Publications by Georges Meylan

Euclid: Calibrating photometric redshifts with spectroscopic cross-correlations

Frédéric Courbin, Richard Massey, Georges Meylan, Yi Wang

Cosmological constraints from key probes of the Euclid imaging survey rely critically on the accurate determination of the true redshift distributions, n(z); of tomographic redshift bins. We determine whether the mean redshift, < z >, of ten Euclid tomographic redshift bins can be calibrated to the Euclid target uncertainties of sigma(< z >) < 0:002 (1 + z) via cross-correlation, with spectroscopic samples akin to those from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), and Euclid's NISP spectroscopic survey. We construct mock Euclid and spectroscopic galaxy samples from the Flagship simulation and measure small-scale clustering redshifts up to redshift z < 1 :8 with an algorithm that performs well on current galaxy survey data. The clustering measurements are then fitted to two n(z) models: one is the true n(z) with a free mean; the other a Gaussian process modified to be restricted to non-negative values. We show that < z > is measured in each tomographic redshift bin to an accuracy of order 0.01 or better. By measuring the clustering redshifts on subsets of the full Flagship area, we construct scaling relations that allow us to extrapolate the method performance to larger sky areas than are currently available in the mock. For the full expected Euclid, BOSS, and DESI overlap region of approximately 6000 deg(2), the uncertainties attainable by clustering redshifts exceeds the Euclid requirement by at least a factor of three for both n(z) models considered, although systematic biases limit the accuracy. Clustering redshifts are an extremely effective method for redshift calibration for Euclid if the sources of systematic biases can be determined and removed, or calibrated out with sufficiently realistic simulations. We outline possible future work, in particular an extension to higher redshifts with quasar reference samples.

EDP SCIENCES S A2023

EAS 2022 takes positive steps forward for sustainable astronomy

Georges Meylan

2022

Euclid preparation XXI. Intermediate-redshift contaminants in the search for z > 6 galaxies within the Euclid Deep Survey

Hakim Atek, Gianluca Castignani, Frédéric Courbin, Marcello Farina, Maurizio Martinelli, Richard Massey, Georges Meylan, Austin Chandler Peel, Jean-Luc Starck, Yi Wang

Context. The Euclid mission is expected to discover thousands of z > 6 galaxies in three deep fields, which together will cover a similar to 50 deg(2) area. However, the limited number of Euclid bands (four) and the low availability of ancillary data could make the identification of z > 6 galaxies challenging. Aims. In this work we assess the degree of contamination by intermediate-redshift galaxies (z = 1-5.8) expected for z > 6 galaxies within the Euclid Deep Survey. Methods. This study is based on similar to 176 000 real galaxies at z = 1-8 in a similar to 0.7 deg(2) area selected from the UltraVISTA ultra-deep survey and similar to 96 000 mock galaxies with 25.3 6 recovery of 91% (88%) for bright (faint) galaxies. For the UltraVISTA-like bright sample, the percentage of z = 1-5.8 contaminants amongst apparent z > 6 galaxies as observed with Euclid alone is 18%, which is reduced to 4% (13%) by including ultra-deep Rubin (Spitzer) photometry. Conversely, for the faint mock sample, the contamination fraction with Euclid alone is considerably higher at 39%, and minimised to 7% when including ultra-deep Rubin data. For UltraVISTA-like bright galaxies, we find that Euclid (I-E - Y-E) > 2:8 and (Y-E - J(E)) < 1.4 colour criteria can separate contaminants from true z > 6 galaxies, although these are applicable to only 54% of the contaminants as many have unconstrained (I-E - Y-E) colours. In the best scenario, these cuts reduce the contamination fraction to 1% whilst preserving 81% of the fiducial z > 6 sample. For the faint mock sample, colour cuts are infeasible; we find instead that a 5 sigma detection threshold requirement in at least one of the Euclid near-infrared bands reduces the contamination fraction to 25%.

