We present new arcminute-resolution maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropy from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, using data taken from 2013–2016 at 98 and 150 GHz. The maps cover more than 17,000 deg2, the deepest 600 deg2 with noise levels below 10μK-arcmin. We use the power spectrum derived from almost 6,000 deg2 of these maps to constrain cosmology. The ACT data enable a measurement of the angular scale of features in both the divergence-like polarization and the temperature anisotropy, tracing both the velocity and density at last-scattering. From these one can derive the distance to the last-scattering surface and thus infer the local expansion rate, H 0. By combining ACT data with large-scale information from WMAP we measure H 0=67.6± 1.1 km/s/Mpc, at 68% confidence, in excellent agreement with the independently-measured Planck satellite estimate (from ACT alone we find H 0=67.9± 1.5 km/s/Mpc). The ΛCDM model provides a good fit to the ACT data, and we find no evidence for deviations: both the spatial curvature, and the departure from the standard lensing signal in the spectrum, are zero to within 1σ; the number of relativistic species, the primordial Helium fraction, and the running of the spectral index are consistent with ΛCDM predictions to within 1.5–2.2σ. We compare ACT, WMAP, and Planck at the parameter level and find good consistency; we investigate how the constraints on the correlated spectral index and baryon density parameters readjust when adding CMB large-scale information that ACT does not measure. The DR4 products presented here will be publicly released on the NASA Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis.

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra of the CMB measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 5400 deg2 of the 2013–2016 survey, which covers >15000 deg2 at 98 and 150 GHz. For this analysis we adopt a blinding strategy to help avoid confirmation bias and, related to this, show numerous checks for systematic error done before unblinding. Using the likelihood for the cosmological analysis we constrain secondary sources of anisotropy and foreground emission, and derive a “CMB-only” spectrum that extends to ℓ=4000. At large angular scales, foreground emission at 150 GHz is ∼1% of TT and EE within our selected regions and consistent with that found by Planck. Using the same likelihood, we obtain the cosmological parameters for ΛCDM for the ACT data alone with a prior on the optical depth of τ=0.065±0.015. ΛCDM is a good fit. The best-fit model has a reduced χ2 of 1.07 (PTE=0.07) with H 0=67.9±1.5 km/s/Mpc. We show that the lensing BB signal is consistent with ΛCDM and limit the celestial EB polarization angle to ψ P  =−0.07̂±0.09̂. We directly cross correlate ACT with Planck and observe generally good agreement but with some discrepancies in TE. All data on which this analysis is based will be publicly released.

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Shear peak statistics has gained a lot of attention recently as a practical alternative to the two point statistics for constraining cosmological parameters. We perform a shear peak statistics analysis of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data, using weak gravitational lensing measurements from a 139 deg 2 field. We measure the abundance of peaks identified in aperture mass maps, as a function of their signal-to-noise ratio, in the signal-to-noise range 0 ă S{N ă 4. To predict the peak counts as a function of cosmological parameters we use a suite of N-body simulations spanning 158 models with varying Ω m and σ 8 , fixing w "´1, Ω b " 0.04, h " 0.7 and n s " 1, to which we have applied the DES SV mask and redshift distribution. In our fiducial analysis we measure σ 8 pΩ m {0.3q 0.6 " 0.77˘0.07, after marginalising over the shear multiplicative bias and the error on the mean redshift of the galaxy sample. We introduce models of intrinsic alignments, blending, and source contamination by cluster members. These models indicate that peaks with S{N ą 4 would require significant corrections, which is why we do not include them in our analysis. We compare our results to the cosmological constraints from the two point analysis on the SV field and find them to be in good agreement in both the central value and its uncertainty. We discuss prospects for future peak statistics analysis with upcoming DES data.

