No Arabic abstract
Future dark energy space missions such as JDEM and EUCLID are being designed to survey the galaxy population to trace the geometry of the universe and the growth of structure, which both depend on the cosmological model. To reach the goal of high precision cosmology they need to evaluate the capabilities of different instrument designs based on realistic mock catalog. The aim of this paper is to construct realistic and flexible mock catalogs based on our knowledge of galaxy population from current deep surveys. We explore two categories of mock catalog : (i) based on luminosity functions fit of observations (GOODS, UDF,COSMOS,VVDS) using the Le Phare software (ii) based on the observed COSMOS galaxy distribution which benefits from all the properties of the data-rich COSMOS survey. For these two catalogs, we have produced simulated number counts in several bands, color diagrams and redshift distribution for validation against real observational data. We also derive some basic requirements to help designing future Dark Energy mission in terms of number of galaxies available for the weak-lensing analysis as a function of the PSF size and depth of the survey. We also compute the spectroscopic success rate for future spectroscopic redshift surveys (i) aiming at measuring BAO in the case of the wide field spectroscopic redshift survey, and (ii) for the photometric redshift calibration survey which is required to achieve weak lensing tomography with great accuracy. They will be publicly accessible at http://lamwws.oamp.fr/cosmowiki/RealisticSpectroPhotCat, or by request to the first author of this paper.
Accurate weak-lensing analysis requires not only accurate measurement of galaxy shapes but also precise and unbiased measurement of galaxy redshifts. The photometric redshift technique appears as the only possibility to determine the redshift of the background galaxies used in the weak-lensing analysis. Using the photometric redshift quality, simple shape measurement requirements, and a proper sky model, we explore what could be an optimal weak-lensing dark energy mission based on FoM calculation. We found that photometric redshifts reach their best accuracy for the bulk of the faint galaxy population when filters have a resolution R~3.2. We show that an optimal mission would survey the sky through 8 filters using 2 cameras (visible and near infrared). Assuming a 5-year mission duration, a mirror size of 1.5m, a 0.5deg2 FOV with a visible pixel scale of 0.15, we found that a homogeneous survey reaching IAB=25.6 (10sigma) with a sky coverage of ~11000deg2 maximizes the Weak Lensing FoM. The effective number density of galaxies then used for WL is ~45gal/arcmin2, at least a factor of two better than ground based survey. This work demonstrates that a full account of the observational strategy is required to properly optimize the instrument parameters to maximize the FoM of the future weak-lensing space dark energy mission.
We perform a detailed forecast on how well a {sc Euclid}-like survey will be able to constrain dark energy and neutrino parameters from a combination of its cosmic shear power spectrum, galaxy power spectrum, and cluster mass function measurements. We find that the combination of these three probes vastly improves the surveys potential to measure the time evolution of dark energy. In terms of a dark energy figure-of-merit defined as $(sigma(w_{mathrm p}) sigma(w_a))^{-1}$, we find a value of 690 for {sc Euclid}-like data combined with {sc Planck}-like measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in a 10-dimensional cosmological parameter space, assuming a $Lambda$CDM fiducial cosmology. For the more commonly used 7-parameter model, we find a figure-of-merit of 1900 for the same data combination. We consider also the surveys potential to measure dark energy perturbations in models wherein the dark energy is parameterised as a fluid with a nonstandard non-adiabatic sound speed, and find that in an emph{optimistic} scenario in which $w_0$ deviates by as much as is currently observationally allowed from $-1$, models with $hat{c}_mathrm{s}^2 = 10^{-6}$ and $hat{c}_mathrm{s}^2 = 1$ can be distinguished at more than $2sigma$ significance. We emphasise that constraints on the dark energy sound speed from cluster measurements are strongly dependent on the modelling of the cluster mass function; significantly weaker sensitivities ensue if we modify our model to include fewer features of nonlinear dark energy clustering. Finally, we find that the sum of neutrino masses can be measured with a $1 sigma$ precision of 0.015~eV, (abridged)
