Correlations between tracers of the matter density field and gravitational lensing are sensitive to the evolution of the matter power spectrum and the expansion rate across cosmic time. Appropriately ...defined ratios of such correlation functions, on the other hand, depend only on the angular diameter distances to the tracer objects and to the gravitational lensing source planes. Because of their simple cosmological dependence, such ratios can exploit available signal-to-noise ratio down to small angular scales, even where directly modelling the correlation functions is difficult. We present a measurement of lensing ratios using galaxy position and lensing data from the Dark Energy Survey, and CMB lensing data from the South Pole Telescope and Planck, obtaining the highest precision lensing ratio measurements to date. Relative to the concordance CDM model, we find a best-fitting lensing ratio amplitude of A = 1.1 ± 0.1. We use the ratio measurements to generate cosmological constraints, focusing on the curvature parameter. We demonstrate that photometrically selected galaxies can be used to measure lensing ratios, and argue that future lensing ratio measurements with data from a combination of LSST and Stage-4 CMB experiments can be used to place interesting cosmological constraints, even after considering the systematic uncertainties associated with photometric redshift and galaxy shear estimation.
Clusters of galaxies are sensitive to the most nonlinear peaks in the cosmic density field. The weak gravitational lensing of background galaxies by clusters can allow us to infer their masses. ...However, galaxies associated with the local environment of the cluster can also be intrinsically aligned due to the local tidal gradient, contaminating any cosmology derived from the lensing signal. We measure this intrinsic alignment in Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 1 redMaPPer clusters. We find evidence of a non-zero mean radial alignment of galaxies within clusters between redshift 0.1-0.7. We find a significant systematic in the measured ellipticities of cluster satellite galaxies that we attribute to the central galaxy flux and other intracluster light. We attempt to correct this signal, and fit a simple model for intrinsic alignment amplitude (\(A_{\textrm{IA}}\)) to the measurement, finding \(A_{\textrm{IA}}=0.15\pm 0.04\), when excluding data near the edge of the cluster. We find a significantly stronger alignment of the central galaxy with the cluster dark matter halo at low redshift and with higher richness and central galaxy absolute magnitude (proxies for cluster mass). This is an important demonstration of the ability of large photometric data sets like DES to provide direct constraints on the intrinsic alignment of galaxies within clusters. These measurements can inform improvements to small-scale modeling and simulation of the intrinsic alignment of galaxies to help improve the separation of the intrinsic alignment signal in weak lensing studies.
The Cold Spot is a puzzling large-scale feature in the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature maps and its origin has been subject to active debate. As an important foreground structure at low ...redshift, the Eridanus supervoid was recently detected, but it was subsequently determined that, assuming the standard \(\Lambda\)CDM model, only about 10-20\(\%\) of the observed temperature depression can be accounted for via its Integrated Sachs-Wolfe imprint. However, \(R\gtrsim100~h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}\) supervoids elsewhere in the sky have shown ISW imprints \(A_{\mathrm{ISW}}\approx5.2\pm1.6\) times stronger than expected from \(\Lambda\)CDM (\(A_{\mathrm{ISW}}=1\)), which warrants further inspection. Using the Year-3 redMaGiC catalogue of luminous red galaxies from the Dark Energy Survey, here we confirm the detection of the Eridanus supervoid as a significant under-density in the Cold Spot's direction at \(z<0.2\). We also show, with \(\mathrm{S/N}\gtrsim5\) significance, that the Eridanus supervoid appears as the most prominent large-scale under-density in the dark matter mass maps that we reconstructed from DES Year-3 gravitational lensing data. While we report no significant anomalies, an interesting aspect is that the amplitude of the lensing signal from the Eridanus supervoid at the Cold Spot centre is about \(30\%\) lower than expected from similar peaks found in N-body simulations based on the standard \(\Lambda\)CDM model with parameters \(\Omega_{\rm m} = 0.279\) and \(\sigma_8 = 0.82\). Overall, our results confirm the causal relation between these individually rare structures in the cosmic web and in the CMB, motivating more detailed future surveys in the Cold Spot region.
We present reconstructed convergence maps, \textit{mass maps}, from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) third year (Y3) weak gravitational lensing data set. The mass maps are weighted projections of the ...density field (primarily dark matter) in the foreground of the observed galaxies. We use four reconstruction methods, each is a \textit{maximum a posteriori} estimate with a different model for the prior probability of the map: Kaiser-Squires, null B-mode prior, Gaussian prior, and a sparsity prior. All methods are implemented on the celestial sphere to accommodate the large sky coverage of the DES Y3 data. We compare the methods using realistic \(\Lambda\)CDM simulations with mock data that are closely matched to the DES Y3 data. We quantify the performance of the methods at the map level and then apply the reconstruction methods to the DES Y3 data, performing tests for systematic error effects. The maps are compared with optical foreground cosmic-web structures and are used to evaluate the lensing signal from cosmic-void profiles. The recovered dark matter map covers the largest sky fraction of any galaxy weak lensing map to date.
