Browsing by Autor "S. W. Allen"

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    DESI peculiar velocity survey – Fundamental Plane
    (Oxford University Press, 2025) Khaled Saïd; Cullan Howlett; T. M. Davis; J. R. Lucey; Christoph Saulder; Kelly A. Douglass; Alex Kim; S. W. Allen; Caitlin Ross; Greg Aldering
    ABSTRACT The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) peculiar velocity survey aims to measure the peculiar velocities of early- and late-type galaxies within the DESI footprint using both the Fundamental Plane and optical Tully–Fisher relations. Direct measurements of peculiar velocities can significantly improve constraints on the growth rate of structure, reducing uncertainty by a factor of approximately 2.5 at redshift 0.1 compared to the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey’s redshift space distortion measurements alone. We assess the quality of stellar velocity dispersion measurements from DESI spectroscopic data. These measurements, along with photometric data from the Legacy Survey, establish the Fundamental Plane relation and determine distances and peculiar velocities of early-type galaxies. During survey validation, we obtain spectra for 6698 unique early-type galaxies, up to a photometric redshift of 0.15. 64 per cent of observed galaxies (4267) have relative velocity dispersion errors below 10 per cent. This percentage increases to 75 per cent if we restrict our sample to galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts below 0.1. We use the measured central velocity dispersion, along with photometry from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, to fit the Fundamental Plane parameters using a 3D Gaussian maximum likelihood algorithm that accounts for measurement uncertainties and selection cuts. In addition, we conduct zero-point calibration using the absolute distance measurements to the Coma cluster, leading to a value of the Hubble constant, $H_0 = 76.05 \pm 0.35$ (statistical) $\pm 0.49$ (systematic Fundamental Plane) $\pm 4.86$ (statistical due to calibration) $\mathrm{km \ s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}}$. This $H_0$ value is within $2\sigma$ of Planck cosmic microwave background results and within $1\sigma$ of other low-redshift distance indicator-based measurements.
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    Spectroscopic Characterization of redMaPPer Galaxy Clusters with DESI
    (Oxford University Press, 2025) J. Myles; D. Gruen; T Jeltema; Shaojun Fu; S. W. Allen; Shenming Fu; S. P. Ahlen; José Aguilar; David H. Brooks; D. Bianchi
    ABSTRACT Optical galaxy cluster identification algorithms such as redMaPPer promise to enable an array of astrophysical and cosmological studies, but suffer from biases whereby galaxies in front of and behind a galaxy cluster are mistakenly associated with the primary cluster halo. These projection effects caused by irreducible photometric redshift uncertainty must be quantified to facilitate the use of optical cluster catalogues. We present measurements of galaxy cluster projection effects and velocity dispersion using spectroscopy from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. Our findings are as follows: we confirm that the fraction of redMaPPer putative member galaxies mistakenly associated with cluster haloes is richness dependent, being more than twice as large at low richness than high richness; we present the first spectroscopic evidence of an increase in projection effects with increasing redshift, by as much as 25 per cent from $z\sim 0.1$ to $z\sim 0.2$; moreover, we find qualitative evidence for luminosity dependence in projection effects, with fainter galaxies being more commonly far behind clusters than their bright counterparts; finally, we fit the scaling relation between measured mean spectroscopic richness and velocity dispersion, finding an implied linear scaling between spectroscopic richness and halo mass. We discuss further directions for the application of spectroscopic data sets to improve use of optically selected clusters to test cosmological models.