Shadab Alam

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 _p = 8.1 × 10 ⁷ h ^-1 M _⊙ in the fiducial Planck 2018 cosmology. This resolution enables robust identification of dark matter halos down to M _min = 3.2 × 10 ⁹ h ^-1 M _⊙ , which represents a factor of ∼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 ^th nearest neighbour statistics, showing excellent agreement with theoretical predictions and significant sensitivity to Ω _m variations. We implement a custom compression scheme reducing storage requirements by a factor of ∼3 while maintaining sub-percent clustering accuracy. Key data products will be made publicly available.

In 2021 May the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration began a 5 yr spectroscopic redshift survey to produce a detailed map of the evolving three-dimensional structure of the Universe between z = 0 and z ≈ 4. DESI’s principal scientific objectives are to place precise constraints on the equation of state of dark energy, the gravitationally driven growth of large-scale structure, and the sum of the neutrino masses, and to explore the observational signatures of primordial inflation. We present DESI DR1, which consists of all data acquired during the first 13 months of the DESI main survey, as well as a uniform reprocessing of the DESI Survey Validation data, which were previously made public in the DESI Early Data Release. The DR1 main survey includes high-confidence redshifts for 18.7M objects, of which 13.1M are spectroscopically classified as galaxies, 1.6M as quasars, and 4M as stars, making DR1 the largest sample of extragalactic redshifts ever assembled. We summarize the DR1 observations, the spectroscopic data-reduction pipeline and data products, large-scale structure catalogs, value-added catalogs, and describe how to access and interact with the data. In addition to fulfilling its core cosmological objectives with unprecedented precision, we expect DR1 to enable a wide range of transformational astrophysical studies and discoveries.

Forecasting cosmological constraints from halo-based statistics often suffers from instability in derivative estimates, especially when the number of simulations is limited. This instability reduces the reliability of Fisher forecasts and machine learning based approaches that use derivatives. We introduce a general framework that addresses this challenge by stabilizing the input statistic and then systematically identifying the optimal subset of summary statistics that maximizes cosmological information while simultaneously minimizing the instability of predicted constraints. We demonstrate this framework using the halo mass function as well as the Voronoi volume function (VVF), a summary statistic that captures beyond two-point clustering information. Applying our two-step procedure — random sub-sampling followed by optimization — improves the constraining power by up to a factor of 4, while also enhancing the stability of the forecasts across realizations. As surveys like Euclid, DESI, and LSST push toward tighter constraints, the ability to produce stable and accurate theoretical predictions is essential. Our results suggest that new summary statistics such as the VVF, combined with careful data curation and stabilization strategies, can play a key role in next-generation precision cosmology.

E G is a summary statistic that combines cosmological observables to achieve a test of gravity that is relatively model independent. Here, we consider the power of a measurement of E G using galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering with sources from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and lenses from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We first update the theoretical framework for the covariance of E G to accommodate this Stage IV scenario. We then demonstrate that E G offers in principle a model-agnostic test of gravity using only linear-scale information, with the caveat that a careful treatment of galaxy bias is required. We finally address the persistent issue of E G ’s theoretical dependence on the measured value of Ω M 0 . We propose a framework that takes advantage of the posterior predictive test to consistently incorporate uncertainty on Ω M 0 in tests of gravity with E G , which should be of general use beyond the LSST + DESI scenario. Our forecasting study using this method shows that the prior information available for Ω M 0 is instrumental in determining the power of E G in the LSST + DESI context. For the full survey dataset, with priors on Ω M 0 from existing cosmic microwave background data, we find that for some modified gravity scenarios considered, we are likely to be able to reject the general relativity null hypothesis.

We present baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements from more than 14 million galaxies and quasars drawn from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 2 (DR2), based on three years of operation. For cosmology inference, these galaxy measurements are combined with DESI Lyman- α forest BAO results presented in a companion paper (M. Abdul-Karim , companion paper, .). The DR2 BAO results are consistent with DESI DR1 and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and their distance-redshift relationship matches those from recent compilations of supernovae (SNe) over the same redshift range. The results are well described by a flat Λ cold dark matter ( Λ CDM ) model, but the parameters preferred by BAO are in mild, 2.3 σ tension with those determined from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), although the DESI results are consistent with the acoustic angular scale θ * that is well measured by Planck. This tension is alleviated by dark energy with a time-evolving equation of state parametrized by w 0 and w a , which provides a better fit to the data, with a favored solution in the quadrant with w 0 > − 1 and w a < 0 . This solution is preferred over Λ CDM at 3.1 σ for the combination of DESI BAO and CMB data. When also including SNe, the preference for a dynamical dark energy model over Λ CDM ranges from 2.8 − 4.2 σ depending on which SNe sample is used. We present evidence from other data combinations which also favor the same behavior at high significance. From the combination of DESI and CMB we derive 95% upper limits on the sum of neutrino masses, finding ∑ m ν < 0.064 eV assuming Λ CDM and ∑ m ν < 0.16 eV in the w 0 w a model. Unless there is an unknown systematic error associated with one or more datasets, it is clear that Λ CDM is being challenged by the combination of DESI BAO with other measurements and that dynamical dark energy offers a possible solution.

