Related papers: Gaussianization: Enhancing the Statistical Power o…
It was recently shown that applying a Gaussianizing transform, such as a logarithm, to the nonlinear matter density field extends the range of useful applicability of the power spectrum by a factor of a few smaller. Such a transform…
Some aspects of gravitational lensing by large scale structure (LSS) are investigated. We show that lensing causes the damping tail of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum to fall less rapidly with decreasing angular scale…
Distances in cosmology are usually inferred from observed redshifts - an estimate that is dependent on the local peculiar motion - giving a distorted view of the three dimensional structure and affecting basic observables such as the…
Likelihood fitting to two-point clustering statistics made from galaxy surveys usually assumes a multivariate normal distribution for the measurements, with justification based on the central limit theorem given the large number of…
We analyse the covariance of the one-dimensional mass power spectrum along lines of sight. The covariance reveals the correlation between different modes of fluctuations in the cosmic density field and gives the sample variance error for…
Observations of redshift-space distortions in spectroscopic galaxy surveys offer an attractive method for observing the build-up of cosmological structure. In this paper we develop and test a new statistic based on anisotropies in the…
The likelihood function is a crucial element of parameter estimation. In analyses of galaxy overdensities and weak lensing shear, one often approximates the likelihood of the power spectrum with a Gaussian distribution. The posterior…
We find that, even in the presence of discreteness noise, a Gaussianizing transform (producing a more-Gaussian one-point distribution) reduces nonlinearities in the power spectra of cosmological matter and galaxy density fields, in many…
Gravitational lensing of distant galaxies can be exploited to infer the convergence field as a function of angular position on the sky. The statistics of this field, much like that of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), can be studied to…
We use simulated maps of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy to quantify the ability of different statistical tests to discriminate between Gaussian and non-Gaussian models. Despite the central limit theorem on large angular scales,…
Weak gravitational lensing observations probe the spectrum and evolution of density fluctuations and the cosmological parameters which govern them. At low redshifts, the non-linear gravitational evolution of large scale structure produces a…
We consider cosmological applications of galaxy number density correlations to be inferred from future deep and wide multi-band optical surveys. We mostly focus on very large scales as a probe of possible features in the primordial power…
Skew-spectra allow us to extract non-Gaussian information by taking the square of a map and finding the power spectrum of this new map with the original map. This allows us to use much of the infrastructure of power spectra and avoid the…
Applying a transformation to a non-Gaussian field can enhance the information content of the resulting power spectrum, by reducing the correlations between Fourier modes. In the context of weak gravitational lensing, it has been shown that…
The present spatial distribution of galaxies in the Universe is non-Gaussian, with 40% skewness in 50 Mpc/h spheres, and remarkably little is known about the information encoded in it about cosmological parameters beyond the power spectrum.…
We find statistically significant correlations in the cosmological matter power spectrum over the full range of observable scales. While the correlations between individual modes are weak, the band-averaged power spectrum shows strong…
We consider the shape of the posterior distribution to be used when fitting cosmological models to power spectra measured from galaxy surveys. At very large scales, Gaussian posterior distributions in the power do not approximate the…
The normalisation of the matter power spectrum, sigma_8, is an essential ingredient to predict the phenomenology of the low redshift universe. It has been measured using several methods, such as X-ray cluster counts, weak lensing and the…
Cosmic microwave background observations are most commonly analyzed by estimating the power spectrum. In the limit where the CMB statistics are perfectly Gaussian, this extracts all the information, but the CMB also contains detectable…
Gravitational lensing distorts the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization fields and encodes valuable information on distances and growth rates at intermediate redshifts into the lensed power spectra. The…