zeldovich (SZ) cluster sample (PSZ1) to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) redMaPPer catalogue, finding that all Planck clusters within the redMaPPer mask and within the redshift range probed by redMaPPer are contained in the redMaPPer cluster catalogue. These common clusters define a tight scaling relation in the richness-SZ mass (λ–MSZ) plane, with an intrinsic scatter in richness of σλ|MSZ=0.266±0.017. The corresponding intrinsic scatter in true cluster halo mass at fixed richness is ≈21 percent. The regularity of this scaling relation is used to identify failures in both catalogues. The failure rates for redMaPPer and PSZ1 1.2 percent and 14.7 percent, respectively. The PSZ1 failure rates decreases to 9.8 percent after removing incorrect redshifts that were drawn from the literature. We note the failure rates in the PSZ1 from this analysis are specific to the SDSS overlap region, and may not be indicative of failure rates over the full Planck survey. We have further identified five PSZ1 sources that suffer from projection effects (multiple rich systems along the line of sight of the SZ detection) and 17 new high-redshift (z ≳ 0.6) cluster candidates of varying degrees of confidence.

Astrophysics,ASTRO↗
DOE OSTI2016

Cosmology constraints from shear peak statistics in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data

Shear peak statistics has gained a lot of attention recently as a practical alternative to the two point statistics for constraining cosmological parameters. We perform a shear peak statistics analysis of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data, using weak gravitational lensing measurements from a 139 deg$^2$ field. We measure the abundance of peaks identified in aperture mass maps, as a function of their signal-to-noise ratio, in the signal-to-noise range $0<\mathcal S / \mathcal N<4$. To predict the peak counts as a function of cosmological parameters we use a suite of $N$-body simulations spanning 158 models with varying $\Omega_{\rm m}$ and $\sigma_8$, fixing $w = -1$, $\Omega_{\rm b} = 0.04$, $h = 0.7$ and $n_s=1$, to which we have applied the DES SV mask and redshift distribution. In our fiducial analysis we measure $\sigma_{8}(\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.6}=0.77 \pm 0.07$, after marginalising over the shear multiplicative bias and the error on the mean redshift of the galaxy sample. We introduce models of intrinsic alignments, blending, and source contamination by cluster members. These models indicate that peaks with $\mathcal S / \mathcal N>4$ would require significant corrections, which is why we do not include them in our analysis. We compare our results to the cosmological constraints from the two point analysis on the SV field and find them to be in good agreement in both the central value and its uncertainty. As a result, we discuss prospects for future peak statistics analysis with upcoming DES data.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