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# Estimating photometric redshifts with artificial neural networks

## 1 Introduction

The basic photometric redshift technique is to use the colours of a galaxy in a selection of medium- or broad-band filters as a crude approximation of the galaxy’s spectral energy distribution or SED, in order to find its redshift and spectral type. The technique is very efficient compared with spectroscopic redshifts since the signal-to-noise in broad-band filters is much greater than the signal-to-noise in a dispersed spectrum and, furthermore, a whole field of galaxies may be imaged at once while spectroscopy is limited to individual galaxies or those that can be positioned on slits or fibres. However photometric redshifts are only approximate at best and are sometimes subject to complete misidentifications. For many applications though, large sample sizes are more important than precise redshifts and photometric redshifts may be used to good effect.

Photometric redshifts date back to Baum (1962; see also Hogg et al. 1998; Weymann et al. 1999). They have been used extensively in recent years on the ultra-deep and well-calibrated Hubble Deep Field observations (e.g. Gwyn & Hartwick 1996; Connolly, Szalay & Brunner 1998; Fernández-Soto, Lanzetta & Yahil 1999; Fontana et al. 2000; Fernández-Soto et al. 2001; Massarotti, Iovino & Buzzoni 2001a; Massarotti et al. 2001b). The most commonly used approach is the template-fitting technique. This involves compiling a library of template spectra – either theoretical SEDs from population synthesis models (e.g. GISSEL – Bruzual & Charlot 1993) or empirical SEDs (e.g. Coleman, Wu & Weedman 1980). Then the expected flux through each survey filter is calculated for each template SED on a grid of redshifts, with corrections for ISM, IGM and Galactic extinction where necessary. A redshift and spectral type are estimated for each observed galaxy by minimizing $`\chi ^2`$ with respect to redshift, $`z`$, and spectral type, SED, where

$$\chi ^2(z,\mathrm{SED})=\underset{i}{}\left(\frac{f_i\alpha (z,\mathrm{SED})t_i(z,\mathrm{SED})}{\sigma _i}\right)^2,$$
(1)
$`f_i`$ is the observed flux in filter $`i`$, $`\sigma _i`$ is the error in $`f_i`$, $`t_i(z,\mathrm{SED})`$ is the flux in filter $`i`$ for the template SED at redshift $`z`$ and $`\alpha (z,\mathrm{SED})`$ (the scaling factor normalizing the template to the observed flux) is determined by minimizing equation 1 with respect to $`\alpha `$, giving

$$\alpha (z,\mathrm{SED})=\left(\underset{i}{}\frac{f_it_i(z,\mathrm{SED})}{\sigma _i^2}\right)/\left(\underset{i}{}\frac{t_i(z,\mathrm{SED})^2}{\sigma _i^2}\right).$$
(2)
The template-fitting photometric redshift technique makes use of the available and reasonably detailed knowledge of galaxy SEDs and in principle it may be used reliably even for populations of galaxies for which there are few or no spectroscopically confirmed redshifts. However, crucial to its success, is the compilation of a library of accurate and representative template SEDs (see e.g. Hogg et al. 1998; Firth 2002b). Empirical templates are typically derived from nearby bright galaxies, which may not be truly representative of high redshift galaxies. Conversely, while theoretical SEDs can cover a large range of star formation histories, metallicities, dust extinction models etc., not all combinations of these parameters (at any particular redshift) are realistic, and the ad hoc inclusion of superfluous templates increases the potential for misidentifications when using observations with noisy photometry.

An alternative approach can be used when one has a sufficiently large (e.g. $``$100–1000, depending on the redshift range) and representative subsample with spectroscopic redshifts. Then one can fit a polynomial or other function mapping the photometric data to the known redshifts and use this to estimate redshifts for the remainder of the sample with unknown redshifts (e.g. Connolly et al. 1995b; Brunner, Szalay & Connolly 2000; Sowards-Emmerd et al. 2000). With this approach, errors in the estimated redshifts may also be estimated analytically or via Monte Carlo simulations.

