First Constraints on Small-Scale Non-Gaussianity from UV Galaxy Luminosity Functions

Abstract

UV luminosity functions provide a wealth of information on the physics of galaxy formation in the early Universe. Given that this probe indirectly tracks the evolution of the mass function of dark matter halos, it has the potential to constrain alternative theories of structure formation. One of such scenarios is the existence of primordial non-Gaussianity at scales beyond those probed by observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background. Through its impact on the halo mass function, such small-scale non-Gaussianity would alter the abundance of galaxies at high redshifts. In this work we present an application of UV luminosity functions as measured by the Hubble Space Telescope to constrain the non-Gaussianity parameter $f_{\mathrm{NL}}$ for wavenumbers above a cut-off scale $k_{\mathrm{cut}}$. After marginalizing over the unknown astrophysical parameters and accounting for potential systematic errors, we arrive at a $2\sigma$ bound of $f_{\mathrm{NL}}=71_{-237}^{+426}$ for a cut-off scale $k_{\mathrm{cut}}=0.1{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ in the bispectrum of the primordial gravitational potential. Moreover, we perform forecasts for the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, finding an expected improvement of a factor $3-4$ upon the current bound.

arXiv comment18 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables - v2: journal version

References in corpus (111)

• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• Star Formation in Galaxies Along the Hubble Sequence
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Non-Gaussian features of primordial fluctuations in single field inflationary models
• LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray
• The Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System (CLASS) II: Approximation schemes
• The James Webb Space Telescope
• Mass function of dark matter halos
• Planck 2018 results. I. Overview and the cosmological legacy of Planck
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
• UV Luminosity Functions at redshifts z~4 to z~10: 10000 Galaxies from HST Legacy Fields
• An absorption profile centred at 78 megahertz in the sky-averaged spectrum
• Dust Absorption And The Ultraviolet Luminosity Density At z \approx 3 As Calibrated By Local Starburst Galaxies
• The Effective Field Theory of Inflation
• Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report
• 21-cm cosmology
• An excursion set model of hierarchical clustering: Ellipsoidal collapse and the moving barrier
• Evidence for Reionization at z ~ 6: Detection of a Gunn-Peterson Trough in a z=6.28 Quasar
• The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• The Connection between Galaxies and their Dark Matter Halos
• 21cmFAST: A Fast, Semi-Numerical Simulation of the High-Redshift 21-cm Signal
• The Evolution of the Galaxy Rest-Frame Ultraviolet Luminosity Function Over the First Two Billion Years
• Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA)
• Simulations of Early Structure Formation: Primordial Gas Clouds
• UV-continuum slopes at z~4-7 from the HUDF09+ERS+CANDELS observations: Discovery of a well-defined UV-color magnitude relationship for z>=4 star-forming galaxies
• Reionization and Cosmology with 21 cm Fluctuations
• Efficient Simulations of Early Structure Formation and Reionization
• UV-Continuum Slopes of >4000 z~4-8 Galaxies from the HUDF/XDF, HUDF09, ERS, CANDELS-South, and CANDELS-North Fields
• Second-Generation Objects in the Universe: Radiative Cooling and Collapse of Halos with Virial Temperatures Above 10^4 Kelvin
• Simulations of Pregalactic Structure Formation with Radiative Feedback
• The Dearth of z~10 Galaxies in all HST Legacy Fields -- The Rapid Evolution of the Galaxy Population in the First 500 Myr
• The halo mass function from the dark ages through the present day
• Directly Observing the Galaxies Likely Responsible for Reionization
• Cosmic Variance and Its Effect on the Luminosity Function Determination in Deep High z Surveys
• Early star-forming galaxies and the reionization of the Universe
• Full-Data Results of Hubble Frontier Fields: UV Luminosity Functions at $z\sim 6-10$ and a Consistent Picture of Cosmic Reionization
• TASI Lectures on Inflation
• ALMA Spectroscopic Survey in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: The Infrared Excess of UV-selected z=2-10 galaxies as a function of UV-continuum Slope and Stellar Mass
• Effects of Scale-Dependent Non-Gaussianity on Cosmological Structures
• The Galaxy UV Luminosity Function Before the Epoch of Reionization
• Wouthuysen-Field coupling strength and application to high-redshift 21 cm radiation
• A redshift-independent efficiency model: star formation and stellar masses in dark matter halos at z>4
• 21CMMC: an MCMC analysis tool enabling astrophysical parameter studies of the cosmic 21 cm signal
• The z~6 Luminosity Function Fainter than -15 mag from the Hubble Frontier Fields: The Impact of Magnification Uncertainties
• The Extreme Faint End of the UV Luminosity Function at $z\sim 6$ Through Gravitational Telescopes: a comprehensive assessment of strong lensing uncertainties
• Planck intermediate results. XLVII. Planck constraints on reionization history
• Great Optically Luminous Dropout Research Using Subaru HSC (GOLDRUSH). I. UV Luminosity Functions at $z\sim 4-7$ Derived with the Half-Million Dropouts on the 100 deg${}^2$ Sky
• Reionization Revisited: Secondary CMB Anisotropies and Polarization
