Professor Pedro Ferreira

Abstract:

Context. The Euclid space satellite mission will measure the large-scale clustering of galaxies at an unprecedented precision, providing a unique probe of modifications to the ?CDM model. Aims. We investigated the approximations needed to efficiently predict the large-scale clustering of matter and dark matter halos in the context of modified gravity and exotic dark energy scenarios. We examined the normal branch of the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model, the Hu-Sawicki f(R) model, a slowly evolving dark energy model, an interacting dark energy model, and massive neutrinos. For each, we tested approximations for the perturbative kernel calculations, including the omission of screening terms and the use of perturbative kernels based on the Einstein-de Sitter universe; we explored different infrared-resummation schemes, tracer bias models and a linear treatment of massive neutrinos; we investigated various approaches for dealing with redshift-space distortions and modelling the mildly nonlinear scales, namely the Taruya-Nishimishi-Saito prescription and the effective field theory of large-scale structure. This work provides a first validation of the various codes being considered by Euclid for the spectroscopic clustering probe in beyond-?CDM scenarios. Methods. We calculated and compared the χ2 statistic to assess the different modelling choices. This was done by fitting the spectroscopic clustering predictions to measurements from numerical simulations and perturbation theory-based mock data. We compared the behaviour of this statistic in the beyond-?CDM cases, as a function of the maximum scale included in the fit, to the baseline ?CDM case. Results. We find that the Einstein-de Sitter approximation without screening is surprisingly accurate for the modified gravity cases when comparing to the halo clustering monopole and quadrupole obtained from simulations and mock data. Further, we find the same goodness-of-fit for both cases - the one including and the one omitting non-standard physics in the predictions. Our results suggest that the inclusion of multiple redshift bins, higher-order multipoles, higher-order clustering statistics (such as the bispectrum), and photometric probes such as weak lensing, will be essential to extract information on massive neutrinos, modified gravity and dark energy. Additionally, we show that the three codes used in our analysis, namely, PBJ, Pybird and MG-Copter, exhibit sub-percent agreement for k ≤ 0.5 h Mpc-1 across all the models. This consistency underscores their value as reliable tools.

Abstract:

Context. Computing the matter power spectrum, P(k), as a function of cosmological parameters can be prohibitively slow in cosmological analyses, hence emulating this calculation is desirable. Previous analytic approximations are insufficiently accurate for modern applications, so black-box, uninterpretable emulators are often used.

Aims. We aim to construct an efficient, differentiable, interpretable, symbolic emulator for the redshift zero linear matter power spectrum which achieves sub-percent level accuracy. We also wish to obtain a simple analytic expression to convert A_s to σ₈ given the other cosmological parameters.

Methods. We utilise an efficient genetic programming based symbolic regression framework to explore the space of potential mathematical expressions which can approximate the power spectrum and σ₈. We learn the ratio between an existing low-accuracy fitting function for P(k) and that obtained by solving the Boltzmann equations and thus still incorporate the physics which motivated this earlier approximation.

Results. We obtain an analytic approximation to the linear power spectrum with a root mean squared fractional error of 0.2% between k = 9 × 10⁻³ − 9 h Mpc⁻¹ and across a wide range of cosmological parameters, and we provide physical interpretations for various terms in the expression. Our analytic approximation is 950 times faster to evaluate than CAMB and 36 times faster than the neural network based matter power spectrum emulator BACCO. We also provide a simple analytic approximation for σ₈ with a similar accuracy, with a root mean squared fractional error of just 0.1% when evaluated across the same range of cosmologies. This function is easily invertible to obtain A_s as a function of σ₈ and the other cosmological parameters, if preferred.

Conclusions. It is possible to obtain symbolic approximations to a seemingly complex function at a precision required for current and future cosmological analyses without resorting to deep-learning techniques, thus avoiding their black-box nature and large number of parameters. Our emulator will be usable long after the codes on which numerical approximations are built become outdated.