CosmosClub: Fangchen Feng (10/10/19)

Date: October 10th 2019, 15h00

Speaker: Fangchen Feng (Laboratoire Astroparticule & Cosmologie)

Title: Reconstruction and characterisation of polarisations of a gravitational-wave signal

Room: Kepler


Abstract

Polarisation properties of gravitational waves carry crucial information about the physics of gravitational sources (binary compact systems of black holes or neutron stars, etc. ) such as precession effects. In practice, the reconstruction of the two polarizations h+(t) and h×(t) is made possible by the use of at least two non-aligned detectors. To this aim, we propose a complete analysis procedure of gravitational-wave signals. Starting from measurements, this procedure estimates the sky position of the source, reconstructs the two components h+(t) and h×(t) and estimates instantaneous Stokes parameters of the wave. This set of non-parametric observables encodes many fine properties of the astrophysical source without close bounds to a specific dynamical model, making them particularly suited to decipher precession effects.

CosmosClub: Catherine Heymans (22/10/19)

Date: October 22nd 2019, 11am

Speaker: Catherine Heymans (ROE, Edinburgh)

Title: low-z-vs-CMB tensions with KiDS and DES and  photo-z calibration

Room: Kepler


Abstract

Catherine Heymans will give a 15-20min introduction on recent work on low-z-vs-CMB tensions with KiDS and DES (https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.09262) and some more recent work on photo-z calibration. Then we will have a "bring a plot" session, in which each of us brings the plot we are most excited about and we comment and discuss on it together.

École Euclid de cosmologie 2019

Date: August 19 - August 31, 2019

Venue: Banyuls, Occitanie, France

Website: http://ecole-euclid.cnrs.fr/accueil-session-2019


Lecture ``Weak gravitational lensing'' (Le lentillage gravitationnel), Martin Kilbinger.

Find here links to the lecture notes, TD exercises, "tables rondes" topics, and other information.

  • Resources.
    • A great and detailed introduction to (weak) gravitational lensing are the 2005 Saas Fee lecture notes by Peter Schneider. Download Part I (Introduction to lensing) and Part III (Weak lensing) from my homepage.
    • Check out Sarah Bridle's video lectures on WL from 2014.
  • TD cycle 1, Data analysis.
    1.  We will work on a rather large (150 MB) weak-lensing catalogues from the public CFHTLenS web page. During the TD I will show instructions how to create and download this catalogue. These catalogues will also be available on the virtual machine for the school, or download here.
      If you want to do the TD on your laptop, you'll need to download and install athena (the newest version 1.7). Available on the VM.
  • Lecture notes and exercise classes.  You can already download the slides in one file (40 - 60 MB), but be ware that the content will still change slightly until the classes.
    • Part I (Cycle 1):    [all ]
    • Part II (Cycle 2):  [day 1 (4/6)] The lectures for day 2+3 are given by Nicolas Martinet]
    • TD:                             [cycle 1]. The TDs for cycle 2 are given by Nicolas as well.
    • Table Ronde sujet

GOLD : The Golden Cosmological Surveys Decade

This 10-week programme on the Golden Cosmological Surveys Decade will be held at the new Institut Pascal, in Paris Orsay, from 1st April 2020 to 5th June 2020. The Institut Pascal provides offices, seminar rooms, common areas and supports long-term scientific programmes. 
 
GOLD 2020 will include a summer school, three workshops (on Lensing, Galaxy Clustering, Theory and Interpretation of the Data). 
In-between, an active training programme will be run. We plan to host around 40 people for the whole programme, plus around 30 scientists during the workshops. 
Whether you are a PhD, a postdoc, a senior scientist and are interested in attending this programme, you can now apply. Deadline for applications: 1st October 2019.

 

 

Euclid joint meeting: WL + GC + CG SWG + OU-LE3

Dates: February, 3 - 7, 2020

Organisers:  Martin Kilbinger, ...

Venue: Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP),  98bis bd Arago, 75014 Paris.

Local information: http://www.iap.fr/accueil/acces/acces.php?langue=en

Contact: martin.kilbinger@cea.fr


Registration

Please add your name to the following google doc if you are planning to attend the meeting.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Hn8Z6LH54fJDbDY2uQPtZPauZotm6IsnNC4LbBcmII/edit?usp=sharing

There is no registration fee. Coffee and snacks will be provided for the breaks. For lunch, participants are invited to go to the nearby restaurants, shops, or imbiss stands
(see http://www.iap.fr/vie_scientifique/colloques/Colloque_IAP/2018/i-practicalinfo.html#lunch for some ideas).