An extension of the latter approach is to use Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs hereafter). ANNs have been used before in astronomy for, amongst other things, galaxy morphological classification (e.g. Storrie-Lombardi et al. 1992; Naim et al. 1995; Lahav et al. 1996), morphological star/galaxy separation (e.g. Bertin & Arnouts 1996; Andreon et al. 2000) and stellar spectral classification (e.g. Bailer-Jones, Irwin & von Hippel 1998; Allende Prieto et al. 2000; Weaver 2000). Essentially an ANN takes a set of inputs (e.g. logarithms of fluxes – i.e. magnitudes – in different filters) for each object, applies some non-linear function, and outputs a value (e.g. the estimated redshift). The ANN is first trained – i.e. the coefficients (weights) of the function are optimized – by using a training set where the desired output is known. The ANN may then be used on any number of other objects with similar inputs (i.e. magnitudes in the same filter set) but unknown outputs (i.e. redshifts).

As well as using all of the information contained in the magnitudes and colours, provided the training set is a representative subsample of the data, the ANN will also take into account the Bayesian priors on the galaxy redshift distribution (cf. Benitez 1998; Teplitz et al. 2001). While choosing a template library that is both sufficient and non-superfluous is a source of concern for the template-fitting method, ANNs automatically fit the true range of galaxy SEDs. Another potential advantage of ANNs relative to the template-fitting method is that the weights applied to each filter may be more optimal than simple $`\chi ^2`$-weighting. In addition one can also feed in other observational input such as image size or surface brightness, morphology and concentration parameters where such data are available. It is interesting then to see how the two methods compare.

This paper explores the use of ANNs as a potential tool for photometric redshift determination. The layout of this paper is as follows. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$2 the ANNs are described and in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3 a semi-analytic model (used to provide a simulated galaxy catalogue) is introduced. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$4 the ANN parameters (architecture and training set size) are investigated using the simulated galaxy catalogue and in $`\mathrm{\S }`$5 the performance of ANNs are compared with the performance of the traditional template-fitting method. $`\mathrm{\S }`$6 looks at the effect of photometric noise and in $`\mathrm{\S }`$7 ANNs are investigated as a method for also determining spectral type from redshifted data. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$8, ANNs are tested on Sloan Digital Sky Survey observational data. The science prospects are briefly discussed in $`\mathrm{\S }`$9.

## 2 Artificial neural networks

An ANN comprises a set of input nodes, one or more output nodes, and one or more hidden layers each containing a number of nodes (Fig. 1; see e.g. Bishop 1995, and references therein, for background). A particular network architecture may be denoted by $`N_{\mathrm{in}}`$:$`N_1`$:$`N_2`$:…:$`N_{\mathrm{out}}`$ where $`N_{\mathrm{in}}`$ is the number of input nodes, $`N_1`$ is the number of nodes in the first hidden layer, and so on. For example 9:6:1 takes 9 inputs, has 6 nodes in a single hidden layer and gives a single output. The nodes are connected and each connection carries a weight which together comprise the vector of coefficients $`𝒘`$ which are to be optimized. Unless otherwise stated, here every node is assumed to be connected to every node in the previous layer and to every node in the next layer only, but it is certainly possible to have more or less interconnected nets. The input parameters for each object are represented by the vector $`𝒙`$ (e.g. the magnitudes in a set of filters). Given a training set of inputs $`𝒙_k`$ and desired outputs $`z_k`$ (e.g. the redshift), the ANN is optimized by minimizing the cost function

$$E=\frac{1}{2}\underset{k}{}[z_kF(𝒘,𝒙_k)]^2.$$
(3)
The function $`F(𝒘,𝒙_k)`$ is given by the network. A function $`g_p`$ is defined at each node $`p`$, taking as its argument

$$u_p=\underset{j}{}w_jx_j$$
(4)
where the sum is over the input nodes to $`p`$. These functions are typically taken (in analogy to biological neurons) to be sigmoid functions such as $`g_p(u_p)=1/[1+\mathrm{exp}(u_p)]`$ (used here). An extra input node – the bias node – is automatically included to allow for additive constants in these functions. The combination of these functions over all the network nodes makes up the function $`F`$. A programme kindly provided by B. D. Ripley was used to train the networks. The programme takes as its input a network architecture, a training set and a random seed to initiate the weight vector $`𝒘`$111The initial weights were randomly chosen from a uniform distribution with range \[$``$0.7, 0.7\]., and uses an iterative quasi-Newton method (see e.g. Bishop 1995) to minimize the cost function. To ensure that the weights are regularized (i.e. that they do not become too large), an extra quadratic cost term

