No Arabic abstract
The cosmological dark matter field is not completely described by its hierarchy of $N$-point functions, a non-perturbative effect with the consequence that only part of the theory can be probed with the hierarchy. We give here an exact characterization of the joint information of the full set of $N$-point correlators of the lognormal field. The lognormal field is the archetypal example of a field where this effect occurs, and, at the same time, one of the few tractable and insightful available models to specify fully the statistical properties of the evolved matter density field beyond the perturbative regime. Nonlinear growth in the Universe in that model is set letting the log-density field probability density functional evolve keeping its Gaussian shape, according to the diffusion equation in Euclidean space. We show that the hierarchy probes a different evolution equation, the diffusion equation defined not in Euclidean space but on the compact torus, with uniformity as the long-term solution. The extraction of the hierarchy of correlators can be recast in the form of a nonlinear transformation applied to the field, wrapping, undergoing a sharp transition towards complete disorder in the deeply nonlinear regime, where all memory of the initial conditions is lost.
The one-point probability distribution function (PDF) of the matter density field in the universe is a fundamental property that plays an essential role in cosmology for estimates such as gravitational weak lensing, non-linear clustering, massive production of mock galaxy catalogs, and testing predictions of cosmological models. Here we make a comprehensive analysis of the dark matter PDF using a suite of 7000 N-body simulations that covers a wide range of numerical and cosmological parameters. We find that the PDF has a simple shape: it declines with density as a power-law P~rho**(-2), which is exponentially suppressed on both small and large densities. The proposed double-exponential approximation provides an accurate fit to all our N-body results for small filtering scales R< 5Mpc/h with rms density fluctuations sigma>1. In combination with the spherical infall model that works well for small fluctuations sigma<1, the PDF is now approximated with just few percent errors over the range of twelve orders of magnitude -- a remarkable example of precision cosmology. We find that at 5-10% level the PDF explicitly depends on redshift (at fixed sigma) and on cosmological density parameter Omega_m. We test different existing analytical approximations and find that the often used log-normal approximation is always 3-5 times less accurate than either the double-exponential approximation or the spherical infall model.
The marked power spectrum is capable of placing far tighter constraints on cosmological parameters (particularly the neutrino mass) than the conventional power spectrum. What new information does it contain beyond conventional statistics? Through the development of a perturbative model, we find that the mark induces a significant coupling between non-Gaussianities, which are usually found on small scales, and large scales, leading to the additional information content. The model is derived in the context of one-loop perturbation theory and validated by comparison to $N$-body simulations across a variety of mark parameters. At moderate redshifts, including for massive neutrino cosmologies, the theory is in good agreement with the simulations. The importance of non-linear gravitational effects on the large-scale spectra complicates the modeling as there is no well-defined convergence radius of the theory at low $z$. Extension to higher perturbative order and biased tracers is possible via a similar approach, and a simple model of the latter is shown to yield promising results. The theory becomes non-perturbative at redshift zero for small smoothing scales, with important contributions from higher-order terms: these will need to be studied before the full power of this tool can be realized.
Non-Gaussianity of the cosmological matter density field can be largely reduced by a local Gaussianization transformation (and its approximations such as the logrithmic transformation). Such behavior can be recasted as the Gaussian copula hypothesis, and has been verified to very high accuracy at two-point level. On the other hand, statistically significant non-Gaussianities in the Gaussianized field have been detected in simulations. We point out that, this apparent inconsistency is caused by the very limited degrees of freedom in the copula function, which make it misleading as a diagnosis of residual non-Gaussianity in the Gaussianized field. Using the copula density, we highlight the departure from Gaussianity. We further quantify its impact in the predicted n-point correlation functions. We explore a remedy of the Gaussian copula hypothesis, which alleviates but not completely solves the above problems.
A single-particle multi-branched wave-function is studied. Usual which-path tests show that if the detector placed on one branch clicks, the detectors on the other branches remain silent. By the collapse postulate, after this click, the state of the particle is reduced to a single branch, the branch on which the detector clicked. The present article challenges the collapse postulate, claiming that when one branch of the wave-function produces a click in a detector, the other branches dont disappear. They cant produce clicks in detectors, but they are still there. An experiment different from which-path test is proposed, which shows that detectors are responsible for strongly decohering the wave-function, but not for making parts of it disappear. Moreover, one of the branches supposed to disappear may produce an interference pattern with a wave-packet of another particle.
The jackknife method gives an internal covariance estimate for large-scale structure surveys and allows model-independent errors on cosmological parameters. Using the SDSS-III BOSS CMASS sample, we study how the jackknife size and number of resamplings impact the precision of the covariance estimate on the correlation function multipoles and the error on the inferred baryon acoustic scale. We compare the measurement with the MultiDark Patchy mock galaxy catalogues, and we also validate it against a set of log-normal mocks with the same survey geometry. We build several jackknife configurations that vary in size and number of resamplings. We introduce the Hartlap factor in the covariance estimate that depends on the number of jackknife resamplings. We also find that it is useful to apply the tapering scheme to estimate the precision matrix from a limited number of resamplings. The results from CMASS and mock catalogues show that the error estimate of the baryon acoustic scale does not depend on the jackknife scale. For the shift parameter $alpha$, we find an average error of 1.6%, 2.2% and 1.2%, respectively from CMASS, Patchy and log-normal jackknife covariances. Despite these uncertainties fluctuate significantly due to some structural limitations of the jackknife method, our $alpha$ estimates are in reasonable agreement with published pre-reconstruction analyses. Jackknife methods will provide valuable and complementary covariance estimates for future large-scale structure surveys.