• Halo mass function and scale-dependent bias from N-body simulations with non-Gaussian initial conditions
• Primordial black holes in non-Gaussian regimes
• Constraints on the Star Formation Efficiency of Galaxies During the Epoch of Reionization
• Imprints of Primordial Non-Gaussianity on Gravitational Wave Spectrum
• Opening the 21cm EoR Window: Measurements of Foreground Isolation with PAPER
• Semi-analytic forecasts for JWST - I. UV luminosity functions at z = 4 - 10
• The Ineludible non-Gaussianity of the Primordial Black Hole Abundance
• Design and characterization of the Large-Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Age (LEDA) radiometer systems
• The JWST Extragalactic Mock Catalog: Modeling galaxy populations from the UV through the near-IR over thirteen billion years of cosmic history
• The Galaxy Luminosity Function during the Reionization Epoch
• Probing the Dark Ages at Z~20: The SCI-HI 21 cm All-Sky Spectrum Experiment
• Are Dusty Galaxies Blue? Insights on UV Attenuation from Dust-Selected Galaxies
• Planck 2018 results. IX. Constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity
• The 21-cm signature of the first stars during the Lyman-Werner feedback era
• High redshift JWST predictions from IllustrisTNG: Dust modelling and galaxy luminosity functions
• The Universe at z>10: Predictions for JWST from the UniverseMachine DR1
• The Star Formation Rate Function for Redshift z~4-7 Galaxies: Evidence for a Uniform Build-Up of Star-Forming Galaxies During the First 3 Gyr of Cosmic Time
• Scale-dependent non-Gaussianity probes inflationary physics
• Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs). II. Discovery of 32 Quasars and Luminous Galaxies at 5.7 < z < 6.8
• Stochastic modelling of star-formation histories II: star-formation variability from molecular clouds and gas inflow
• A physical model for the 0 < z < 8 redshift evolution of the galaxy UV luminosity and stellar mass functions
• Redshift-weighted constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity from the clustering of the eBOSS DR14 quasars in Fourier space
• Properties of the Cosmological Density Distribution Function
• Weakly Non-Linear Gaussian Fluctuations and the Edgeworth Expansion
• Constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity from 800,000 photometric quasars
• Constraints on dark matter scenarios from measurements of the galaxy luminosity function at high redshifts
• PBH in single field inflation: the effect of shape dispersion and non-Gaussianities
• The Imprint of Warm Dark Matter on the Cosmological 21-cm Signal
• Tests for primordial non-Gaussianity
• Detection of PAH and Far-Infrared Emission from the Cosmic Eye: Probing the Dust and Star Formation of Lyman Break Galaxies
• Probing the Small-Scale Matter Power Spectrum with Large-Scale 21-cm Data
• SARAS 2: A Spectral Radiometer for probing Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization through detection of the global 21 cm signal
• Constraints on the star-formation rate of z~3 LBGs with measured metallicity in the CANDELS GOODS-South field
• A tale of two sites -- I: Inferring the properties of minihalo-hosted galaxies from current observations
• Dark-ages reionization & galaxy formation simulation IV: UV luminosity functions of high-redshift galaxies
• The Non-Gaussian Halo Mass Function with fNL, gNL and tauNL
• Robust Velocity-induced Acoustic Oscillations at Cosmic Dawn
• Early galaxy formation in warm dark matter cosmologies
• Combining clustering and abundances of galaxy clusters to test cosmology and primordial non-Gaussianity
• A Standard Ruler at Cosmic Dawn
• Early Structure Formation Constraints on the Ultra-Light Axion in the Post-Inflation Scenario
• Fundamental physics with the Hubble Frontier Fields: constraining Dark Matter models with the abundance of extremely faint and distant galaxies
• The luminosity and stellar mass functions of GRB host galaxies: Insight into the metallicity bias
• Probing the scale dependence of non-Gaussianity with spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background
• Implications for Primordial Non-Gaussianity (f_NL) from weak lensing masses of high-z galaxy clusters
• ETHOS -- an effective theory of structure formation: predictions for the high-redshift Universe -- abundance of galaxies and reionization
• UVUDF: UV Luminosity Functions at the cosmic high-noon
• Number Counts and Non-Gaussianity
• The Hunt for Primordial Interactions in the Large Scale Structures of the Universe
• On the faint-end of the galaxy luminosity function in the Epoch of Reionization: updated constraints from the HST Frontier Fields
• Primordial Non-Gaussianity
• Looking for the first galaxies: Lensing or blank fields?
• Constraints on $\mu$-distortion fluctuations and primordial non-Gaussianity from Planck data
• Spectral distortion anisotropies from single-field inflation
• Constraints on Primordial Power Spectrum from Galaxy Luminosity Functions
• Correlating CMB Spectral Distortions with Temperature: what do we learn on Inflation?
• Probing Primordial Non-Gaussianity with Weak Lensing Minkowski Functionals
• Combining high-z galaxy luminosity functions with Bayesian evidence
• Effect of primordial non-Gaussianities on the far-UV luminosity function of high-redshift galaxies: implications for cosmic reionization
• Probing small-scale non-Gaussianity from anisotropies in acoustic reheating
• The MOSDEF Survey: Measurements of Balmer Decrements and the Dust Attenuation Curve at Redshifts z~1.4-2.6
• Probing Radio Intensity at high-Z from Marion: 2017 Instrument