The calibration and validation of scientific analysis in simulations is a fundamental tool to ensure unbiased and robust results in observational cosmology. In particular, mock galaxy catalogs are a crucial resource to achieve these goals in the measurement of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of galaxies. Here we present a set of 1952 galaxy mock catalogs designed to mimic the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 BAO sample over its full photometric redshift range $0.6 < z_{rm photo} < 1.1$. The mocks are based upon 488 ICE-COLA fast $N$-body simulations of full-sky light-cones and are created by populating halos with galaxies, using a hybrid Halo Occupation Distribution - Halo Abundance Matching model. This model has 10 free parameters, which are determined, for the first time, using an automatic likelihood minimization procedure. We also introduce a novel technique to assign photometric redshift for simulated galaxies, following a two-dimensional probability distribution with VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) data. The calibration was designed to match the observed abundance of galaxies as a function of photometric redshift, the distribution of photometric redshift errors, and the clustering amplitude on scales smaller than those used for BAO measurements. An exhaustive analysis is done to ensure that the mocks reproduce the input properties. Finally, mocks are tested by comparing the angular correlation function $w(theta)$, angular power spectrum $C_ell$ and projected clustering $xi_p(r_perp)$ to theoretical predictions and data. The success in reproducing accurately the photometric redshift uncertainties and the galaxy clustering as a function of redshift render this mock creation pipeline as a benchmark for future analyses of photometric galaxy surveys.
We present a multi-band analysis of the six Hubble Frontier Field clusters and their parallel fields, producing catalogs with measurements of source photometry and photometric redshifts. We release these catalogs to the public along with maps of intracluster light and models for the brightest galaxies in each field. This rich data set covers a wavelength range from 0.2 to 8 $mu m$, utilizing data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Observatories, Very Large Telescope array, and Spitzer Space Telescope. We validate our products by injecting into our fields and recovering a population of synthetic objects with similar characteristics as in real extragalactic surveys. The photometric catalogs contain a total of over 32,000 entries with 50% completeness at a threshold of $mathrm{mag_{AB}}sim 29.1$ for unblended sources, and $mathrm{mag_{AB}}sim 29$ for blended ones, in the IR-Weighted detection band. Photometric redshifts were obtained by means of template fitting and have an average outlier fraction of 10.3% and scatter $sigma = 0.067$ when compared to spectroscopic estimates. The software we devised, after being tested in the present work, will be applied to new data sets from ongoing and future surveys.
Interacting dark energy models have been proposed as attractive alternatives to $Lambda$CDM. Forthcoming Stage-IV galaxy clustering surveys will constrain these models, but they require accurate modelling of the galaxy power spectrum multipoles on mildly non-linear scales. In this work we consider a dark scattering model with a simple 1-parameter extension to $w$CDM - adding only $A$, which describes a pure momentum exchange between dark energy and dark matter. We then provide a comprehensive comparison of three approaches of modeling non-linearities, while including the effects of this dark sector coupling. We base our modeling of non-linearities on the two most popular perturbation theory approaches: TNS and EFTofLSS. To test the validity and precision of the modelling, we perform an MCMC analysis using simulated data corresponding to a $Lambda$CDM fiducial cosmology and Stage-IV surveys specifications in two redshift bins, $z=0.5$ and $z=1$. We find the most complex EFTofLSS-based model studied to be better suited at both, describing the mock data up to smaller scales, and extracting the most information. Using this model, we forecast uncertainties on the dark energy equation of state, $w$, and on the interaction parameter, $A$, finding $sigma_w=0.06$ and $sigma_A=1.1$ b/GeV for the analysis at $z=0.5$ and $sigma_w=0.06$ and $sigma_A=2.0$ b/GeV for the analysis at $z=1$. In addition, we show that a false detection of exotic dark energy up to 3$sigma$ would occur should the non-linear modelling be incorrect, demonstrating the importance of the validation stage for accurate interpretation of measurements.