Carlos Garcia-Garcia

Abstract:

The disconnected part of the power spectrum covariance matrix (also known as the "Gaussian" covariance) is the dominant contribution on large scales for galaxy clustering and weak lensing datasets. The presence of a complicated sky mask causes non-trivial correlations between different Fourier/harmonic modes, which must be accurately characterized in order to obtain reliable cosmological constraints. This is particularly relevant for galaxy survey data. Unfortunately, an exact calculation of these correlations involves O(ℓmax6) operations that become computationally impractical very quickly. We present an implementation of approximate methods to estimate the Gaussian covariance matrix of power spectra involving spin-0 and spin-2 flat- and curved-sky fields, expanding on existing algorithms {developed in the context of CMB analyses}. These methods achieve an O(ℓmax3) scaling, which makes the computation of the covariance matrix as fast as the computation of the power spectrum itself. We quantify the accuracy of these methods on large-scale structure and weak lensing data, making use of a large number of Gaussian but otherwise realistic simulations. We show that, using the approximate covariance matrix, we are able to recover the true posterior distribution of cosmological parameters to high accuracy. We also quantify the shortcomings of these methods, which become unreliable on the very largest scales, as well as for covariance matrix elements involving cosmic shear B modes. The algorithms presented here are implemented in the public code NaMaster https://github.com/LSSTDESC/NaMaster.

Abstract:

The α-attractor inflationary models are nowadays favored by CMB Planck observations. Their similarity with canonical quintessence models motivates the exploration of a common framework that explains both inflation and dark energy. We study the expected constraints that next-generation cosmological experiments will be able to impose for the dark energy α-attractor model. We systematically account for the constraining power of SNIa from WFIRST, BAO from DESI and WFIRST, galaxy clustering and shear from LSST and Stage-4 CMB experiments. We assume a tensor-to-scalar ratio, 10−3 < r < 10−2, which permits to explore the wide regime sufficiently close, but distinct, to a cosmological constant, without need of fine tunning the initial value of the field. We find that the combination S4CMB + LSST + SNIa will achieve the best results, improving the FoM by almost an order of magnitude; respect to the S4CMB + BAO + SNIa case. We find this is also true for the FoM of the w0 − wa parameters. Therefore, future surveys will be uniquely able to probe models connecting early and late cosmic acceleration.