Determining the redshift distribution n(z) of galaxy samples is essential for several cosmological probes including weak lensing. For imaging surveys, this is usually done using photometric redshifts estimated on an object-by-object basis. We present a new approach for directly measuring the global n(z) of cosmological galaxy samples, including uncertainties, using forward modeling. Our method relies on image simulations produced using UFig (Ultra Fast Image Generator) and on ABC (Approximate Bayesian Computation) within the MCCL (Monte-Carlo Control Loops) framework. The galaxy population is modeled using parametric forms for the luminosity functions, spectral energy distributions, sizes and radial profiles of both blue and red galaxies. We apply exactly the same analysis to the real data and to the simulated images, which also include instrumental and observational effects. By adjusting the parameters of the simulations, we derive a set of acceptable models that are statistically consistent with the data. We then apply the same cuts to the simulations that were used to construct the target galaxy sample in the real data. The redshifts of the galaxies in the resulting simulated samples yield a set of n(z) distributions for the acceptable models. We demonstrate the method by determining n(z) for a cosmic shear like galaxy sample from the 4band Subaru Suprime-Cam data in the COSMOS field. We also complement this imaging data with a spectroscopic calibration sample from the VVDS survey. We compare our resulting posterior n(z) distributions to the one derived from photometric redshifts estimated using 36 photometric bands in COSMOS and find good agreement. This offers good prospects for applying our approach to current and future large imaging surveys.

, UKWe present the first constraints on cosmology from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), using weak lensing measurements from the preliminary Science Verification (SV) data. We use 139 square degrees of SV data, which is less than 3% of the full DES survey area. Using cosmic shear 2-point measurements over three redshift bins we find σ8(Ωm/0.3) 0.5 = 0.81 ± 0.06 (68% confidence), after marginalising over 7 systematics parameters and 3 other cosmological parameters. We examine the robustness of our results to the choice of data vector and systematics assumed, and find them to be stable. About 20% of our error bar comes from marginalising over shear and photometric redshift calibration uncertainties. The current state-of-the-art cosmic shear measurements from CFHTLenS are mildly discrepant with the cosmological constraints from Planck CMB data; our results are consistent with both datasets. Our uncertainties are ∼30% larger than those from CFHTLenS when we carry out a comparable analysis of the two datasets, which we attribute largely to the lower number density of our shear catalogue. We investigate constraints on dark energy and find that, with this small fraction of the full survey, the DES SV constraints make negligible impact on the Planck constraints. The moderate disagreement between the CFHTLenS and Planck values of σ8(Ωm/0.3) 0.5 is present regardless of the value of w.

We present new cosmological parameter constraints for general Horndeski scalartensor theories, using CMB, redshift space distortion, matter power spectrum and BAO measurements from the Planck, SDSS/BOSS and 6dF surveys. We focus on theories with cosmological gravitational waves propagating at the speed of light, c GW = c, implementing and discussing several previously unaccounted for aspects in the constraint derivation for such theories, that qualitatively affect the resulting constraints. In order to ensure our conclusions are robust, we compare results for three different parametrisations of the free functions in Horndeski scalartensor theories, identifying several parametrisation-independent features of the constraints. We also consider models, where c GW = c in cosmological settings (still allowed after GW170817 for frequency-dependent c GW ) and show how this affects cosmological parameter constraints.

We analyze the clustering of galaxies in the first public data release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. Despite the relatively small footprints of the observed fields, the data are an excellent proxy for the very deep photometric datasets that will be acquired by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, and are therefore an ideal test bed for the analysis methods being implemented by the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration. We select a magnitude limited sample with i < 24.5 and analyze it in four tomographic redshift bins covering the range 0.15 z 1.5. We carry out a Fourier-space analysis of the two-point clustering of this sample, including all auto-and cross-correlations between bins. We demonstrate the use of map-level deprojection methods to account for non-physical fluctuations in the galaxy number density caused by observational systematics. Through a halo occupation distribution analysis, we place constraints on the characteristic halo masses of this sample as a function of redshift, finding a good fit up to scales k max = 1 Mpc −1 , including both auto-and cross-correlations. Our results show monotonically decreasing average halo masses with increasing redshift, which can be interpreted in terms of the drop-out of red galaxies at high redshifts for a flux-limited sample, consistent with previous analyses. In terms of photometric redshift systematics, we show that additional care is needed in order to marginalize over uncertainties in the redshift distribution in galaxy clustering, even for samples of this small size, and that these uncertainties can be significantly constrained by including cross-bin correlations. We are able to make a ∼ 3σ detection of the effects of lensing magnification in the HSC data. Our results are stable to variations in the amplitude of density fluctuations σ 8 and the cold dark matter abundance Ω c and we find constraints that agree well with measurements from Planck and low-redshift probes. Finally, we use our analysis pipeline to study the clustering of galaxies as a function of limiting flux, and provide a simple fitting function for the linear galaxy bias for magnitude limited samples as a function of limiting magnitude and redshift. Discussion and Conclusions 50A Reconstructing depth from discrete sources 54