What is S_8(z_low) actually?Confirmed

by Noah Sailer (Berkeley)

Tuesday Oct 15, 2024, 11:00 a.m. → 12:30 p.m. America/Toronto

PI/4-405 - Bob Room (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

Claims of a low clustering amplitude (S_8) at low redshifts from weak galaxy lensing measurements trace back nearly a decade, however, recent work suggests these results may be driven by large baryonic feedback or mischaracterization of linear alignments. I will present a complimentary approach to measure the evolution of S_8(z) using spectroscopically calibrated DESI galaxies and the latest CMB lensing measurements from Planck and ACT. These data are insensitive to many of the systematic complications present in galaxy lensing measurements, while our fiducial Hybrid Effective Field Theory model robustly regulates the information obtainable from smaller scales, such that our cosmological constraints are reliably derived from the (predominantly) linear regime. Our tomographic analysis of DESI Luminous Red Galaxies (LRG) prefers a slightly lower (5 − 7%) value of S_8 than primary CMB measurements with a statistical significance ranging from 1.8 − 2.3σ. Intriguingly, our lowest redshift LRG bin is most discrepant with a Planck cosmology, leaving open the possibility that structure growth is slowing down for redshifts z < 0.5. To address this possibility, I will conclude my talk with preliminary results from the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey, which enable tomographic S_8(z) measurements over the redshift range 0.1 \lesssim z \lesssim 0.4.