Related papers: Distance Estimation in Cosmology
In the last two decades, Bayesian inference has become commonplace in astronomy. At the same time, the choice of algorithms, terminology, notation, and interpretation of Bayesian inference varies from one sub-field of astronomy to the next,…
Tensions between cosmological parameters derived through different channels can be a genuine signature of new physics that $\Lambda$CDM as the standard model is not able to reproduce, in particular in the missing consistency between…
We present a method to estimate distances to stars with spectroscopically derived stellar parameters. The technique is a Bayesian approach with likelihood estimated via comparison of measured parameters to a grid of stellar isochrones, and…
We present a Bayesian method for the identification and classification of objects from sets of astronomical catalogs, given a predefined classification scheme. Identification refers here to the association of entries in different catalogs…
Large scale astronomical surveys are going wider and deeper than ever before. However, astronomers, cosmologists and theorists continue to face the perennial issue that their data sets are often incomplete in magnitude space and must be…
Photometric redshift estimation is becoming an increasingly important technique, although the currently existing methods present several shortcomings which hinder their application. Here it is shown that most of those drawbacks are…
Astrometric surveys such as Gaia and LSST will measure parallaxes for hundreds of millions of stars. Yet they will not measure a single distance. Rather, a distance must be estimated from a parallax. In this didactic article, I show that…
This textbook provides a systematic treatment of statistical machine learning for astronomical research through the lens of Bayesian inference, developing a unified framework that reveals connections between modern data analysis techniques…
The gravitational field of a galaxy can act as a lens and deflect the light emitted by a more distant object such as a quasar. Strong gravitational lensing causes multiple images of the same quasar to appear in the sky. Since the light in…
In almost every scientific field, an experiment involves collecting data and then analysing it. The analysis stage will often consist in trying to extract some physical parameter and estimating its uncertainty; this is known as Parameter…
The Universe is not completely homogeneous. Even if it is sufficiently so on large scales, it is very inhomogeneous at small scales, and this has an effect on light propagation, so that the distance as a function of redshift, which in many…
This is an introduction to Bayesian inference with a focus on hierarchical models and hyper-parameters. We write primarily for an audience of Bayesian novices, but we hope to provide useful insights for seasoned veterans as well. Examples…
In astronomical and cosmological studies one often wishes to infer some properties of an infinite-dimensional field indexed within a finite-dimensional metric space given only a finite collection of noisy observational data. Bayesian…
Scatter in distance indicators introduces two conceptually distinct systematic biases when reconstructing peculiar velocity fields from redshifts and distances. The first is distance Malmquist bias (dMB) that affects individual distance…
Clustering in high-dimensions poses many statistical challenges. While traditional distance-based clustering methods are computationally feasible, they lack probabilistic interpretation and rely on heuristics for estimation of the number of…
We review some of the common methods for model selection: the goodness of fit, the likelihood ratio test, Bayesian model selection using Bayes factors, and the classical as well as the Bayesian information theoretic approaches. We…
The next generation of weak gravitational lensing surveys is capable of generating good measurements of cosmological parameters, provided that, amongst other requirements, adequate redshift information is available for the background…
Estimating a distance by inverting a parallax is only valid in the absence of noise. As most stars in the Gaia catalogue will have non-negligible fractional parallax errors, we must treat distance estimation as a constrained inference…
By introducing Crossing functions and hyper-parameters I show that the Bayesian interpretation of the Crossing Statistics [1] can be used trivially for the purpose of model selection among cosmological models. In this approach to falsify a…
The ability to obtain reliable point estimates of model parameters is of crucial importance in many fields of physics. This is often a difficult task given that the observed data can have a very high number of dimensions. In order to…