 

 

CosmosClub: Sebastian Rojas Gonzalez (12/07/19)

Date: July 12th 2019, 11am

Speaker: Sebastian Rojas Gonzales (KU Leuven)

Title: Gaussian processes for simulation optimization

Room: Kepler


Abstract

The use of kriging metamodels (also known as gaussian processes) in simulation optimization has become increasingly popular during recent years. The majority of the algorithms so far uses the ordinary (deterministic) kriging approach for constructing the metamodel, assuming that observations have been sampled with infinite precision. This is a major issue when the simulation problem is stochastic: ignoring the noise in the outcomes may lead to inaccurate predictions. In this work, we propose a stochastic multiobjective simulation optimization algorithm that contains two crucial elements: the search phase implements a kriging method that is able to account for the inherent noise in the outputs when constructing the metamodel, and in the identification phase uses a Bayesian multiobjective ranking and selection procedure in view of maximizing the probability of selecting the true non-dominated points by optimally allocating the available computational budget. We evaluate the impact of these elements on the search and identification effectiveness on a set of artificial test problems with varying levels of heteroscedastic noise. Our results show that the characterization of the noise is crucial in improving the prediction efficiency; yet, the allocation procedure appears to lose effectiveness in settings with high noise. This emphasizes the need for further research on multiobjective ranking and selection methods.

WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN REMOTE SENSING AND ASTROPHYSICS

The workshop on Computational Intelligence in Remote Sensing and Astrophysics (CIRSA) aims at bringing together researchers from the environmental sciences, astrophysics and computer science communities in an effort to understand the potential and pitfalls of novel computational intelligence paradigms including machine learning and large-scale data processing.

 

 

CosmosClub: Doogesh Kodi Ramanah (20/06/2019)

Date: June 20th 2019, 11am

Speaker: Doogesh Kodi Ramanah (IAP)

Title: Fast complex dynamics emulators for cosmological inference

Room: Cassini


Abstract

I will present an overview of our recent work in developing various aspects of Bayesian forward modelling machinery for an optimal exploitation of state-of-the-art galaxy redshift surveys. I will focus on the development of a generative model for mapping dark matter simulations to 3D halo fields using physically motivated neural networks. We employ the Wasserstein distance as a metric to train our halo painting emulator and demonstrate its efficacy in predicting 3D halo distributions using summary statistics such as the power spectrum and bispectrum. I will subsequently briefly review our novel cosmological parameter inference framework that extracts several orders of magnitude more information from the cosmic expansion relative to standard approaches, and a sophisticated likelihood that is robust to unknown foreground contaminations.

CosmosClub: Isabella Carucci (13/06/2019)

Date: June 13th 2019, 10:30am (/!\ unusual time)

Speaker: Isabella Carucci (CosmoStat)

Title: 21cm intensity mapping: using cosmic neutral hydrogen as tracer of large scale structure

Room: Kepler


Abstract

This is an opportunity to introduce my past work to the group. I’ll start by briefly illustrating what we mean by intensity mapping (IM) and why to use the 21cm radiation coming from neutral hydrogen. I’ll then move to what its observational status is and how we can model this signal. In particular, I’ll show how IM will be a remarkable test both for dark energy and dark matter models, presenting forecasts for the bounds that the SKA telescope will be able to uniquely set. On the other hand, this signal is literally buried under foregrounds (about 4 orders of magnitude more intense). In this spirit, I’ll conclude by sketching what our plans are to use and optimise Cosmostat-developed tools for tackling the foreground and instrumental systematics problems of IM.

CosmosClub: Jean-Baptise Bayle (23/05/2019)

Date: May 23rd 2019, 11am

Speaker: Jean-Baptise Bayle (APC)

Title: Space-based Detection of Gravitational Waves with LISA: Opening the Low-Frequency Part of the Gravitational Spectrum [slides]

Room: Cassini


Abstract

Einstein’s theory of General Relativity offers a powerful picture of the world, where the gravitational force is only the consequence of the curvature of spacetime. Gravitational waves are very tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime, propagating at the speed of light. They do not interact much with the matter encountered on their way, making them very good messengers to probe astrophysical events at a distance... but also very difficult to detect. Scientists have looked for gravitational waves on Earth for more than 40 years and have developed incredibly precise instruments. In 2015, the first direct detection of such waves was announced by the LIGO and Virgo community: gravitational astronomy had opened a new observational window on the distant Universe. Unfortunately the limited sensitivities of such ground-based detectors does not enable the observation of the most massive object.

In two decades, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission will join the network of ground detectors. LISA aims to measure gravitational waves in the millihertz range, to help answer numerous astrophysical, cosmological and theoretical questions. Three spacecraft will orbit the Sun in a nearly equilateral triangular formation, with arm lengths of about 2.5 million kilometers. Each spacecraft will host two spacetime probes. Laser beams, exchanged between the spacecraft, will be reflected upon the probes and then made to interfere, in order to detect passing gravitational waves.

During this conversation, I will briefly recap how gravitational waves arise from Einstein equations, and present the astrophysical and cosmological sources expected throughout the gravitational spectrum. I will then describe the main detection principles, from ground-based interferometry to pulsar timing. I will then focus on the LISA mission, and discuss my PhD work on data pre-processing and instrumental modeling.