EDP SCIENCES S A2022

Euclid: Searching for pair-instability supernovae with the Deep Survey

Frédéric Courbin, Giovanni Longo, Richard Massey, Georges Meylan, Yi Wang

Pair-instability supernovae are theorized supernovae that have not yet been observationally confirmed. They are predicted to exist in low-metallicity environments. Because overall metallicity becomes lower at higher redshifts, deep near-infrared transient surveys probing high-redshift supernovae are suitable to discover pair-instability supernovae. The Euclid satellite, which is planned launch in 2023, has a near-infrared wide-field instrument that is suitable for a high-redshift supernova survey. The Euclid Deep Survey is planned to make regular observations of three Euclid Deep Fields (40 deg(2) in total) spanning Euclid's six-year primary mission period. While the observations of the Euclid Deep Fields are not frequent, we show that the predicted long duration of pair-instability supernovae would allow us to search for high-redshift pair-instability supernovae with the Euclid Deep Survey. Based on the current observational plan of the Euclid mission, we conduct survey simulations in order to estimate the expected numbers of pair-instability supernova discoveries. We find that up to several hundred pair-instability supernovae at z less than or similar to 3.5 can be discovered within the Euclid Deep Survey. We also show that pair-instability supernova candidates can be efficiently identified by their duration and color, which can be determined with the current Euclid Deep Survey plan. We conclude that the Euclid mission can lead to the first confirmation of pair-instability supernovae if their event rates are as high as those predicted by recent theoretical studies. We also update the expected numbers of superluminous supernova discoveries in the Euclid Deep Survey based on the latest observational plan.

EDP SCIENCES S A2022

KiDS and Euclid: Cosmological implications of a pseudo angular power spectrum analysis of KiDS-1000 cosmic shear tomography

Richard Massey, Georges Meylan, Huanyuan Shan, Jean-Luc Starck, Yi Wang

We present a tomographic weak lensing analysis of the Kilo Degree Survey Data Release 4 (KiDS-1000), using a new pseudo angular power spectrum estimator (pseudo-C-l) under development for the ESA Euclid mission. Over 21 million galaxies with shape information are divided into five tomographic redshift bins, ranging from 0.1 to 1.2 in photometric redshift. We measured pseudo-C-l using eight bands in the multipole range 76 < l < 1500 for auto- and cross-power spectra between the tomographic bins. A series of tests were carried out to check for systematic contamination from a variety of observational sources including stellar number density, variations in survey depth, and point spread function properties. While some marginal correlations with these systematic tracers were observed, there is no evidence of bias in the cosmological inference. B-mode power spectra are consistent with zero signal, with no significant residual contamination from E/B-mode leakage. We performed a Bayesian analysis of the pseudo-C-l estimates by forward modelling the effects of the mask. Assuming a spatially flat ACDM cosmology, we constrained the structure growth parameter S-8 = sigma(8)(Omega(m)/0.3)(1/2) = 0.754(-0.029)(+0.027). When combining cosmic shear from KiDS-1000 with baryon acoustic oscillation and redshift space distortion data from recent Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) measurements of luminous red galaxies, as well as the Lyman-alpha forest and its cross-correlation with quasars, we tightened these constraints to S-8 = 0.771(-0.032)(+0.006). These results are in very good agreement with previous KiDS-1000 and SDSS analyses and confirm a similar to 3 sigma tension with early-Universe constraints from cosmic microwave background experiments.

EDP SCIENCES S A2022

Euclid : Effects of sample covariance on the number counts of galaxy clusters

Richard Massey, Georges Meylan, Yi Wang

Aims. We investigate the contribution of shot-noise and sample variance to uncertainties in the cosmological parameter constraints inferred from cluster number counts, in the context of the Euclid survey. Methods. By analysing 1000 Euclid-like light cones, produced with the PINOCCHIO approximate method, we validated the analytical model of Hu & Kravtsov (2003, ApJ, 584, 702) for the covariance matrix, which takes into account both sources of statistical error. Then, we used such a covariance to define the likelihood function that is better equipped to extract cosmological information from cluster number counts at the level of precision that will be reached by the future Euclid photometric catalogs of galaxy clusters. We also studied the impact of the cosmology dependence of the covariance matrix on the parameter constraints. Results. The analytical covariance matrix reproduces the variance measured from simulations within the 10 percent; such a difference has no sizeable effect on the error of cosmological parameter constraints at this level of statistics. Also, we find that the Gaussian likelihood with full covariance is the only model that provides an unbiased inference of cosmological parameters without underestimating the errors, and that the cosmology-dependence of the covariance must be taken into account.