Correlations between tracers of the matter density field and gravitational lensing are sensitive to the evolution of the matter power spectrum and the expansion rate across cosmic time. Appropriately ...defined ratios of such correlation functions, on the other hand, depend only on the angular diameter distances to the tracer objects and to the gravitational lensing source planes. Because of their simple cosmological dependence, such ratios can exploit available signal-to-noise down to small angular scales, even where directly modeling the correlation functions is difficult. We present a measurement of lensing ratios using galaxy position and lensing data from the Dark Energy Survey, and CMB lensing data from the South Pole Telescope and Planck, obtaining the highest precision lensing ratio measurements to date. Relative to the concordance \(\Lambda\)CDM model, we find a best fit lensing ratio amplitude of \(A = 1.1 \pm 0.1\). We use the ratio measurements to generate cosmological constraints, focusing on the curvature parameter. We demonstrate that photometrically selected galaxies can be used to measure lensing ratios, and argue that future lensing ratio measurements with data from a combination of LSST and Stage-4 CMB experiments can be used to place interesting cosmological constraints, even after considering the systematic uncertainties associated with photometric redshift and galaxy shear estimation.
We present new wide-field weak lensing mass maps for the Year 1 Dark Energy Survey data, generated via a forward fitting approach. This method of producing maps does not impose any prior constraints ...on the mass distribution to be reconstructed. The technique is found to improve the map reconstruction on the edges of the field compared to the conventional Kaiser-Squires method, which applies a direct inversion on the data; our approach is in good agreement with the previous direct approach in the central regions of the footprint. The mapping technique is assessed and verified with tests on simulations; together with the Kaiser-Squires method, the technique is then applied to data from the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 data and the differences between the two methods are compared. We also produce the first DES measurements of the convergence Minkowski functionals and compare them to those measured in simulations.
We construct the largest curved-sky galaxy weak lensing mass map to date from the DES first-year (DES Y1) data. The map, about 10 times larger than previous work, is constructed over a contiguous ...\(\approx1,500 \)deg\(^2\), covering a comoving volume of \(\approx10 \)Gpc\(^3\). The effects of masking, sampling, and noise are tested using simulations. We generate weak lensing maps from two DES Y1 shear catalogs, Metacalibration and Im3shape, with sources at redshift \(0.2<z<1.3,\) and in each of four bins in this range. In the highest signal-to-noise map, the ratio between the mean signal-to-noise in the E-mode and the B-mode map is \(\sim\)1.5 (\(\sim\)2) when smoothed with a Gaussian filter of \(\sigma_{G}=30\) (80) arcminutes. The second and third moments of the convergence \(\kappa\) in the maps are in agreement with simulations. We also find no significant correlation of \(\kappa\) with maps of potential systematic contaminants. Finally, we demonstrate two applications of the mass maps: (1) cross-correlation with different foreground tracers of mass and (2) exploration of the largest peaks and voids in the maps.
The oxygen electrodes from two solid oxide electrolysis stacks that performed high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE) and produced hydrogen for 1000 and 2000
h, respectively, were examined using ...X-ray fluorescence, X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES), four-point resistivity, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and Raman micro-spectroscopy to determine possible causes for the degradation in stack performance over the test periods. These techniques yielded information such as elemental distribution, oxidation state, phases present, electrode delamination, and porosity within the electrode layers. From these studies, we found two phenomena that were likely the cause of increasingly poor oxygen electrode performance over time. The first source of degradation was chromium substitution into the oxygen electrode bond layer, which serves to bond the cell to the flow field and interconnect. This is caused by migration of a chromium species from the bipolar plate. The effect of this is a significant increase in the electrical resistance of the bond layer material. The other source of degradation identified was oxygen electrode delamination. The cause of electrode delamination, which is locally catastrophic to the operation of the cell, is unclear; however, we will discuss two possible mechanisms that might cause this phenomenon.
This study aimed to characterise soil microbial community structure and function in temperate upland grassland ecosystems. We compared the use of community level physiological profiles (CLPP), ...phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) profiles and community DNA (%G+C base distribution) approaches to quantify soil microbial community structure and potential activity across a gradient of three upland grassland types at 10 geographically distinct sites within the UK. Soil microbial biomass (
C
mic) was highest in unimproved (U4a) and lowest in improved (MG6) grasslands. In contrast, potential soil microbial activity (carbon utilisation) was greatest in the improved and lowest in the semi-improved (U4b) grasslands. PLFA and culturing revealed that the soil microbial community shifted from one favouring fungi to one favouring bacteria as grassland improvement increased. Canonical variate analysis (CVA) of the CLPP and PLFA data differentiated microbial communities from the grassland types and sites and the separation between grasslands was greater using PLFA than CLPP. Discrimination between grasslands was mainly due to the presence of higher concentrations of fatty acids typical for Gram −ve bacteria in improved grasslands and actinomycete and fungal fatty acids in the semi and unimproved grasslands. CVA of the %G+C data gave less discrimination of the microbial communities than the other two methods. Correlation analysis of the CVA data for each microbial analysis showed a small, but significant, level of matching between the CLPP and PLFA data suggesting these two analyses may be reporting on similar members of the microbial community. Correlation between microbial community structure and soil physio-chemical properties indicated that PLFA were highly correlated with calcium, phosphorus, sodium, nitrogen and organic matter content and pH. CLPP were highly correlated with sodium and organic matter content and pH, while %G+C content correlated with pH. Correlation between microbial community structure and plant community structure indicated that fatty acids typical for Gram −ve bacteria were highly correlated with the presence of
Lolium perenne and
Trifolium repens and all microbial PLFA with the presence of
Vaccinium myrtillus. Correlation of plant species with CLPP indicated that the presence of a number of rushes, shrubs, herbs and grasses influenced the metabolic profiles of the microbial communities from these grasslands. The presence of herbs were found to be highly correlated with certain %G+C classes within the community DNA.
