No Arabic abstract
Following an approach of Matarrese and Pietroni, we derive the functional renormalization group (RG) flow of the effective action of cosmological large-scale structures. Perturbative solutions of this RG flow equation are shown to be consistent with standard cosmological perturbation theory. Non-perturbative approximate solutions can be obtained by truncating the a priori infinite set of possible effective actions to a finite subspace. Using for the truncated effective action a form dictated by dissipative fluid dynamics, we derive RG flow equations for the scale dependence of the effective viscosity and sound velocity of non-interacting dark matter, and we solve them numerically. Physically, the effective viscosity and sound velocity account for the interactions of long-wavelength fluctuations with the spectrum of smaller-scale perturbations. We find that the RG flow exhibits an attractor behaviour in the IR that significantly reduces the dependence of the effective viscosity and sound velocity on the input values at the UV scale. This allows for a self-contained computation of matter and velocity power spectra for which the sensitivity to UV modes is under control.
Techniques based on $n$-particle irreducible effective actions can be used to study systems where perturbation theory does not apply. The main advantage, relative to other non-perturbative continuum methods, is that the hierarchy of integral equations that must be solved truncates at the level of the action, and no additional approximations are needed. The main problem with the method is renormalization, which until now could only be done at the lowest ($n$=2) level. In this paper we show how to obtain renormalized results from an $n$-particle irreducible effective action at any order. We consider a symmetric scalar theory with quartic coupling in four dimensions and show that the 4 loop 4-particle-irreducible calculation can be renormalized using a renormalization group method. The calculation involves one bare mass and one bare coupling constant which are introduced at the level of the Lagrangian, and cannot be done using any known method by introducing counterterms.
We present a mitigation strategy to reduce the impact of non-linear galaxy bias on the joint `$3 times 2 $pt cosmological analysis of weak lensing and galaxy surveys. The $Psi$-statistics that we adopt are based on Complete Orthogonal Sets of E/B Integrals (COSEBIs). As such they are designed to minimise the contributions to the observable from the smallest physical scales where models are highly uncertain. We demonstrate that $Psi$-statistics carry the same constraining power as the standard two-point galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing statistics, but are significantly less sensitive to scale-dependent galaxy bias. Using two galaxy bias models, motivated by halo-model fits to data and simulations, we quantify the error in a standard $3 times 2$pt analysis where constant galaxy bias is assumed. Even when adopting conservative angular scale cuts, that degrade the overall cosmological parameter constraints, we find of order $1 sigma$ biases for Stage III surveys on the cosmological parameter $S_8 = sigma_8(Omega_{rm m}/0.3)^{alpha}$. This arises from a leakage of the smallest physical scales to all angular scales in the standard two-point correlation functions. In contrast, when analysing $Psi$-statistics under the same approximation of constant galaxy bias, we show that the bias on the recovered value for $S_8$ can be decreased by a factor of $sim 2$, with less conservative scale cuts. Given the challenges in determining accurate galaxy bias models in the highly non-linear regime, we argue that $3 times 2$pt analyses should move towards new statistics that are less sensitive to the smallest physical scales.
With the completion of the Planck mission, in order to continue to gather cosmological information it has become crucial to understand the Large Scale Structures (LSS) of the universe to percent accuracy. The Effective Field Theory of LSS (EFTofLSS) is a novel theoretical framework that aims to develop an analytic understanding of LSS at long distances, where inhomogeneities are small. We further develop the description of biased tracers in the EFTofLSS to account for the effect of baryonic physics and primordial non-Gaussianities, finding that new bias coefficients are required. Then, restricting to dark matter with Gaussian initial conditions, we describe the prediction of the EFTofLSS for the one-loop halo-halo and halo-matter two-point functions, and for the tree-level halo-halo-halo, matter-halo-halo and matter-matter-halo three-point functions. Several new bias coefficients are needed in the EFTofLSS, even though their contribution at a given order can be degenerate and the same parameters contribute to multiple observables. We develop a method to reduce the number of biases to an irreducible basis, and find that, at the order at which we work, seven bias parameters are enough to describe this extremely rich set of statistics. We then compare with the output of $N$-body simulations. For the lowest mass bin, we find percent level agreement up to $ksimeq 0.3,h,{rm Mpc}^{-1}$ for the one-loop two-point functions, and up to $ksimeq 0.15,h,{rm Mpc}^{-1}$ for the tree-level three-point functions, with the $k$-reach decreasing with higher mass bins. This is consistent with the theoretical estimates, and suggests that the cosmological information in LSS amenable to analytical control is much more than previously believed.
The Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure (EFTofLSS) is a formalism that allows us to predict the clustering of Cosmological Large-Scale Structure in the mildly non-linear regime in an accurate and reliable way. After validating our technique against several sets of numerical simulations, we perform the analysis for the cosmological parameters of the DR12 BOSS data. We assume $Lambda$CDM, a fixed value of the baryon/dark-matter ratio, $Omega_b/Omega_c$, and of the tilt of the primordial power spectrum, $n_s$, and no significant input from numerical simulations. By using the one-loop power spectrum multipoles, we measure the primordial amplitude of the power spectrum, $A_s$, the abundance of matter, $Omega_m$, and the Hubble parameter, $H_0$, to about $13%$, $3.2%$ and $3.2%$ respectively, obtaining $ln(10^{10}As)=2.72pm 0.13$, $Omega_m=0.309pm 0.010$, $H_0=68.5pm 2.2$ km/(s Mpc) at 68% confidence level. If we then add a CMB prior on the sound horizon, the error bar on $H_0$ is reduced to $1.6%$. These results are a substantial qualitative and quantitative improvement with respect to former analyses, and suggest that the EFTofLSS is a powerful instrument to extract cosmological information from Large-Scale Structure.
The precision of the cosmological data allows us to accurately approximate the predictions for cosmological observables by Taylor expanding up to a low order the dependence on the cosmological parameters around a reference cosmology. By applying this observation to the redshift-space one-loop galaxy power spectrum of the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure, we analyze the BOSS DR12 data by scanning over all the parameters of $Lambda$CDM cosmology with massive neutrinos. We impose several sets of priors, the widest of which is just a Big Bang Nucleosynthesis prior on the current fractional energy density of baryons, $Omega_b h^2$, and a bound on the sum of neutrino masses to be less than 0.9 eV. In this case we measure the primordial amplitude of the power spectrum, $A_s$, the abundance of matter, $Omega_m$, the Hubble parameter, $H_0$, and the tilt of the primordial power spectrum, $n_s$, to about $19%$, $5.7%$, $2.2%$ and $7.3%$ respectively, obtaining $ln ( 10^{10} A_s) =2.91pm 0.19$, $Omega_m=0.314pm 0.018$, $H_0=68.7pm 1.5$ km/(s Mpc) and $n_s=0.979pm 0.071$ at $68%$ confidence level. A public code is released with this preprint.