No Arabic abstract
Observational cosmology in the next decade will rely on probes of the distribution of matter in the redshift range between $0<z<3$ to elucidate the nature of dark matter and dark energy. In this redshift range, galaxy formation is known to have a significant impact on observables such as two-point correlations of galaxy shapes and positions, altering their amplitude and scale dependence beyond the expected statistical uncertainty of upcoming experiments at separations under 10 Mpc. Successful extraction of information in such a regime thus requires, at the very least, unbiased models for the impact of galaxy formation on the matter distribution, and can benefit from complementary observational priors. This work reviews the current state of the art in the modelling of baryons for cosmology, from numerical methods to approximate analytical prescriptions, and makes recommendations for studies in the next decade, including a discussion of potential probe combinations that can help constrain the role of baryons in cosmological studies. We focus, in particular, on the modelling of the matter power spectrum, $P(k,z)$, as a function of scale and redshift, and of the observables derived from this quantity. This work is the result of a workshop held at the University of Oxford in November of 2018.
We present and test a framework that models the three-dimensional distribution of mass in the Universe as a function of cosmological and astrophysical parameters. Our approach combines two different techniques: a rescaling algorithm that modifies the cosmology of gravity-only N-body simulations, and a baryonification algorithm which mimics the effects of astrophysical processes induced by baryons, such as star formation and AGN feedback. We show how this approach can accurately reproduce the effects of baryons on the matter power spectrum of various state-of-the-art hydro-dynamical simulations (EAGLE, Illustris, Illustris-TNG, Horizon-AGN, and OWLS,Cosmo-OWLS and BAHAMAS), to percent level from very large down to small, highly nonlinear scales, k= 5 h/Mpc, and from z=0 up to z=2. We highlight that, thanks to the heavy optimisation of the algorithms, we can obtain these predictions for arbitrary baryonic models and cosmology (including massive neutrinos and dynamical dark energy models) with an almost negligible CPU cost. Therefore, this approach is efficient enough for cosmological data analyses. With these tools in hand we explore the degeneracies between cosmological and astrophysical parameters in the nonlinear mass power spectrum. Our findings suggest that after marginalising over baryonic physics, cosmological constraints inferred from weak gravitational lensing should be moderately degraded.
While baryonic feedback is one of the most important astrophysical systematics that we need to address in order to achieve precision cosmology, few weak lensing studies have directly measured its impact on the matter power spectrum. We report measurement of the baryonic feedback parameter with the constraints on its lower and upper limits from cosmic shear. We use the public data from the Kilo-Degree Survey and the VISTA Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy Survey spanning 450 deg$^2$. Estimating both cosmological and feedback parameters simultaneously, we obtain $A_{rm b}=1.01_{-0.85}^{+0.80}$, which shows a consistency with the dark matter-only (DMO) case at the $sim1.2~sigma$ level and a tendency toward positive feedback; the $A_{rm b}=0$ ($0.81$) value corresponds to the DMO (OWLS AGN) case. Despite this full constraint of the feedback parameter, our $S_8~(equiv sigma_8 sqrt{Omega_m / 0.3})$ measurement ($0.739^{+0.036}_{- 0.035}$) shifts by only $sim6$% of the statistical error, compared to the previous measurement. When we assume the flat $Lambda$CDM cosmology favored by the Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Planck) result, the feedback parameter is constrained to be $A_{rm b}=1.21_{-0.54}^{+0.61}$ ($1.60_{-0.52}^{+0.53}$), which excludes the DMO case at the $sim2.2~sigma$ ($sim3.1~sigma$) level.
We present an updated version of the HMcode augmented halo model that can be used to make accurate predictions of the non-linear matter power spectrum over a wide range of cosmologies. Major improvements include modelling of BAO damping in the power spectrum and an updated treatment of massive neutrinos. We fit our model to simulated power spectra and show that we can match the results with an RMS error of 2.5 per cent across a range of cosmologies, scales $k < 10,hmathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, and redshifts $z<2$. The error rarely exceeds 5 per cent and never exceeds 16 per cent. The worst-case errors occur at $zsimeq2$, or for cosmologies with unusual dark-energy equations of state. This represents a significant improvement over previo
Accurate knowledge of the effect of feedback from galaxy formation on the matter distribution is a key requirement for future weak lensing experiments. Recent studies using hydrodynamic simulations have shown that different baryonic feedback scenarios lead to significantly different two-point shear statistics. In this paper we extend earlier work to three-point shear statistics. We show that, relative to the predictions of dark matter only models, the amplitude of the signal can be reduced by as much as 30-40% on scales of a few arcminutes. We find that baryonic feedback may affect two- and three-point shear statistics differently and demonstrate that this can be used to assess the fidelity of various feedback models. In particular, upcoming surveys such as Euclid might be able to discriminate between different feedback models by measuring both second- and third-order statistics. Because it will likely remain impossible to predict baryonic feedback with high accuracy from first principles, we argue in favour of phenomenological models that can capture the relevant effects of baryonic feedback processes in addition to changes in cosmology. We construct such a model by modifying the dark matter-only halo model to characterise the generic effects of energetic feedback using a small number of parameters. We use this model to perform a likelihood analysis in a simplified case in which two- and three-point shear statistics are measured between 0.5 and 20 arcmin and in which the amplitude of fluctuations, sigma8, the matter density parameter, Om, and the dark energy parameter, w0, are the only unknown free parameters. We demonstrate that for weak lensing surveys such as Euclid, marginalising over the feedbac parameters describing the effects of baryonic processes, such as outflows driven by feedback from star formation and AGN, may be able to mitigate the bias affecting Om, sigma8 and w0.
We describe the Dark Energy Survey (DES) photometric data set assembled from the first three years of science operations to support DES Year 3 cosmology analyses, and provide usage notes aimed at the broad astrophysics community. Y3 Gold improves on previous releases from DES, Y1 Gold and Data Release 1 (DES DR1), presenting an expanded and curated data set that incorporates algorithmic developments in image detrending and processing, photometric calibration, and object classification. Y3 Gold comprises nearly 5000 square degrees of grizY imaging in the south Galactic cap, including nearly 390 million objects, with depth reaching S/N ~ 10 for extended objects up to $i_{AB}sim 23.0$, and top-of-the-atmosphere photometric uniformity $< 3$ mmag. Compared to DR1, photometric residuals with respect to Gaia are reduced by $50%$, and per-object chromatic corrections are introduced. Y3 Gold augments DES DR1 with simultaneous fits to multi-epoch photometry for more robust galaxy color measurements and corresponding photometric redshift estimates. Y3 Gold features improved morphological star-galaxy classification with efficiency $>98%$ and purity $>99%$ for galaxies with $19 < i_{AB} < 22.5$. Additionally, it includes per-object quality information, and accompanying maps of the footprint coverage, masked regions, imaging depth, survey conditions, and astrophysical foregrounds that are used to select the cosmology analysis samples. This paper will be complemented by online resources.