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Implications of the NANOGrav results for inflation
• Constraints on Multi-Field Inflation from the BOSS Galaxy Survey
• Primordial Non-Gaussianity from Biased Tracers: Likelihood Analysis of Real-Space Power Spectrum and Bispectrum
• Breaking degeneracies in the first galaxies with clustering
• New Roads to the Small-Scale Universe: Measurements of the Clustering of Matter with the High-Redshift UV Galaxy Luminosity Function
• Alleviating the need for exponential evolution of JWST galaxies in 10${}^{10}{M}_{\odot }$ haloes at $z>10$ by a modified $\Lambda$CDM power spectrum
• Primordial Non-Gaussianity $f_{\mathrm{NL}}$ and Anisotropies in Scalar-Induced Gravitational Waves
• An Effective Model for the Cosmic-Dawn 21-cm Signal
• High-redshift JWST Observations and Primordial Non-Gaussianity
• GALLUMI: A Galaxy Luminosity Function Pipeline for Cosmology and Astrophysics
• Constraints on warm dark matter from UV luminosity functions of high-z galaxies with Bayesian model comparison
• BEoRN: A fast and flexible framework to simulate the epoch of reionisation and cosmic dawn
• Probing Compensated Isocurvature with the 21-cm Signal during Cosmic Dawn
• The First Billion Years in Seconds: An Effective Model for the 21-cm Signal with Population III Stars
• Unveiling cosmological information on small scales with line intensity mapping
• Exploring the effects of primordial non-Gaussianity at galactic scales
• Quijote PNG: The information content of the halo power spectrum and bispectrum