arXiv subjects

Arka Banerjee

Publications and source records attributed to Arka Banerjee.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Evidencing Macroscopic Quantum Coherence using Confined Uniform Magnetic Field

A previously unexplored scheme is devised for creating and certifying coherent quantum superposition of distinctly separated states of a spin-tagged massive object passing through a confined uniform magnetic field. This results in entangling the spatial and spin parts of a two-component Pauli wavefunction such that the entailed coherence can be conveniently certified by spin measurements alone. The implementability of this scheme is analysed using NV-centre nanodiamonds of masses $\sim 10^{10}$ amu based on the current technological capabilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Boundary Dynamics, Cubical Actions, and Infinite Girth

We develop two methods for proving infinite girth from boundary dynamics. First, we use topologically free extreme boundary actions to give a boundary-dynamical proof of infinite girth for finitely generated acylindrically hyperbolic groups. The second combines Nakamura's criterion with, respectively, flag-space and Roller-boundary dynamics, yielding infinite-girth results for semisimple $S$-algebraic groups and for essential non-elementary actions on finite-dimensional, second countable, non-Euclidean CAT(0) cube complexes. We also prove that every finitely generated large group has infinite girth, thereby answering a question of Akhmedov and Mishra.

math.GR↗

arXiv2026

1-Uryson width and covers

We investigate the following question: Do there exist Riemannian polyhedra $X$ such that the 1-Uryson width of their universal covers $\mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X})$ is bounded but $\mathrm{UW}_1(X)$ is arbitrarily large? We rule out two specific cases: when $π_1(X)$ is virtually cyclic and when $X$ is a Riemannian surface. More specifically, we show that if $X$ is a compact polyhedron with a virtually cyclic fundamental group, then its 1-Uryson width is bounded by the 1-Uryson width of its universal cover $\widetilde{X}$. Precisely: $$\mathrm{UW}_1(X) \leq 6 \cdot \mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X}).$$ We show that if $X$ is a Riemannian surface with boundary then $$\mathrm{UW}_1(X) \leq \mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X}).$$ Furthermore, we show that if there exist spaces $X$ for which $\mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X})$ is bounded while $\mathrm{UW}_1(X)$ is arbitrarily large, then such examples must already appear in low dimensions. In particular, such $X$ can be found among Riemannian $2$-complexes.

math.MG↗

arXiv2026

Sahyadri: A simulation suite for the cosmology dependence of the Cosmic Web

We present Sahyadri, a suite of cosmological $N$-body simulations designed to enable precision studies of the low-redshift Universe with next-generation spectroscopic surveys. Sahyadri includes systematic variations of four cosmological parameters around Planck 2018 constraints, with seed-matched initial conditions enabling cosmological parameter derivatives. It is planned to ultimately extend to six parameters. Each simulation evolves $2048^3$ particles in a periodic box of side length $200$ $h^{-1}$ Mpc, yielding a particle mass of $m_{\rm{p}} = 8.1 \times 10^{7}\,h^{-1}\,M_{\odot}$ in the fiducial Planck 2018 cosmology. This resolution enables robust identification of dark matter halos down to $M_{\rm min} = 3.2 \times 10^{9}$ $h^{-1}$ $M_\odot$, which represents a factor of $\sim$25 improvement over the AbacusSummit suite, and is over two orders of magnitude better than the Quijote and Aemulus suites. We estimate that approximately 40% of DESI BGS galaxies at redshift $z < 0.15$ - roughly 1.6 million objects - reside in halos accessible to Sahyadri but beyond the reach of existing parameter-varying simulation suites. We demonstrate Sahyadri's capabilities through measurements of the matter power spectrum, halo mass function and power spectrum, and beyond 2-point statistics such as the Voronoi volume function and $k^{\rm th}$ nearest neighbour statistics, showing excellent agreement with theoretical predictions and significant sensitivity to $Ω_{\rm m}$ variations. We implement a custom compression scheme reducing storage requirements by a factor of $\sim$3 while maintaining sub-percent clustering accuracy. Key data products are publicly available.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Learning Cosmology from Nearest Neighbour Statistics