$$E_w=\beta \frac{1}{2}\underset{j}{}w_j^2,$$
(5)
was added to equation 3. A value of $`\beta =0.0001`$ was chosen empirically to optimize the ANN performance. After each training iteration, the cost function is evaluated on a separate validation set. After a chosen number of training iterations, training terminates and the final weights chosen for the ANN are those from the iteration at which the cost function is minimal on the validation set. This is useful to avoid over-fitting to the training set if the training set is small.

## 3 Model galaxy catalogues

### 3.1 Semi-analytic models

To provide a galaxy catalogue on which to train and test ANNs, a semi-analytic model was used. Semi-analytic models are an attempt to use simple recipes to parameterize the main physical processes of galaxy formation within the hierarchical paradigm of galaxy formation (e.g. Kauffmann, White & Guiderdoni 1993; Cole et al. 1994). In these models, Monte Carlo techniques may be used to efficiently generate large mock galaxy catalogues with a (broadly-speaking) realistic distribution of galaxy types, luminosities, colours and redshifts. Here the current version of the code developed by Somerville (1997) is used. This has been shown to produce good agreement with many properties of local and high-redshift galaxies (Somerville & Primack 1999; Somerville, Primack & Faber 2001; Firth et al. 2002a).

In this model (see Somerville & Primack 1999 for details), the number density of haloes of various masses at a given redshift is determined by an improved version of the Press-Schechter model (Sheth & Tormen 1999) and the formation and merging of dark matter haloes as a function of time is represented by a ‘merger tree’. The cooling of gas, formation of stars, and reheating and ejection of gas by supernovae within these haloes are modelled by simple recipes. Cold gas is assumed to initially cool into, and form stars within, a rotationally supported disc. Major mergers between galaxies destroy the discs and create spheroids. Galaxy mergers also produce bursts of star formation. The chemical evolution and star formation history of each galaxy is traced and convolved with multi-metallicity stellar population synthesis models (Devriendt, Guiderdoni & Sadat 1999), and a dust extinction law, in order to calculate the galaxy’s SED.

There are several advantages in using a semi-analytic model here. Firstly, an arbitrarily large number of galaxies may be generated over any desired redshift range, and with any magnitude limit. The ‘true’ redshift and magnitudes (prior to the addition of photometric noise) are known precisely. At present there is no large observed spectroscopic sample at high redshift, and those spectroscopic samples that do exist tend to be biased towards luminous galaxies with prominent emission lines at optical wavelengths. On the other hand, simpler model galaxy catalogues (e.g. PLE models) are less likely to produce realistic distributions of galaxy SEDs in terms of composite stellar populations, ages, metallicities and the effects of dust (all as a function of redshift). Where (when) suitable spectroscopic samples exist, the model catalogues could be replaced by observed photometric and spectroscopic samples and the results would be expected to be comparable (see e.g. $`\mathrm{\S }`$8).

### 3.2 Preparing the input catalogue

An $`H<22`$ catalogue in $`UBVRIH`$ was generated using the semi-analytic model. To simulate a real galaxy survey, photometric noise was added to this catalogue, simulating 5$`\sigma `$ magnitude limits of $`U=25.1`$, $`B=26.6`$, $`V=26.1`$, $`R=25.6`$, $`I=24.7`$ and $`H=20.5`$ (typical of current and future large surveys aimed at studying large-scale structure at high redshifts – e.g. the LCIR Survey, Firth et al. 2002a). An extra 0.05 mags r.m.s. error term was included to simulate seeing variations, zeropoint inaccuracies and other sources of photometric errors. Finally an $`H<20.5`$ ‘noisy’ sample was drawn from this catalogue.

So that all weights are treated fairly equally in equation 5, it is useful to normalize the magnitudes in each filter and the model redshifts to the range . The exact form of the normalization is unimportant provided the same normalization is used for both training the ANN and using the ANN. For definiteness, in each filter the mean magnitude (derived from an $`H<20.5`$ ‘noiseless’ sample) was subtracted, and the range \[$``$5, 5\] was mapped linearly to . Furthermore the redshift range \[0, 3.5\] was mapped linearly to .

