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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.

Matteo Zennaro

Visitor

Research theme

  • Particle astrophysics & cosmology

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
matteo.zennaro@physics.ox.ac.uk
Telephone: 01865283014
Denys Wilkinson Building, room 555E
  • About
  • Publications

Low-redshift constraints on structure growth from CMB lensing tomography

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics IOP Publishing 2026:07 (2026) 016

Authors:

Andrea Rubiola, Matteo Zennaro, Carlos García-García, David Alonso, Raul E Angulo

Abstract:

We present constraints on the amplitude of matter fluctuations from the clustering of galaxies and their cross-correlation with the gravitational lensing convergence of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), focusing on low redshifts (z ≲ 0.3), where potential deviations from a perfect cosmological constant dominating the growth of structure could be more prominent. Specifically, we make use of data from the 2MASS photometric survey (2MPZ) and the WISE×SuperCOSMOS galaxy survey, in combination with CMB lensing data from Planck. Using a hybrid effective field theory (HEFT) approach to model galaxy bias we obtain constraints on the combination S 8 = σ 8 √(Ω m /0.3), where σ 8 is the amplitude of matter fluctuations, and Ω m is the non-relativistic matter fraction. Using a prior on Ω m based on the baryon acoustic oscillation measurements of DESI, we find S 8 = 0.79 ± 0.06, in reasonable agreement with CMB constraints. We also find that, in the absence of this prior, the data favours a value of Ω m = 0.245 ± 0.024, that is 2.8σ lower than Planck. This result is driven by the broadband shape of the galaxy auto-correlation, and may be affected by theoretical uncertainties in the HEFT power spectrum templates. We further reconstruct the low-redshift growth history, finding it to be compatible with the Planck predictions, as well as existing constraints from lensing tomography. Finally, we study our constraints on the HEFT bias parameters of the galaxy samples studied, finding them to be in reasonable agreement with coevolution predictions.
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Cosmological constraints from the angular power spectrum and bispectrum of luminous red galaxies and CMB lensing

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics IOP Publishing 2026:06 (2026) 027

Authors:

Francesco Verdiani, Léa Harscouet, Matteo Zennaro, David Alonso, Boryana Hadzhiyska

Abstract:

We study the projected clustering of photometric luminous red galaxies from the DESI Legacy Survey, combining their angular power spectrum, bispectrum, and cross-correlation with maps of the CMB lensing convergence from the Planck satellite. We employ a perturbative bias expansion in Eulerian space to describe the clustering of galaxies, modelling the power spectrum and bispectrum at one-loop and tree level, respectively. This allows us to use the bispectrum to self-consistently calibrate the perturbative bias parameters. We validate this model against an N-body simulation, and show that it can be used up to scales of at least kP max ≃ 0.2 h Mpc-1 and kB max ≃ 0.08 h Mpc-1, saturating the information recovered from the data. We obtain constraints on the amplitude of matter fluctuations σ 8 = 0.761 ± 0.020 and the non-relativistic matter fraction Ω m = 0.307 ± 0.015, as well as the combination S 8 ≡ σ 8 √(Ω m /0.3) = 0.769 ± 0.020. Including the galaxy bispectrum leads to a 10–20% improvement on the cosmological constraints, which are also in good agreement with previous analyses of the same data, and in mild tension with Planck at the ∼2.5σ level. Finally, using the bispectrum allows for a substantially more precise measurement of the bias parameters of this sample, which are in reasonable agreement with existing coevolution relations.
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Euclid: An emulator for baryonic effects on the matter bispectrum

Astronomy & Astrophysics EDP Sciences 705 (2026) a170

Authors:

PA Burger, G Aricò, L Linke, RE Angulo, JC Broxterman, J Schaye, M Schaller, M Zennaro, A Halder, L Porth, S Heydenreich, MJ Hudson, A Amara, S Andreon, C Baccigalupi, M Baldi, A Balestra, S Bardelli, A Biviano, E Branchini, M Brescia, S Camera, V Capobianco, C Carbone, VF Cardone, J Carretero, S Casas, M Castellano, G Castignani, S Cavuoti, KC Chambers, A Cimatti, C Colodro-Conde, G Congedo, L Conversi, Y Copin, F Courbin, HM Courtois, A Da Silva, H Degaudenzi, S de la Torre, G De Lucia, F Dubath, CAJ Duncan, X Dupac, S Dusini, S Escoffier, M Farina, R Farinelli, S Ferriol, F Finelli, P Fosalba, N Fourmanoit, M Frailis, E Franceschi, M Fumana, S Galeotta, B Gillis, C Giocoli, J Gracia-Carpio, A Grazian, F Grupp, SVH Haugan, H Hoekstra, W Holmes, IM Hook, F Hormuth, A Hornstrup, K Jahnke, M Jhabvala, B Joachimi, E Keihänen, S Kermiche, M Kilbinger, B Kubik, M Kunz, H Kurki-Suonio, AMC Le Brun, S Ligori, PB Lilje, V Lindholm, I Lloro, G Mainetti, D Maino, E Maiorano, O Mansutti, O Marggraf, M Martinelli, N Martinet, F Marulli, R Massey, E Medinaceli, S Mei, M Melchior, M Meneghetti, E Merlin, G Meylan, A Mora, M Moresco, L Moscardini, C Neissner, S-M Niemi, C Padilla, S Paltani, F Pasian, K Pedersen, WJ Percival, V Pettorino, S Pires, G Polenta, M Poncet, LA Popa, F Raison, A Renzi, J Rhodes, G Riccio, E Romelli, M Roncarelli, R Saglia, Z Sakr, AG Sánchez, D Sapone, B Sartoris, P Schneider, T Schrabback, A Secroun, E Sefusatti, G Seidel, S Serrano, P Simon, C Sirignano, G Sirri, A Spurio Mancini, L Stanco, J Steinwagner, P Tallada-Crespí, AN Taylor, I Tereno, S Toft, R Toledo-Moreo, F Torradeflot, I Tutusaus, L Valenziano, J Valiviita, T Vassallo, G Verdoes Kleijn, A Veropalumbo, Y Wang, J Weller, G Zamorani, E Zucca, C Burigana, L Gabarra, A Pezzotta, V Scottez, M Viel