Extracting cosmological parameters from galaxy/halo catalogues with sub-percent level accuracy is an important aspect of modern cosmology, especially in view of ongoing and upcoming surveys such as Euclid, DESI, and LSST. While traditional two-point statistics have been known to be suboptimal for this task, recently proposed k-Nearest Neighbour (kNN) based summary statistics have demonstrated tighter constraining power. Building on the kNN statistics, we introduce a new field-level representation of discrete halo catalogues - NN distance maps. We employ this technique on the halo catalogues obtained from Quijote N-body simulation suites. By combining these maps with kNN-based summary statistics, we train a hybrid neural network to infer cosmological parameters, showing that the resulting constraints achieve state-of-the-art, if not the best, accuracy. In addition, our hybrid framework is 5-10 times more computationally efficient than some of the existing point-cloud-based ML methods.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Nearest Neighbour-Based Statistics for 21cm-Galaxy Cross-Correlations in the Epoch of Reionization

21cm radiation from neutral hydrogen serves as a direct probe of the Epoch of Reionization. However, both its detection and physical interpretation are severely hindered by contamination from astrophysical foreground emission and instrumental noise that are several orders of magnitude brighter than the signal of interest. A promising way to tackle these challenges is to cross-correlate the 21cm signal with other independent tracers of large-scale structure, most notably high-redshift galaxies. Besides validating putative 21cm detections, such joint analyses are expected to provide independent insights into the properties of ionizing sources and the evolving morphology of ionized regions during reionization. The 21cm signal, however, is intrinsically highly non-Gaussian, limiting the effectiveness of conventional two-point cross-correlation statistics, which capture information only up to the second order. In this work, we therefore investigate the utility of k-nearest-neighbour cumulative distribution functions (kNN CDF), which encode information from the joint clustering at all orders, as an alternative framework for probing 21cm-galaxy cross-correlations. Using self-consistently simulated mock 21cm fields and a catalog of line-emitting galaxies at z = 7, we conducted a proof-of-concept study comparing the kNN CDF formalism and the two-point cross-correlation approach. We find that the kNN CDF statistics outperform the two-point statistics in detecting 21cm-galaxy cross-correlations, even in the presence of instrumental noise and aggressive foreground filtering. Moreover, at a fixed global ionized fraction, it is even able to differentiate between reionization models that remain indistinguishable using two-point statistics. These results demonstrate the power and unexplored potential of exploiting higher-order statistics for extracting maximal information from 21cm-galaxy synergies.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Lagrangian Bias as a Gaussian Random Field

Halo bias is typically treated as a set of coefficients in a perturbative expansion. We show instead that every point in a Gaussian density field has a well-defined scale-independent Lagrangian bias, thereby defining a bias field. This property can be extended to any linear operator acting on the Lagrangian density field, generating secondary bias fields. Halo bias then arises from geometric selection of Lagrangian patches within this pre-existing field, rather than being generated by collapse. We demonstrate that this framework predicts the measured $b(M)$ relation for halos. The multivariate Gaussian structure of the fields naturally explains the Gaussian distribution of halo bias at fixed mass and assembly bias. The results presented here motivate combining this framework with a forward model of halo collapse, yielding an ab initio model for halo clustering.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Joint analysis of small-scale galaxy clustering and galaxy--galaxy lensing from BOSS galaxies

We present a joint analysis of galaxy clustering and galaxy--galaxy lensing measurements from BOSS galaxies using a simulation-based emulation method combined with a halo occupation distribution model. Our emulators are constructed with the Aemulus $ν$ simulations, a suite of $wν$CDM $N$-body simulations with massive neutrinos as independent particle species. We combine small-scale analysis of clustering from $0.1h^{-1}$Mpc to $60.2~h^{-1}$Mpc and lensing from $1.7h^{-1}$Mpc to $60.2~h^{-1}$Mpc to perform cosmological constraints. We split the BOSS galaxies into three redshift bins to measure their clustering and employ galaxies from Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey and Hyper Suprime-Cam as source galaxies to measure lensing separately. We find that the addition of lensing significantly improves the constraining power on $S_{8}=σ_8(Ω_m/0.3)^{0.5}$, with a weak improvement for $fσ_{8}$. Our results of $fσ_{8}$ indicate tensions of around $1\sim4σ$ below the results of CMB observations of Planck. For $S_{8}$, our results are also lower than Planck, and the tension can be mitigated when considering possible systematics in lensing measurement. As a byproduct, our analysis prefers a non-zero neutrino mass but without strong significance, with the constraining power dominated by the clustering. Given the accuracy and precision of our model and the observational data, it is anticipated that larger and higher-quality spectroscopic datasets will improve the constraints on this fundamental property in the near future.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Forecasting Constraints on Non-Thermal Light Massive Relics from Future CMB Experiments (CMB-S4/Simons Observatory)