EDP SCIENCES S A2021

Euclid preparation: IX. EuclidEmulator2-power spectrum emulation with massive neutrinos and self-consistent dark energy perturbations

Gianluca Castignani, Fabio Finelli, Richard Massey, Georges Meylan, Yi Wang

We present a new, updated version of the EuclidEmulator (called EuclidEmulator2), a fast and accurate predictor for the nonlinear correction of the matter power spectrum. 2 per cent level accurate emulation is now supported in the eight-dimensional parameter space of w(0)w(a)CDM+Sigma m(nu) models between redshift z = 0 and z = 3 for spatial scales within the range . In order to achieve this level of accuracy, we have had to improve the quality of the underlying N-body simulations used as training data: (i) we use self-consistent linear evolution of non-dark matter species such as massive neutrinos, photons, dark energy, and the metric field, (ii) we perform the simulations in the so-called N-body gauge, which allows one to interpret the results in the framework of general relativity, (iii) we run over 250 high-resolution simulations with 3000(3) particles in boxes of 1(h(-1)Gpc)(3) volumes based on paired-and-fixed initial conditions, and (iv) we provide a resolution correction that can be applied to emulated results as a post-processing step in order to drastically reduce systematic biases on small scales due to residual resolution effects in the simulations. We find that the inclusion of the dynamical dark energy parameter w(a) significantly increases the complexity and expense of creating the emulator. The high fidelity of EuclidEmulator2 is tested in various comparisons against N-body simulations as well as alternative fast predictors such as HALOFIT, HMCode, and CosmicEmu. A blind test is successfully performed against the Euclid Flagship v2.0 simulation. Nonlinear correction factors emulated with EuclidEmulator2 are accurate at the level of or better for and z

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2021

The European Astronomical Society awarded its most prestigious prizes during its annual meeting held from 28 June to 2 July 2021. In a way similar to last year, the meeting was entirely virtual.

2021

COSMOGRAIL: XIX. Time delays in 18 strongly lensed quasars from 15 years of optical monitoring star

Vivien François Bonvin, Hung-Hsu Chan, Frédéric Courbin, Aymeric Alexandre Galan, Rémy Elie Joseph, Cameron Alexander Campbell Lemon, Georges Meylan, Martin Raoul Robert Millon, Eric Gérard Guy Paic, Malte Tewes, Olga Tihhonova

We present the results of 15 years of monitoring lensed quasars, which was conducted by the COSMOGRAIL programme at the Leonhard Euler 1.2 m Swiss Telescope. The decade-long light curves of 23 lensed systems are presented for the first time. We complement our data set with other monitoring data available in the literature to measure the time delays in 18 systems, among which nine reach a relative precision better than 15% for at least one time delay. To achieve this, we developed an automated version of the curve-shifting toolbox PyCS to ensure robust estimation of the time delay in the presence of microlensing, while accounting for the errors due to the imperfect representation of microlensing. We also re-analysed the previously published time delays of RX J1131-1231 and HE 0435-1223, by adding six and two new seasons of monitoring, respectively, and confirming the previous time-delay measurements. When the time delay measurement is possible, we corrected the light curves of the lensed images from their time delay and present the difference curves to highlight the microlensing signal contained in the data. To date, this is the largest sample of decade-long lens monitoring data, which is useful to measure H-0 and the size of quasar accretion discs with microlensing as well as to study quasar variability.

EDP SCIENCES S A2020

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The Complete Calibration of the Colour-Redshift Relation survey (C3R2) is a spectroscopic e ffort involving ESO and Keck facilities designed specifically to empirically calibrate the galaxy colour-redshift relation - P(z jC) to the Euclid depth (iAB = 24 :5) and is intimately linked to the success of upcoming Stage IV dark energy missions based on weak lensing cosmology. The aim is to build a spectroscopic calibration sample that is as representative as possible of the galaxies of the Euclid weak lensing sample. In order to minimise the number of spectroscopic observations necessary to fill the gaps in current knowledge of the P(z jC), self-organising map (SOM) representations of the galaxy colour space have been constructed. Here we present the first results of an ESO@VLT Large Programme approved in the context of C3R2, which makes use of the two VLT optical and near-infrared multi-object spectrographs, FORS2 and KMOS. This data release paper focuses on high-quality spectroscopic redshifts of high-redshift galaxies observed with the KMOS spectrograph in the near-infrared H- and K-bands. A total of 424 highly-reliable redshifts are measured in the 1:3

EDP SCIENCES S A2020