Abstract:

The Euclid mission and other next-generation large-scale structure surveys will enable high-precision measurements of the cosmic matter distribution. Understanding the impact of baryonic processes such as star formation and active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback on matter clustering is crucial to ensure precise and unbiased cosmological inference. Most theoretical models of baryonic effects to date focus on two-point statistics, neglecting higher-order contributions. This work develops a fast and accurate emulator for baryonic effects on the matter bispectrum, a key non-Gaussian statistic in the nonlinear regime. We employ high-resolution N -body simulations from the BACCO suite and apply a combination of cutting-edge techniques such as cosmology scaling and baryonification to efficiently span a large cosmological and astrophysical parameter space. A deep neural network is trained to emulate baryonic effects on the matter bispectrum measured in simulations, capturing modifications across various scales and redshifts relevant to Euclid . We validate the emulator accuracy and robustness using an analysis of Euclid mock data, employing predictions from the state-of-the-art FLAMINGO hydrodynamical simulations. The emulator reproduces baryonic suppression in the bispectrum to better than 2% for the 68% percentile across most triangle configurations for k ∈ [0.01, 20] h Mpc −1 and ensures consistency between cosmological posteriors inferred from second- and third-order weak lensing statistics. These results demonstrate that our emulator meets the high-precision requirements of the Euclid mission for at least the first data release and provides reliable forecasts of the cosmological information contained in the small-scale matter bispectrum. This underscores the potential of emulation techniques to bridge the gap between complex baryonic physics and observational data, maximising the scientific output of Euclid .
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A 1-per cent-accurate method to include baryonic effects in galaxy–galaxy lensing models

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 544:4 (2025) 3512-3532

Authors:

Matteo Zennaro, Giovanni Aricò, Carlos García-García, Raúl E Angulo, Lurdes Ondaro-Mallea, Sergio Contreras, Andrina Nicola, Matthieu Schaller, Joop Schaye

Abstract:

The clustering of galaxies and galaxy–galaxy lensing are two of the main observational probes in Stage-IV large-scale structure surveys, such as Euclid and LSST. Unfortunately, the complicated relationship between galaxies and matter greatly limits the exploitation of this data. Sophisticated theoretical galaxy bias models–such as the hybrid Lagrangian bias expansion – allow describing galaxy clustering down to scales as small as . However, the galaxy–matter cross-power spectra are already affected by baryons on these scales, directly impacting the modelling of galaxy–galaxy lensing. In this work, we propose a way to extend state-of-the-art models of the galaxy–matter cross-power spectrum (currently only accounting for dark matter) by including a baryonic correction term inferred from the matter component [the suppression ], so that . We use the FLAMINGO hydrodynamical simulations to measure the effect of baryons on the galaxy–matter cross-power spectrum and to assess the performance of our model. Specifically, we perform a Bayesian analysis of synthetic data, implementing a model based on BACCO’s hybrid Lagrangian bias expansion (for the non-linear galaxy bias) and Baryon Correction Model (for the baryon suppression of the matter power spectrum). Ignoring the effect of baryons on the galaxy–matter cross-power spectrum leads to a biased inference of the galaxy bias parameters, while ignoring baryons in both the galaxy–matter and matter–matter power spectra leads to a biased inference of both the galaxy bias and cosmological parameters. In contrast, our method is 1 per cent accurate compared to all physics variations in FLAMINGO and on all scales described by hybrid perturbative models (). Moreover, our model leads to inferred bias and cosmological parameters compatible within 1 with their reference values. We anticipate that our method will be a promising candidate for analysing forthcoming Stage-IV survey data.
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Robust cosmic shear with small-scale nulling

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics IOP Publishing 2025:10 (2025) 017

Authors:

Giulia Piccirilli, Matteo Zennaro, Carlos García-García, David Alonso

Abstract:

Standard cosmological weak lensing analyses using cosmic shear are inevitably sensitive to small-scale, non-linear clustering from low-redshift structures. The need to adequately model the clustering of matter on this non-linear regime, accounting for both gravitational and baryonic effects, adds significant uncertainty to weak lensing studies, particularly in the context of near-future Stage-IV datasets. In this paper, inspired by previous work on so-called “nulling” techniques, we present a general method that selects the linear combinations of a given tomographic cosmic shear dataset that are least sensitive to small-scale non-linearities, by essentially suppressing the contribution from low-redshift structures. We apply this method to the latest public cosmic shear data from the Dark Energy Survey, DES-Y3, that corresponds to 3 years of observation, and show: a) that a large fraction of the signal is dominated by the single mode that is most affected by non-linear scales, and b) that removing this mode leads to a ∼ 1σ upwards shift in the preferred value of S 8 ≡ σ 8√(ΩM/0.3), alleviating the tension with current CMB data. However, the removal of the most contaminated mode also results in a significant increase in the statistical uncertainties. Taking this into account, we find this shift to be compatible with a random fluctuation caused by removing this most-contaminated mode at the ∼ 1.4σ level. We also show that this technique may be used by future Stage-IV surveys to mitigate the sensitivity of the final constraints to baryonic effects, trading precision for robustness.
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