Tomasz Kacprzak

D. Huppenkothen, M. Ntampaka, M. Ho et al. · princeton

Machine learning has rapidly become a tool of choice for the astronomical community. It is being applied across a wide range of wavelengths and problems, from the classification of transients to neural network emulators of cosmological simulations, and is shifting paradigms about how we generate and report scientific results. At the same time, this class of method comes with its own set of best practices, challenges, and drawbacks, which, at present, are often reported on incompletely in the astrophysical literature. With this paper, we aim to provide a primer to the astronomical community, including authors, reviewers, and editors, on how to implement machine learning models and report their results in a way that ensures the accuracy of the results, reproducibility of the findings, and usefulness of the method.

Sotiris Anagnostidis, Arne Thomsen, Tomasz Kacprzak et al. · eth-zurich

In recent years, deep learning approaches have achieved state-of-the-art results in the analysis of point cloud data. In cosmology, galaxy redshift surveys resemble such a permutation invariant collection of positions in space. These surveys have so far mostly been analysed with two-point statistics, such as power spectra and correlation functions. The usage of these summary statistics is best justified on large scales, where the density field is linear and Gaussian. However, in light of the increased precision expected from upcoming surveys, the analysis of -- intrinsically non-Gaussian -- small angular separations represents an appealing avenue to better constrain cosmological parameters. In this work, we aim to improve upon two-point statistics by employing a \textit{PointNet}-like neural network to regress the values of the cosmological parameters directly from point cloud data. Our implementation of PointNets can analyse inputs of $\mathcal{O}(10^4) - \mathcal{O}(10^5)$ galaxies at a time, which improves upon earlier work for this application by roughly two orders of magnitude. Additionally, we demonstrate the ability to analyse galaxy redshift survey data on the lightcone, as opposed to previously static simulation boxes at a given fixed redshift.

Tomasz Kacprzak, Janis Fluri

In classical cosmological analysis of large scale structure surveys with 2-pt functions, the parameter measurement precision is limited by several key degeneracies within the cosmology and astrophysics sectors. For cosmic shear, clustering amplitude $σ_8$ and matter density $Ω_m$ roughly follow the $S_8=σ_8(Ω_m/0.3)^{0.5}$ relation. In turn, $S_8$ is highly correlated with the intrinsic galaxy alignment amplitude $A_{\rm{IA}}$. For galaxy clustering, the bias $b_g$ is degenerate with both $σ_8$ and $Ω_m$, as well as the stochasticity $r_g$. Moreover, the redshift evolution of IA and bias can cause further parameter confusion. A tomographic 2-pt probe combination can partially lift these degeneracies. In this work we demonstrate that a deep learning analysis of combined probes of weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering, which we call DeepLSS, can effectively break these degeneracies and yield significantly more precise constraints on $σ_8$, $Ω_m$, $A_{\rm{IA}}$, $b_g$, $r_g$, and IA redshift evolution parameter $η_{\rm{IA}}$. The most significant gains are in the IA sector: the precision of $A_{\rm{IA}}$ is increased by approximately 8x and is almost perfectly decorrelated from $S_8$. Galaxy bias $b_g$ is improved by 1.5x, stochasticity $r_g$ by 3x, and the redshift evolution $η_{\rm{IA}}$ and $η_b$ by 1.6x. Breaking these degeneracies leads to a significant gain in constraining power for $σ_8$ and $Ω_m$, with the figure of merit improved by 15x. We give an intuitive explanation for the origin of this information gain using sensitivity maps. These results indicate that the fully numerical, map-based forward modeling approach to cosmological inference with machine learning may play an important role in upcoming LSS surveys. We discuss perspectives and challenges in its practical deployment for a full survey analysis.

Tomasz Kacprzak, Jörg Herbel, Adam Amara et al.

Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a method to obtain a posterior distribution without a likelihood function, using simulations and a set of distance metrics. For that reason, it has recently been gaining popularity as an analysis tool in cosmology and astrophysics. Its drawback, however, is a slow convergence rate. We propose a novel method, which we call qABC, to accelerate ABC with Quantile Regression. In this method, we create a model of quantiles of distance measure as a function of input parameters. This model is trained on a small number of simulations and estimates which regions of the prior space are likely to be accepted into the posterior. Other regions are then immediately rejected. This procedure is then repeated as more simulations are available. We apply it to the practical problem of estimation of redshift distribution of cosmological samples, using forward modelling developed in previous work. The qABC method converges to nearly same posterior as the basic ABC. It uses, however, only 20\% of the number of simulations compared to basic ABC, achieving a fivefold gain in execution time for our problem. For other problems the acceleration rate may vary; it depends on how close the prior is to the final posterior. We discuss possible improvements and extensions to this method.