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Black Hole

Lensing of space time around a black hole. At Oxford we study black holes observationally and theoretically on all size and time scales - it is some of our core work.

Credit: ALAIN RIAZUELO, IAP/UPMC/CNRS. CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE IMAGES.

Prof. David Alonso

Associate Professor of Cosmology

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  • Rubin-LSST
David.Alonso@physics.ox.ac.uk
Telephone: 01865 (2)288582
Denys Wilkinson Building, room 532B
  • About
  • Publications

Tomographic constraints on the high-energy cosmic neutrino emission rate

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 546:3 (2026) stag084

Authors:

Alberto Gálvez Ureña, Federico Urban, David Alonso

Abstract:

ABSTRACT Despite growing efforts to find the sources of high-energy neutrinos measured by IceCube, the bulk of the neutrinos remain with unknown origins. In this work, we aim to constrain the emissivity of cosmic high-energy neutrinos from extragalactic sources through their correlation with the large-scale structure. We use cross-correlations between the IceCube 10-year data set and tomographic maps of the galaxy overdensity to place constraints on the bias-weighted high-energy neutrino emissivity out to redshift $z\sim 3$. We test two different models to describe the evolution of neutrino emissivity with redshift, a power-law model $\propto (1+z)^a$, and a model tracking the star formation history, assuming a simple power-law model for the energy injection spectrum. We also consider a non-parametric reconstruction of the astrophysical neutrino emissivity as a function of redshift. We do not find any significant correlation, with our strongest results corresponding to a $1.9 \sigma$ deviation with respect to a model with zero signal. We use our measurements to place upper bounds on the bias-weighted astrophysical high-energy neutrino emission rate as a function of redshift for different source models. This analysis provides a new probe to test extragalactic neutrino source models. With future neutrino and galaxy data sets, we expect the constraining and detection power of this type of analysis to increase.
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Constraints from CMB lensing tomography with projected bispectra

The Open Journal of Astrophysics Maynooth University 9 (2026)

Authors:

Lea Harscouet, David Alonso, Andrina Nicola, Anže Slosar

Abstract:

We measure the angular power spectrum and bispectrum of the projected overdensity of photometric DESI luminous red galaxies, and its cross-correlation with maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background lensing convergence from Planck. This analysis is enabled by the use of the “filtered-squared bispectrum” approach, introduced in previous work, which we generalise here to the case of cross-correlations between multiple fields. The projected galaxy bispectrum is detected at very high significance (above 30 σ in all redshift bins), and the galaxy-galaxy-convergence bispectrum is detected above 5 σ in the three highest-redshift bins. We find that the bispectrum is reasonably well described over a broad range of scales by a tree-level prediction using the linear galaxy bias measured from the power spectrum. We carry out the first cosmological analysis combining projected power spectra and bispectra under a relatively simple model, and show that the galaxy bispectrum can be used in combination with the power spectrum to place a constraint on the amplitude of matter fluctuations, σ 8 , an on the non-relativistic matter fraction Ω m . We find that data combinations involving the galaxy bispectrum recover constraints on these parameters that are in good agreement with those found from the traditional “2 × 2-point” combination of galaxy-galaxy and galaxy-convergence power spectra, across all redshift bins.
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First Constraints from Marked Angular Power Spectra with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey First-Year Data

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) (2026) stag033

Authors:

Jessica A Cowell, Joaquin Armijo, Leander Thiele, Gabriela A Marques, Camila P Novaes, Daniela Grandón, Sihao Cheng, Masato Shirasaki, David Alonso, Jia Liu

Abstract:

Abstract We present the first application of marked power spectra to weak lensing data, using maps from the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Year 1 (HSC-Y1) survey. Marked convergence fields, constructed by weighting the convergence field with non-linear functions of its smoothed version, are designed to encode higher-order information while remaining computationally tractable. Using simulations tailored to the HSC-Y1 data, we test three mark functions that up- or down-weight different density environments. Our results show that combining multiple types of marked auto- and cross-spectra improves constraints on the clustering amplitude parameter $S_8\equiv \sigma _8\sqrt{\Omega _{\rm m}/0.3}$ by ≈43 percnt compared to standard two-point power spectra. When applied to the HSC-Y1 data, this translates into a constraint on S8 = 0.807 ± 0.024. We assess the sensitivity of the marked power spectra to systematics, including baryonic effects, intrinsic alignment, photometric redshifts, and multiplicative shear bias. We note that some of the additional information introduced by the marked field originates from scales smaller than the scale cut, and is partly Gaussian in nature. This does not invalidate our systematic tests. These results demonstrate the promise of marked statistics as a practical and powerful tool for extracting non-Gaussian information from weak lensing surveys.
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kSZ for everyone: the pseudo-Cl approach to stacking

(2025)

Authors:

Lea Harscouet, Kevin Wolz, Amy Wayland, David Alonso, Boryana Hadzhiyska

Cosmological constraints from galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing with extended SubHalo Abundance Matching

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) (2025) staf2143

Authors:

Constance Mahony, Sergio Contreras, Raul E Angulo, David Alonso, Christos Georgiou, Andrej Dvornik

Abstract:

Abstract We present the first cosmological constraints from a joint analysis of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing using extended SubHalo Abundance Matching (SHAMe). We analyse stellar mass-selected Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) galaxy clustering and Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-1000) galaxy-galaxy lensing and find constraints on $S_8\equiv \sigma _8\sqrt{\Omega _{\rm m}/0.3}=0.793^{+0.025}_{-0.024}$, in agreement with Planck at 1.7σ, with σ8 the mass density fluctuation amplitude in 8 h−1Mpc sphere at present and Ωm the density parameter in total matter. These results are in agreement with the Cosmic Microwave Background results from Planck. We are able to constrain all 5 SHAMe parameters, which describe the galaxy-subhalo connection. We validate our methodology by first applying it to simulated catalogues, generated from the TNG300 simulation, which mimic the stellar mass selection of our real data. We show that we are able to recover the input cosmology for both our fiducial and all-scale analyses. Our all-scale analysis extends to scales of galaxy-galaxy lensing below rp < 1.4 Mpc h−1, which we exclude in our fiducial analysis to avoid baryonic effects. When including all scales, we find a value of S8, which is 1.26σ higher than our fiducial result (against naive expectations where baryonic feedback should lead to small-scale power suppression), and in agreement with Planck at 0.9σ. We also find a 21 % tighter constraint on S8 and a 29 % tighter constraint on Ωm compared to our fiducial analysis. This work shows the power and potential of joint small-scale galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing analyses using SHAMe.
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