We present the measurements and cosmological implications of the galaxy two-point clustering using over 4.7 million unique galaxy and quasar redshifts in the range 0.1 < z < 2.1 divided into six redshift bins over a ∼ 7,500 square degree footprint, from the first year of observations with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI Data Release 1). By fitting the full power spectrum, we extend previous DESI DR1 baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements to include redshift-space distortions and signals from the matter-radiation equality scale. For the first time, this Full-Shape analysis is blinded at the catalogue-level to avoid confirmation bias and the systematic errors are accounted for at the two-point clustering level, which automatically propagates them into any cosmological parameter. When analysing the data in terms of compressed model-agnostic variables, we obtain a combined precision of 4.7% on the amplitude of the redshift space distortion (RSD) signal reaching a similar precision with just one year of DESI data than with twenty years of observation from the previous generation survey. We also analyse the data to directly constrain the cosmological parameters within the ΛCDM model using perturbation theory and combine this information with the reconstructed DESI DR1 galaxy BAO. Using a Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Gaussian prior on the baryon density parameter, ω_b , and a weak Gaussian prior on the spectral index, n_s , we constrain the matter density is Ω _m = 0.296±0.010 and the Hubble constant H ₀ = (68.63 ± 0.79)[km s^-1Mpc^-1]. Additionally, we measure the amplitude of clustering σ ₈ = 0.841±0.034. The DESI DR1 galaxy clustering results are in agreement with the ΛCDM model based on general relativity with parameters consistent with those from Planck. The cosmological interpretation of these results in combination with DESI DR1 Ly-α forest data and external datasets are presented in the companion paper [1].

We present cosmological results from the measurement of clustering of galaxy, quasar and Lyman-α forest tracers from the first year of observations with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI Data Release 1). We adopt the full-shape (FS) modeling of the power spectrum, including the effects of redshift-space distortions, in an analysis which has been thoroughly validated in a series of supporting papers as summarised in [1]. We combine the full-shape information with DESI's DR1 constraints from the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) of these tracers. In the flat ΛCDM cosmological model, DESI (FS+BAO), combined with a baryon density prior from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and a weak prior on the scalar spectral index, determines matter density to Ω_m = 0.2962 ± 0.0095, and the amplitude of mass fluctuations to σ ₈ = 0.842 ± 0.034. The addition of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data tightens these constraints to Ω_m = 0.3056 ± 0.0049 and σ ₈ = 0.8121 ± 0.0053, while further addition of the joint clustering and lensing analysis from the Dark Energy Survey Year-3 (DESY3) data further improves these measurements, and leads to a 0.4% determination of the Hubble constant, H ₀ = (68.40 ± 0.27) km s^-1 Mpc^-1. In models with a time-varying dark energy equation of state parametrised by w ₀ and w_a , combinations of DESI (FS+BAO) with CMB and type Ia supernovae continue to show the preference, previously found in the DESI DR1 BAO analysis, for w ₀ > -1 and w_a < 0 with similar levels of significance. DESI data, in combination with the CMB, improve the upper limits on the sum of the neutrino masses relative to the case when only the DR1 BAO was available, giving ∑m _ν < 0.071 eV at 95% confidence. We finally constrain deviations from general relativity represented by two modified gravity parameters. DESI (FS+BAO) data alone measure the parameter that controls the clustering of massive particles, μ ₀ = 0.11^+0.45 _-0.54, in agreement with the zero value predicted by general relativity. The combination of DESI with the CMB and the clustering and lensing analysis from DESY3 constrains both modified-gravity parameters, giving μ ₀ = 0.04 ± 0.22 and Σ₀ = 0.044 ± 0.047, again in agreement with general relativity.

We present the samples of galaxies and quasars used for DESI 2024 cosmological analyses, drawn from the DESI Data Release 1 (DR1). We describe the construction of large-scale structure (LSS) catalogs from these samples, which include matched sets of synthetic reference `randoms' and weights that account for variations in the observed density of the samples due to experimental design and varying instrument performance. We detail how we correct for variations in observational completeness, the input `target' densities due to imaging systematics, and the ability to confidently measure redshifts from DESI spectra. We then summarize how remaining uncertainties in the corrections can be translated to systematic uncertainties for particular analyses. We describe the weights added to maximize the signal-to-noise of DESI DR1 2-point clustering measurements. We detail measurement pipelines applied to the LSS catalogs that obtain 2-point clustering measurements in configuration and Fourier space. The resulting 2-point measurements depend on window functions and normalization constraints particular to each sample, and we present the corrections required to match models to the data. We compare the configuration- and Fourier-space 2-point clustering of the data samples to that recovered from simulations of DESI DR1 and find they are, generally, in statistical agreement to within 2% in the inferred real-space over-density field. The LSS catalogs, 2-point measurements, and their covariance matrices will be released publicly with DESI DR1.