High-quality Strong Lens Candidates in the Final Kilo-Degree Survey Footprint

We present 97 new high-quality strong lensing candidates found in the final ∼350 deg2 that complete the full ∼1350 deg2 area of the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS). Together with our previous findings, the final list of high-quality candidates from KiDS sums up to 268 systems. The new sample is assembled using a new convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier applied to r-band (best-seeing) and g, r, and i color-composited images separately. This optimizes the complementarity of the morphology and color information on the identification of strong lensing candidates. We apply the new classifiers to a sample of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and a sample of bright galaxies (BGs) and select candidates that received a high probability to be a lens from the CNN (P CNN). In particular, setting P CNN > 0.8 for the LRGs, the one-band CNN predicts 1213 candidates, while the three-band classifier yields 1299 candidates, with only ∼30% overlap. For the BGs, in order to minimize the false positives, we adopt a more conservative threshold, P CNN > 0.9, for both CNN classifiers. This results in 3740 newly selected objects. The candidates from the two samples are visually inspected by seven coauthors to finally select 97 “high-quality” lens candidates which received mean scores larger than 6 (on a scale from 0 to 10). We finally discuss the effect of the seeing on the accuracy of CNN classification and possible avenues to increase the efficiency of multiband classifiers, in preparation of next-generation surveys from ground and space.

Halo-model Analysis of the Clustering of Photometric Luminous Red Galaxies at 0.10 ≤ z ≤1.05 from the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey

We present the clustering analysis of photometric luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at a redshift range of 0.1 ≤ z ≤ 1.05 using 615,317 photometric LRGs selected from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program, covering ∼124 deg2. Our sample covers a broad range of stellar masses and photometric redshifts and enables a halo occupation distribution analysis to study the redshift and stellar-mass dependence of dark halo properties of LRGs. We find a tight correlation between the characteristic dark halo mass to host central LRGs, M min , and the number density of LRGs, independently of redshifts, indicating that the formation of LRGs is associated with the global environment. The M min of LRGs depends only weakly on the stellar mass M ⋆ at M ⋆ ≲ 1010.75 h −2 M ⊙ at 0.3 < z < 1.05, in contrast to the case for all photometrically selected galaxies, for which M min shows significant dependence on M ⋆ even at low M ⋆. The weak stellar-mass dependence is indicative of the dark halo mass being the key parameter for the formation of LRGs, rather than the stellar mass. Our result suggests that the halo mass of ∼1012.5±0.2 h −1 M ⊙ is the critical mass for an efficient halo quenching due to the halo environment. We compare our result with the result of the hydrodynamical simulation to find that low-mass LRGs at z ∼ 1 will increase their stellar masses by an order of magnitude from z = 1 to 0 through mergers and satellite accretions, and that a large fraction of massive LRGs at z < 0.9 consist of LRGs that recently migrated from massive green valley galaxies or those that evolved from less massive LRGs through mergers and satellite accretions.

Traces of Anisotropic Quasi-Regular Structure in the SDSS Data

The aim of this study is to search for quasi-periodical structures at moderate cosmological redshifts z ≲ 0.5. We mainly use the SDSS DR7 data on the luminous red galaxies (LRGs)with redshifts 0.16 ≤ z ≤ 0.47. At first, we analyze features (peaks) in the power spectra of radial (shell-like) distributions using separate angular sectors in the sky and calculate the power spectra within each sector. As a result, we found some signs of a large-scale anisotropic quasi-periodic structure detectable through 6 sectors out of a total of 144 sectors. These sectors are distinguished by large amplitudes of dominant peaks in their radial power spectra at wavenumbers k within a narrow interval of 0.05 < k < 0.07 h Mpc−1. Then, passing from a spherical coordinate system to a Cartesian one, we found a special direction such that the total distribution of LRG projections on it contains a significant (≳5σ) quasi-periodical component. We assume that we are dealing with a signature of a quasi-regular structure with a characteristic scale 116 ± 10 h−1 Mpc. Our assumption is confirmed by a preliminary analysis of the SDSS DR12 data.

Building a digital twin of a luminous red galaxy spectroscopic survey: galaxy properties and clustering covariance

ABSTRACT Upcoming surveys will use a variety of galaxy selections to map the large-scale structure of the Universe. It is important to make accurate predictions for the properties and clustering of such galaxies, including the errors on these statistics. Here, we describe a novel technique which uses the semi-analytical model of galaxy formation galform, embedded in the high-resolution N-body Planck-Millennium simulation, to populate a thousand halo catalogues generated using the Parallel-PM N-body glam code. Our hybrid scheme allows us to make clustering predictions on scales that cannot be modelled in the original N-body simulation. We focus on luminous red galaxies (LRGs) selected in the redshift range z = 0.6 − 1 from the galform output using similar colour-magnitude cuts in the r, z, and W1 bands to those that will be applied in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, and call this illustrative sample ‘DESI-like’ LRGs. We find that the LRG-halo connection is non-trivial, leading to the prediction of a non-standard halo occupation distribution; in particular, the occupation of central galaxies does not reach unity for the most massive haloes, and drops with increasing mass. The glam catalogues reproduce the abundance and clustering of the LRGs predicted by galform. We use the glam mocks to compute the covariance matrices for the two-point correlation function and power spectrum of the LRGs and their background dark matter density field, revealing important differences. We also make predictions for the linear-growth rate and the baryon acoustic oscillations distances at z = 0.6, 0.74, and 0.93. All ‘DESI-like’ LRG catalogues are made publicly available.

