Browsing by Author "Fonseca, José"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Detecting Baryon Acoustic Oscillations with HI Intensity Mapping using MeerKAT
    (University of the Western Cape, 2019) Engelbrecht, Brandon; Santos, Mario; Fonseca, José
    Future radio surveys as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and its precursor, the "Meer" Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT), will map the Neutral Hydrogen (HI) in large areas of the sky using the intensity mapping (IM). HI IM is currently one of the most promising ways of accessing the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe. The distribution of matter in the Universe not only encodes its composition but also how it evolves and its initial conditions. An effect on the matter distribution that will be detected by the SKA on the post re-ionization Universe are the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). While it has been shown that in single dish mode the SKA can measure the BAO peak in the radial 21cm power spectrum at low redshifts, this possibility has not yet been studied in detail for the MeerKAT. In this thesis we construct a set of full sky simulations to test how well MeerKAT will be able to extract the BAO wiggles along the line of sight. These simulations are done for the frequencies corresponding to MeerKAT L-band. The maps combine the cosmological HI signal, systematic noise, cosmological foregrounds and the instrumental telescope beam. A model-independent estimator is used to extract the BAO wiggles by subtracting a smooth polynomial component from the 21cm radial power spectrum. We test with simulations if this estimator is biased and the signal to noise of the extraction. We conclude that we are able to remove contaminants and recover the cosmological HI signal while not risking the recovery of the BAO signal. We investigate the effects of varying the sky area and the observational hours on the signal to noise ratio for the BAO wiggles. We found that for a HI IM experiment using MeerKAT, the optimal sky area to detect the BAO along the line of sight is 50% of the sky. With a signal-to-noise ratio of 3.37. This can be achieved with 2000 hours of exposure time
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    Gravitational waves and galaxies cross-correlations: a forecast on GW biases for future detectors
    (Oxford University Press, 2025) Fonseca, José; Clarkson, Chris; Baker, Tessa
    Gravitational waves (GWs) have rapidly become important cosmological probes since their first detection in 2015. As the number of detected events continues to rise, upcoming instruments like Einstein Telescope (ET) and Cosmic Explorer (CE) will observe millions of compact binary mergers. These detections, coupled with galaxy surveys by instruments such as the Dark Spectroscopic Energy Instrument (DESI), Euclid, and the Vera Rubin Observatory, will provide unique information on the large-scale structure of the universe by cross-correlating GWs with the distribution of galaxies hosting them. In this paper, we focus on how cross-correlations constrain the clustering bias of GWs emitted by the coalescence of binary black holes (BBHs). This parameter links BBHs to the underlying dark matter distribution, hence informing us how they populate galaxies. Using a multitracer approach, we forecast the precision of these measurements under different survey combinations. Our results indicate that current GW detectors will have limited precision, with measurement errors as high as ∼ 50 per cent. However, third-generation detectors like ET, when cross-correlated with Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) data, can improve clustering bias measurements to within 2.5 per cent. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these cross-correlations can enable a per cent-level measurement of the magnification lensing effect on GWs. Despite this, there is a degeneracy between magnification and evolution biases, which hinders the precision of both. This degeneracy is most effectively addressed by assuming knowledge of one bias or targeting an optimal redshift range of 1 < z < 2.5. Our analysis opens new avenues for studying the distribution of BBHs and testing the nature of gravity through large-scale structure.
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    Multi-tracer power spectra and bispectra: formalism
    (Institute of Physics, 2024) Karagiannis, Dionysios; Maartens, Roy; Fonseca, José; Camera, Stefano; Clarkson, Chris
    The power spectrum and bispectrum of dark matter tracers are key and complementary probes of the Universe. Next-generation surveys will deliver good measurements of the bispectrum, opening the door to improved cosmological constraints and the breaking of parameter degeneracies, from the combination of the power spectrum and bispectrum. Multi-tracer power spectra have been used to suppress cosmic variance and mitigate the effects of nuisance parameters and systematics. We present a bispectrum multi-tracer formalism that can be applied to next-generation survey data. Then we perform a simple Fisher analysis to illustrate qualitatively the improved precision on primordial non-Gaussianity that is expected to come from the bispectrum multi-tracer. In addition, we investigate the parametric dependence of conditional errors from multi-tracer power spectra and multi-tracer bispectra, on the differences between the biases and the number densities of two tracers. Our results suggest that optimal constraints arise from maximising the ratio of number densities, the difference between the linear biases, the difference between the quadratic biases, and the difference between the products b 1 b Φ for each tracer, where b Φ is the bias for the primordial potential.
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    Testing gravity with redshift-space distortions, using MeerKAT and the SKA
    (University of the Western Cape, 2019) Viljoen, Jan-Albert; Maartens, Roy; Fonseca, José
    The growth rate of large-scale structure is a key probe of gravity in the accelerating Universe. Standard models of Dark Energy within General Relativity predict essentially the same growth rate, whereas Modified Gravity theories without Dark Energy predict a different growth rate. Redshift-space distortions lead to anisotropy in the power spectrum, and extracting the monopole and quadrupole allows us to determine the growth rate and thus test theories of gravity. We investigate redshift-space distortions in the intensity maps of the 21cm emission line of neutral hydrogen (HI) in galaxies after the Epoch of Reionization: HI intensity mapping delivers very accurate redshifts. We first use the standard approach based on the Fourier power spectrum. Then we explored an alternative approach, based on the spherical-harmonic angular power spectrum. Fisher forecasting was used to make predictions of the accuracy with which MeerKAT will measure the growth rate parameter, via the proposed MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey (MeerKLASS). Then we extend the forecasts to consider the planned HI intensity mapping survey in Phase 1 of the Square Kilometre Array. These forecasts enable us to predict at what level of accuracy General relativity and various alternative theories could be ruled out.