- Joint Planck and WMAP CMB map reconstruction
- Bobin, J.; Sureau, F.; Starck, J.-L.; Rassat, A.; Paykari, P.
We present a novel estimate of the cosmological microwave background (CMB) map by combining the two latest full-sky microwave surveys: WMAP nine-year and Planck PR1. The joint processing benefits from a recently introduced component separation metho …
- Cluster membership probabilities from proper motions and multi-wavelength photometric catalogues. I. Method and application to the Pleiades cluster
- Sarro, L. M.; Bouy, H.; Berihuete, A.; Bertin, E.; Moraux, E.; Bouvier, J.; Cuillandre, J.-C.; Barrado, D.; Solano, E.
Context. With the advent of deep wide surveys, large photometric and astrometric catalogues of literally all nearby clusters and associations have been produced. The unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity of these data sets and their broad spatial, …
- A novel estimator of the polarization amplitude from normally distributed Stokes parameters
- Plaszczynski, S.; Montier, L.; Levrier, F.; Tristram, M.
We propose a novel estimator of the polarization amplitude from a single measurement of its normally distributed (Q, U) Stokes components. Based on the properties of the Rice distribution and dubbed modified asymptotic, it meets several desirable cr …
- Probabilistic image reconstruction for radio interferometers
- Sutter, P. M.; Wandelt, Benjamin D.; McEwen, Jason D.; Bunn, Emory F.; Karakci, Ata; Korotkov, Andrei; Timbie, Peter; Tucker, Gregory S.; Zhang, Le
We present a novel, general-purpose method for deconvolving and denoizing images from gridded radio interferometric visibilities using Bayesian inference based on a Gaussian process model. The method automatically takes into account incomplete cover …
- Bayesian analysis of radial velocity data of GJ667C with correlated noise: evidence for only two planets
- Feroz, F.; Hobson, M. P.
GJ667C is the least massive component of a triple star system which lies at a distance of about 6.8 pc (22.1 light-year) from the Earth. GJ667C has received much attention recently due to the claims that it hosts up to seven planets including three …
- Comparison of cosmological parameter inference methods applied to supernovae light curves fitted with SALT-II
- March, M. C.; Karpenka, N. V.; Feroz, F.; Hobson, M. P.
We present a comparison of two methods for cosmological parameter inference from Type Ia supernovae (SNeIa) light curves fitted with the SALT-II technique, in which we treat the statistical errors but not the systematic errors. The standard χ2 meth …
- Generating merger trees for dark matter haloes: a comparison of methods
- Jiang, Fangzhou; van den Bosch, Frank C.
Halo merger trees describe the hierarchical assembly of dark matter haloes, and are the backbone for modelling galaxy formation and evolution. Merger trees constructed using Monte Carlo algorithms based on the extended Press-Schechter (EPS) formalis …
- Sufficient observables for large-scale structure in galaxy surveys
- Carron, J.; Szapudi, I.
Beyond the linear regime, the power spectrum and higher order moments of the matter field no longer capture all cosmological information encoded in density fluctuations. While non-linear transforms have been proposed to extract this information lost …
- Photometric selection of quasars in large astronomical data sets with a fast and accurate machine learning algorithm
- Gupta, Pramod; Connolly, Andrew J.; Gardner, Jeffrey P.
Future astronomical surveys will produce data on ˜108 objects per night. In order to characterize and classify these sources, we will require algorithms that scale linearly with the size of the data, that can be easily parallelized and where the sp …
- Periodic and Aperiodic Variability in the Molecular Cloud ρ Ophiuchus
- Parks, J. Robert; Plavchan, Peter; White, Russel J.; Gee, Alan H.