The Completed SDSS-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: N-body Mock Challenge for Galaxy Clustering Measurements

We develop a series of N-body data challenges, functional to the final analysis of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) Data Release 16 (DR16) galaxy sample. The challenges are primarily based on high-fidelity catalogs constructed from the Outer Rim simulation – a large box size realization (3h−1Gpc) characterized by an unprecedented combination of volume and mass resolution, down to 1.85 · 109h−1M⊙. We generate synthetic galaxy mocks by populating Outer Rim halos with a variety of halo occupation distribution (HOD) schemes of increasing complexity, spanning different redshift intervals. We then assess the performance of three complementary redshift space distortion (RSD) models in configuration and Fourier space, adopted for the analysis of the complete DR16 eBOSS sample of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs). We find all the methods mutually consistent, with comparable systematic errors on the Alcock-Paczynski parameters and the growth of structure, and robust to different HOD prescriptions – thus validating the robustness of the models and the pipelines used for the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and full shape clustering analysis. In particular, all the techniques are able to recover α∥ and α⊥ to within $0.9\%$, and fσ8 to within $1.5\%$. As a by-product of our work, we are also able to gain interesting insights on the galaxy-halo connection. Our study is relevant for the final eBOSS DR16 ‘consensus cosmology’, as the systematic error budget is informed by testing the results of analyses against these high-resolution mocks. In addition, it is also useful for future large-volume surveys, since similar mock-making techniques and systematic corrections can be readily extended to model for instance the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) galaxy sample.

Cross-Correlation of Planck CMB Lensing with DESI-Like LRGs

Cross-correlations between the lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and other tracers of large-scale structure provide a unique way to reconstruct the growth of dark matter, break degeneracies between cosmology and galaxy physics, and test theories of modified gravity. We detect a cross-correlation between DESI-like luminous red galaxies (LRGs) selected from DECaLS imaging and CMB lensing maps reconstructed with the Planck satellite at a significance of S/N = 27.2 over scales ℓmin = 30, ℓmax = 1000. To correct for magnification bias, we determine the slope of the LRG cumulative magnitude function at the faint limit as s = 0.999 ± 0.015, and find corresponding corrections on the order of a few percent for $C^{\kappa g}_{\ell }, C^{gg}_{\ell }$ across the scales of interest. We fit the large-scale galaxy bias at the effective redshift of the cross-correlation zeff ≈ 0.68 using two different bias evolution agnostic models: a HaloFit times linear bias model where the bias evolution is folded into the clustering-based estimation of the redshift kernel, and a Lagrangian perturbation theory model of the clustering evaluated at zeff. We also determine the error on the bias from uncertainty in the redshift distribution; within this error, the two methods show excellent agreement with each other and with DESI survey expectations.

The Clustering of DESI-like Luminous Red Galaxies Using Photometric Redshifts

We present measurements of the redshift-dependent clustering of a DESI-like luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample selected from the Legacy Survey imaging dataset, and use the halo occupation distribution (HOD) framework to fit the clustering signal. The photometric LRG sample in this study contains 2.7 million objects over the redshift range of 0.4 &lt; z &lt; 0.9 over 5655 sq. degrees. We have developed new photometric redshift (photo-z) estimates using the Legacy Survey DECam and WISE photometry, with σNMAD = 0.02 precision for LRGs. We compute the projected correlation function using new methods that maximize signal-to-noise while incorporating redshift uncertainties. We present a novel algorithm for dividing irregular survey geometries into equal-area patches for jackknife resampling. For a 5-parameter HOD model fit using the MultiDark halo catalog, we find that there is little evolution in HOD parameters except at the highest-redshifts. The inferred large-scale structure bias is largely consistent with constant clustering amplitude over time. In an appendix, we explore limitations of MCMC fitting using stochastic likelihood estimates resulting from applying HOD methods to N-body catalogs, and present a new technique for finding best-fit parameters in this situation. Accompanying this paper we have released the PRLS (Photometric Redshifts for the Legacy Surveys) catalog of photo-z’s obtained by applying the methods used in this work to the full Legacy Survey Data Release 8 dataset. This catalog provides accurate photometric redshifts for objects with z &lt; 21 over more than 16,000 square degrees of sky.

LESSER: a catalogue of spectroscopically selected sample of Lyman-α emitters lensed by galaxies

ABSTRACT We introduce the LEnSed laeS in the Eboss suRvey (LESSER) project, which aims to search for lensed Lyman-α emitters (LAEs) in the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS). The final catalogue contains 361 candidate lensing systems. The lens galaxies are luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at redshift 0.4 &lt; z &lt; 0.8, and the source galaxies are LAEs at redshift 2 &lt; z &lt; 3. The spectral resolution of eBOSS (∼2000) allows us to further identify the fine structures of Lyman-α ($\rm Ly\alpha$) emissions. Among our lensed LAE candidates, 281 systems present single-peaked line profiles while 80 systems show double-peaked features. Future spectroscopic/imaging follow-up observations of the catalogue may shed light on the origin of diverse $\rm Ly\alpha$ line morphology, and provide promising labs for studying low-mass dark matter haloes/subhaloes.