In this work we present Fisher forecasts on \textit{non-thermal LiMR} models for a CMB Stage IV-like experiment and the Simons Observatory -- particularly focusing on a model of inflaton/moduli decay giving rise to non-thermally distributed dark sector particles, and also comparing our results with those for sterile particles following the Dodelson-Widrow distribution. Two independent parameters, $ΔN_\mathrm{eff}$ and $M_\mathrm{sp}^\mathrm{eff}$, influence linear cosmological observables. We find $ΔN_\mathrm{eff}$ to be more tightly constrained (by a factor of $10$) for a less abundant, heavier LiMR which becomes fully non-relativistic around matter-radiation equality than a more abundant, lighter LiMR which becomes fully non-relativistic just after recombination. The uncertainties on $M_\mathrm{sp}^\mathrm{eff}$ differ by a factor of $\sim3$ between the two cases. Our analysis also reveals distinct parameter correlations: the phenomenological parameters $\{ΔN_\mathrm{eff},M_\mathrm{sp}^\mathrm{eff}\}$ are found to be negatively correlated for the former case and positively correlated for the latter. We obtain similar projected uncertainties on the cosmological parameters (in either case) for both the inflaton/moduli decay and the Dodelson-Widrow models when the first two moments of the LiMR distribution function, related to the phenomenological parameters, are matched. Finally, by constructing a modified distribution that matches the first two moments of the Dodelson-Widrow but deviates maximally in the third moment, we demonstrate that CMB Stage IV data is not expected to be sensitive to higher moments of the distribution.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Time Non-locality in Dark Matter and LSS

We explore the intriguing phenomenon of time non-locality in the evolution of dark matter and Large Scale Structure (LSS). Recently in\,\cite{Donath:2023sav}, it was shown that time non-locality emerges in bias tracer fluctuations, which are $SO(3)$ scalars in real space, at fifth order in the perturbation expansion in dark matter overdensity. We demonstrate that by breaking the symmetry down to $SO(2)$, which is the case whenever line-of-sight effects become important, such as for flux fluctuations in the Lyman $α$ forest, the temporal non-locality appears at the third order in expansion. Additionally, within the framework of EFTofLSS, we demonstrate that time non-locality manifests in the effective stress tensor of dark matter, which is a second rank tensor under $SO(3)$ transformations, again at the third order in dark matter overdensity. Furthermore, we highlight the effectiveness of the standard $Π$ basis\,\cite{Mirbabayi:2014zca} in handling time non-local operators.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Hint of dark matter-dark energy interaction in DESI DR2 and current cosmological dataset?

We present new constraints on an interacting dark matter-dark energy scenario motivated by string compactification, where a scalar field adiabatically tracks the minimum of an effective potential sourced by dark matter density. In this study, we focus on the Chameleon dark energy model and numerically solve the Klein-Gordon equation using a shooting algorithm to determine precise initial conditions such that the field rests at effective potential minima today. We perform a comprehensive Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis using a combination of datasets, including Planck, BAO (SDSS and DESI DR2), Pantheon+, and SH$_0$ES. Our analysis shows a mild preference for a higher non-zero dark sector coupling, compared to earlier works on similar models, for two particular combinations of datasets: (i) Planck + DESI DR2 BAO +.Pantheon+, (ii) Planck + SDSS BAO + Pantheon+ + SH$0$ES. Notably, the inclusion of DESI DR2 and SH$0$ES data increases the inferred interaction strength to $β\sim 0.3$ (68\% C.L.) and yields weak and positive evidence in favor of the model over $Λ$CDM, with $Δχ^2_{\rm min} = -4.75, -6.41$ and $Δ$AIC= $-0.75, -2.41$ respectively. This model remains consistent with a phantom crossing at redshift $z\sim 0.5$, in agreement with the trend indicated by DESI observations. However, due to the settlement of the scalar field at the minima of the effective potential at the present epoch, the effective dark energy equation of state asymptotically approaches $w_{\rm eff}\to -1$. leading to only weak evidence in favor of this model when analyzed using the DESI DR2 dataset.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Astrophysical Tests of Dark Matter Self-Interactions

Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) arises generically in scenarios for physics beyond the Standard Model that have dark sectors with light mediators or strong dynamics. The self-interactions allow energy and momentum transport through halos, altering their structure and dynamics relative to those produced by collisionless dark matter. SIDM models provide a promising way to explain the diversity of galactic rotation curves, and they form a predictive and versatile framework for interpreting astrophysical phenomena related to dark matter. This review provides a comprehensive explanation of the physical effects of dark matter self-interactions in objects ranging from galactic satellites (dark and luminous) to clusters of galaxies and the large-scale structure. The second major part describes the methods used to constrain SIDM models including current constraints, with the aim of advancing tests with upcoming galaxy surveys. This part also provides a detailed review of the unresolved small-scale structure formation issues and concrete ways to test simple SIDM models. The review is rounded off by a discussion of the theoretical motivation for self-interactions, degeneracies with baryonic and gravitational effects, extensions to the single-component elastic-interactions SIDM framework, and future observational and theoretical prospects.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

N-body Simulations of cosmologies with Light Massive Relics

The presence of additional relativistic particles at the time of recombination can be inferred through their contribution to $ΔN_{\rm eff}$. If these species have a finite but low mass (Light Massive Relics - LiMRs), they act as a hot subcomponent of dark matter and impact late-time structure formation. Understanding these effects will be crucial to pin down the underlying particle physics properties of any future $ΔN_{\rm eff}$ detection. While their impact has been well-studied on linear scales, this work develops the framework for and presents results from the first set of cosmological N-body simulations that can track the effects of LiMRs, as a function of their mass and temperature, down to fully nonlinear scales. Importantly, our simulations model the impact of both the massive Standard Model neutrinos and LiMRs, which will be crucial in disentangling possible degeneracies. We systematically explore the effects of LiMR properties such as mass, temperature, and initial distribution, on various cosmological observables, including the total matter power spectrum, Halo Mass Functions (HMF), Mass-Concentration relation, radial halo profiles, and weak lensing signals around massive clusters. The framework and simulations developed here will enable detailed follow-up of the rich phenomenology of LiMR cosmologies.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Geometric Interpretations of the $k$-Nearest Neighbour Distributions

The $k$-Nearest Neighbour Cumulative Distribution Functions are measures of clustering for discrete datasets that are fast and efficient to compute. They are significantly more informative than the 2-point correlation function. Their connection to $N$-point correlation functions, void probability functions and Counts-in-Cells is known. However, the connections between the CDFs and other geometric and topological spatial summary statistics are yet to be fully explored in the literature. This understanding will be crucial to find optimally informative summary statistics to analyse data from stage 4 cosmological surveys. We explore quantitatively the geometric interpretations of the $k$NN CDF summary statistics. We establish an equivalence between the 1NN CDF at radius $r$ and the volume of spheres with the same radius around the data points. We show that higher $k$NN CDFs are equivalent to the volumes of intersections of $\ge k$ spheres around the data points. We present similar geometric interpretations for the $k$NN cross-correlation joint CDFs. We further show that the volume, or the CDFs, have information about the angles and arc lengths created at the intersections of spheres around the data points, which can be accessed through the derivatives of the CDF. We show this information is very similar to that captured by Germ Grain Minkowski Functionals. Using a Fisher analysis we compare the information content and constraining power of various data vectors constructed from the $k$NN CDFs and Minkowski Functionals. We find that the CDFs and their derivatives and the Minkowski Functionals have nearly identical information content. However, $k$NN CDFs are computationally orders of magnitude faster to evaluate. Finally, we find that there is information in the full shape of the CDFs, and therefore caution against using the values of the CDF only at sparsely sampled radii.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Cyclic orders and actions of Leary--Minasyan groups on coarse $\mathrm{PD}(n)$ spaces

