Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Abstract:

We conduct a pseudo-C_ℓ analysis of the tomographic cross-correlation between 1000 deg² of weak-lensing data from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-1000) and the thermal Sunyaev–Zeldovich (tSZ) effect measured by Planck and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). Using HMX, a halo-model-based approach that consistently models the gas, star, and dark matter components, we are able to derive constraints on both cosmology and baryon feedback for the first time from these data, marginalising over redshift uncertainties, intrinsic alignment of galaxies, and contamination by the cosmic infrared background (CIB). We find our results to be insensitive to the CIB, while intrinsic alignment provides a small but significant contribution to the lensing–tSZ cross-correlation. The cosmological constraints are consistent with those of other low-redshift probes and prefer strong baryon feedback. The inferred amplitude of the lensing–tSZ cross-correlation signal, which scales as σ₈(Ω_m/0.3)^0.2, is low by ∼2 σ compared to the primary cosmic microwave background constraints by Planck. The lensing–tSZ measurements are then combined with pseudo-C_ℓ measurements of KiDS-1000 cosmic shear into a novel joint analysis, accounting for the full cross-covariance between the probes, providing tight cosmological constraints by breaking parameter degeneracies inherent to both probes. The joint analysis gives an improvement of 40% on the constraint of S₈ = σ₈Ω_m/0.3 over cosmic shear alone, while providing constraints on baryon feedback consistent with hydrodynamical simulations, demonstrating the potential of such joint analyses with baryonic tracers such as the tSZ effect. We discuss remaining modelling challenges that need to be addressed if these baryonic probes are to be included in future precision-cosmology analyses.

Abstract:

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>We present <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace>, a public software package to efficiently generate synthetic realisations of multiple cosmological surveys. <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace> can simulate the growth of structure with different degrees of accuracy, with the current implementation supporting lognormal fields, first, and second order Lagrangian perturbation theory. <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace> simulates the density field on an all-sky light-cone up to a desired maximum redshift, and uses it to generate multiple 2D and 3D maps: galaxy positions and velocities, lensing (shear, magnification, convergence), integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, line intensity mapping, and line of sight skewers for simulations of the Lyman-<jats:italic>α</jats:italic> forest. We test the accuracy of the simulated maps against analytical theoretical predictions, and showcase its performance with a multi-survey simulation including DESI galaxies and quasars, LSST galaxies and lensing, and SKA intensity mapping and radio galaxies. We expect <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace> to be particularly useful in studies aiming to characterise the impact of systematics in multi-experiment analyses, quantify the covariance between different datasets, and test cross-correlation pipelines for near-future surveys.</jats:p>