Year 2020-2021

The formation of stars, galaxies, and the large-scale structure in the Universe drives complex energy density flows over a wide range of scales from atomic nuclei to the Hubble length. The net effect could be summarized by a census of the density parameters, Ω, for different entries in the cosmic inventory over time. I will present my ongoing effort to probe the history of several key cosmic constituents, including stars, dust, thermal, and gravitational energy associated with the large-scale structure. To do so, we deproject the cosmic UV, IR, and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect backgrounds over redshift using a new tomographic intensity mapping approach. While the results are already pushing our understanding of the Universe, they represent only the beginning of a new chapter of cosmology and astrophysics using the entire radiation field without necessarily resolving individual galaxies. Looking forward, I will describe the infrastructure that we are building in facilitating a close synergy between galaxy surveys and intensity mapping. I will close by highlighting some exciting science opportunities in the next decade.

February 17, 2021

Paul: Career Advice Talk Part 2 of 2

February 10, 2021

[Kevin] Yuan et al., Evidence for galaxy assembly bias in BOSS CMASS redshift-space galaxy correlation function
Paul: Career Advice Talk Part 1 of 2

February 3, 2021

Naim Karacayli (Yale), Follow-up to CCAPP Seminar "From 100 Mpc to 1 Mpc with 1D Lyman-alpha Power Spectrum"
[Kevin] Malz, How not to obtain the redshift distribution from probabilistic redshift estimates: Under what conditions is it not inappropriate to estimate the redshift distribution N(z) by stacking photo-z PDFs?

January 27, 2021

[Paul] Blakeslee et al., The Hubble Constant from Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances
Tansu Daylan (MIT), Follow-up to CCAPP Seminar "Discovery of the HD 108236 multiplanetary system with a bright Sun-like star"

January 20, 2021

Linda Xu (Harvard), Follow-up to CCAPP Seminar "Cosmological Measurements of Massive Light Relics"
Dustin Madison (West Virginia), Follow-up to CCAPP Seminar "Gravitational Wave Memory and the Cosmic Microwave Background"

January 13, 2021

[Anna] Cawthon et al., Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Calibration of Lens Sample Redshift Distributions using Clustering Redshifts with BOSS/eBOSS
[Ami and Jack] Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Measuring the Survey Transfer Function with Balrog

December 16, 2020

[Hui] Azzoni et al., A minimal power-spectrum-based moment expansion for CMB B-mode searches
Jahmour and Lauren: Reflection on DESI Collaboration meeting

December 9, 2020

Johannes Lange (UCSC): An All-Scale Cosmological Analysis of Anisotropic Clustering in BOSS LOWZ
[Heyang] Gazagnes et al., Inferring the properties of the sources of reionization using the morphological spectra of the ionized regions

Abstract:

I will present new constraints on the growth rate parameter $f \sigma_8$ from modeling the anisotropic clustering in BOSS LOWZ. Compared to previous analyses, we extend the modeling into the highly non-linear regime down to scales $s \sim 0.5 \, \mathrm{Mpc} / h$. Extracting cosmological information from non-linear scales is made possible via a sophisticated, simulation-based modeling approach. We directly compare observational data against dark matter-only simulations populated via a Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) framework. I will discuss the HOD model used, including the effects of observational incompleteness, galaxy assembly bias and galaxy velocity bias. I will also discuss tests on mock catalogs to ensure that our cosmological constraints are unbiased. Finally, I will present cosmological constraints from applying this analysis framework to two samples of $~70,000$ galaxies at redshifts $z \approx 0.25$ and $z \approx 0.40$. The derived cosmological constraints on $f \sigma_8$ are more stringent than any previous study targeting large linear scales only.

December 2, 2020

[Kevin] Kim et al., Giving Cosmic Redshift Drift a Whirl
Beverly: Research Update: DMASS overview

November 18, 2020

[Lauren] Yang et al., Measurements of the z ∼6 Intergalactic Medium Optical Depth and Transmission Spikes Using a New z > 6.3 Quasar Sample
Makana: Research update

November 4, 2020

Gabe: Mental Health in Academia

October 28, 2020

[Kevin] Hang et al., Galaxy clustering in the DESI Legacy Survey and its imprint on the CMB

October 21, 2020

Yun-Ting Cheng (Caltech), follow-up to CCAPP seminar "Cosmology and Astrophysics with Intensity Mapping"
[Yi-Kuan] Rhodes et al., The End of Galaxy Surveys

October 14, 2020