We show that for $n \geq 3$, there are torsion-free CAT(0) groups with visual boundaries that embed into $S^n$ but which are not virtually the fundamental group of a compact aspherical $n+1$-manifold. The groups are the CAT(0) and not bi-automatic groups constructed previously by Leary and Minasyan. The obstruction comes from analyzing certain cyclic orders on the boundary of the Bass-Serre tree, in the same manner as Kapovich-Kleiner ruled out actions of Baumslag-Solitar groups on coarse $\mathrm{PD}(3)$ spaces.

math.GR↗

arXiv2025

Efficient Multivariate Initial Sequence Estimators for MCMC

Estimating Monte Carlo error is critical to valid simulation results in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and initial sequence estimators were one of the first methods introduced for this. Over the last few years, focus has been on multivariate assessment of simulation error, and many multivariate generalizations of univariate methods have been developed. The multivariate initial sequence estimator is known to exhibit superior finite-sample performance compared to its competitors. However, the multivariate initial sequence estimator can be prohibitively slow, limiting its widespread use. We provide an efficient alternative to the multivariate initial sequence estimator that inherits both its asymptotic properties as well as the finite-sample superior performance. The effectiveness of the proposed estimator is shown via some MCMC example implementations. Further, we also present univariate and multivariate initial sequence estimators for when parallel MCMC chains are run and demonstrate their effectiveness over a popular alternative.

stat.CO↗

arXiv2025

Boosting HI-Galaxy Cross-Clustering Signal through Higher-Order Cross-Correlations

After reionization, neutral hydrogen (HI) traces the large-scale structure (LSS) of the Universe, enabling HI intensity mapping (IM) to capture the LSS in 3D and constrain key cosmological parameters. We present a new framework utilizing higher-order cross-correlations to study HI clustering around galaxies, tested using real-space data from the IllustrisTNG300 simulation. This approach computes the joint distributions of $k$-nearest neighbor ($k$NN) optical galaxies and the HI brightness temperature field smoothed at relevant scales (the $k$NN-field framework), providing sensitivity to all higher-order cross-correlations, unlike two-point statistics. To simulate HI data from actual surveys, we add random thermal noise and apply a simple foreground cleaning model, filtering out Fourier modes of the brightness temperature field with $k_\parallel < k_{\rm min,\parallel}$. Under current levels of thermal noise and foreground cleaning, typical of a Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)-like survey, the HI-galaxy cross-correlation signal in our simulations, using the $k$NN-field framework, is detectable at $>30σ$ across $r = [3,12] \, h^{-1}$Mpc. In contrast, the detectability of the standard two-point correlation function (2PCF) over the same scales depends strongly on the foreground filter: a sharp $k_\parallel$ filter can spuriously boost detection to $8σ$ due to position-space ringing, whereas a less sharp filter yields no detection. Nonetheless, we conclude that $k$NN-field cross-correlations are robustly detectable across a broad range of foreground filtering and thermal noise conditions, suggesting their potential for enhanced constraining power over 2PCFs.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Exploring Faraday rotation signatures and population bounds for primordial magnetic black holes

Primordial black holes bearing magnetic charges may bypass the constraints imposed by Hawking radiation, thereby enabling reasonable present-day populations, even for masses below $10^{15}\, \mathrm{g} $--a range previously considered improbable. They could, therefore, conceivably contribute to a component of dark matter. We investigate novel Faraday rotation signatures exhibited by primordial magnetic black holes while also establishing new Parker-type bounds on their populations. For the latter, we bound the dark matter fraction from intergalactic magnetic fields in cosmic voids $\left(f_{\text{ DM}} \lesssim 10^{-8}\right)$ and cosmic web filaments $\left(f_{\text{ DM}} \lesssim 10^{-4}\right)$, notably eclipsing previous bounds. Exploring Faraday rotation effects, we discern a pronounced rotation of the polarization angle and the rotation measure values for extremal primordial magnetic black holes with masses $M^{\text{ex.}}_{\text{ BH}} \gtrsim 10^{-6}~ \text{M}_\odot$. This makes them potentially detectable in current observations. A comparative investigation finds that the effects are notably greater than for a neutron star, like a Magnetar, with a similar magnetic field at the surface. Moreover, the polarization angle maps for primordial magnetic black holes exhibit unique features, notably absent in other astrophysical magnetic configurations. In this context, we also introduce a simple integral measure, offering a quantitative measure for their discrimination in many scenarios. These traits potentially suggest a robust avenue for their observational detection and differentiation.

astro-ph.CO↗