Presented are the results of a near-IR photometric survey of 1678 stars in the direction of the ρ Ophiuchus (ρ Oph) star forming region using data from the 2MASS Calibration Database. For each target in this sample, up to 1584 individual J-, H-, a …
- Validation of Kepler’s Multiple Planet Candidates. II. Refined Statistical Framework and Descriptions of Systems of Special Interest
- Lissauer, Jack J.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Rowe, Jason F.; Jontof-Hutter, Daniel; Agol, Eric; Borucki, William J.; Carter, Joshua A.; Ford, Eric B.; Gilliland, Ronald L.; Kolbl, Rea; Star, Kimberly M.; Steffen, Jason H.; Torres, Guillermo
We extend the statistical analysis performed by Lissauer et al. in 2012, which demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Kepler candidate multiple transiting systems (multis) represents true transiting planets, and we develop therefrom a proced …
- Measuring Distances and Reddenings for a Billion Stars: Toward a 3D Dust Map from Pan-STARRS 1
- Green, Gregory Maurice; Schlafly, Edward F.; Finkbeiner, Douglas P.; Jurić, Mario; Rix, Hans-Walter; Burgett, Will; Chambers, Kenneth C.; Draper, Peter W.; Flewelling, Heather; Kudritzki, Rolf Peter; Magnier, Eugene; Martin, Nicolas; Metcalfe, Nigel; Tonry, John; Wainscoat, Richard; Waters, Christopher
We present a method to infer reddenings and distances to stars based only on their broad-band photometry, and show how this method can be used to produce a three-dimensional (3D) dust map of the Galaxy. Our method samples from the full probability d …
- Comparing Simulated Emission from Molecular Clouds Using Experimental Design
- Yeremi, Miayan; Flynn, Mallory; Offner, Stella; Loeppky, Jason; Rosolowsky, Erik
We propose a new approach to comparing simulated observations that enables us to determine the significance of the underlying physical effects. We utilize the methodology of experimental design, a subfield of statistical analysis, to establish a fra …
- Mass estimates for visual binaries with incomplete orbits
- Lucy, L. B.
The problem of estimating the total mass of a visual binary when its orbit is incomplete is treated with Bayesian methods. The posterior mean of a mass estimator is approximated by a triple integral over orbital period, orbital eccentricity and time …
- Extensive search for systematic bias in supernova Ia data
- Heneka, Caroline; Marra, Valerio; Amendola, Luca
The use of advanced statistical analysis tools is crucial in order to improve cosmological parameter estimates via removal of systematic errors and identification of previously unaccounted for cosmological signals. Here, we demonstrate the applicati …
- Cosmological constraints from the large-scale weak lensing of SDSS MaxBCG clusters
- Zu, Ying; Weinberg, David H.; Rozo, Eduardo; Sheldon, Erin S.; Tinker, Jeremy L.; Becker, Matthew R.
We derive constraints on the matter density Ωm and the amplitude of matter clustering σ8 from measurements of large-scale weak lensing (projected separation R = 5-30 h-1 Mpc) by clusters in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey MaxBCG catalogue. The weak l …
- An empirical model for the star formation history in dark matter haloes
- Lu, Zhankui; Mo, H. J.; Lu, Yu; Katz, Neal; Weinberg, Martin D.; van den Bosch, Frank C.; Yang, Xiaohu
We develop an empirical approach to infer the star formation rate in dark matter haloes from the galaxy stellar mass function (SMF) at different redshifts and the local cluster galaxy luminosity function (CGLF), which has a steeper faint end relativ …
- Comparison of sampling techniques for Bayesian parameter estimation
- Allison, Rupert; Dunkley, Joanna
The posterior probability distribution for a set of model parameters encodes all that the data have to tell us in the context of a given model; it is the fundamental quantity for Bayesian parameter estimation. In order to infer the posterior probabi …
- Shedding light on the matter of Abell 781
- Wittman, D.; Dawson, William; Benson, Bryant
The galaxy cluster Abell 781 West has been viewed as a challenge to weak gravitational lensing mass calibration, as Cook & dell’Antonio found that the weak lensing signal-to-noise ratio in three independent sets of observations was consistently lowe …
- A Multi-level Solver for Gaussian Constrained Cosmic Microwave Background Realizations
- Seljebotn, D. S.; Mardal, K.-A.; Jewell, J. B.; Eriksen, H. K.; Bull, P.
We present a multi-level solver for drawing constrained Gaussian realizations or finding the maximum likelihood estimate of the cosmic microwave background sky, given noisy sky maps with partial sky coverage. The method converges substantially faste …