## 4 Selecting network parameters

### 4.1 Number of training iterations

First of all, the required number of training iterations $`N_{\mathrm{iter}}`$ was investigated. Clearly this will depend on the characteristics of the data set and the complexity of the network architecture. There is also an element of chance due to the randomized initial weights. After an ANN has been trained, its performance is assessed by running a testing set (distinct from the training and validation sets) through it and calculating the r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z=z_{\mathrm{model}}z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$, where $`z_{\mathrm{model}}`$ are the model redshifts and $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$ are the corresponding ANN photometric redshifts. Fig. 2 plots the change in r.m.s. as $`N_{\mathrm{iter}}`$ is increased. Three architectures, covering a range in complexity, are compared and, for each architecture, five ANNs were produced starting with different random seeds. A training set of size 10000 was used (cf. $`\mathrm{\S }`$4.3) and the ANNs were tested on a separate testing set, also of size 10000. Note that the testing set could be any size. A sample of size 10000 was chosen simply to provide good statistics.

The r.m.s. decreases as $`N_{\mathrm{iter}}`$ is increased but levels off for large $`N_{\mathrm{iter}}`$. For most random seeds, improvement beyond $`N_{\mathrm{iter}}500`$ is slow. For the remainder of this paper, in which a similar range of architectures, and the same – or simpler – data sets are considered, $`N_{\mathrm{iter}}`$ will be restricted to 1000.

Fig. 3 compares the estimated photometric redshifts on the testing set, using the 6:10:10:10:1 architecture, for two different random seeds after 1000 training iterations. The two ANNs closely agree. Generally, different initial random seeds lead to ANNs with similar r.m.s. accuracy, though there are still differences at the $``$10 per cent level. It is useful, therefore, to generate several ANNs using different random seeds. One may then use the validation set to choose the ‘best’ ANN. A better approach (see e.g. Bishop 1995 for details) is to combine a set of ANNs generated using different random seeds. This is called a ‘committee of ANNs’. In this paper, the estimated redshift for each galaxy presented to the committee is taken to be the median of the estimates provided by the individual ANNs. Typically the committee gives more accurate redshift estimates than any of its component ANNs taken individually (see $`\mathrm{\S }`$4.2, Table 1 for examples).

### 4.2 Network architecture

More complex network architectures have more free parameters (weights) and therefore allow a closer fit to the data. In any real data set there will be a fundamental limit to the r.m.s. fit, due to random noise in the input measurements, and further increases in architecture complexity will provide no significant improvement. In addition, architectures with more weights take longer to train. In any given situation one would like to use the simplest network possible while still obtaining optimal results.

Table 1 compares the r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z=z_{\mathrm{model}}z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$, evaluated on a testing set of size 10000, for several architectures (see also Fig. 4). For committees of five ANNs, the networks with a single hidden layer (i.e. 6:$`m`$:1) reach a limiting r.m.s. of $``$0.14 (e.g. for $`m15`$). There is no significant improvement for larger $`m`$. However adding extra hidden layers offers some improvement, even when the total number of weights is not increased. The committees of five 6:6:6:6:1, 6:10:10:1 and 6:10:10:10:1 ANNs in Table 1 all produce r.m.s. values of $``$0.115. The scatter in the r.m.s. between different committees is of order $`\pm 0.002`$ for these architectures, and increasing the number of ANNs in the committee leads only to a small improvement in the r.m.s. (e.g. $``$0.001 decrease in the r.m.s. for a committee of 25 ANNs). Adding further hidden layers (e.g. 6:10:10:10:10:1) leads to little or no further improvement.

For the remainder of this paper, a 6:6:6:6:1 architecture will be used as the fiducial ANN, since this architecture gives results comparable with the best results in Table 1 but has relatively few weights. Unless stated otherwise, redshifts will be estimated using a committee of five such ANNs – taking the median redshift estimate of five for each galaxy.

Clearly the required network complexity depends on the data set. For data with a higher signal-to-noise ratio, the fundamental r.m.s. limit on $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ will be lower and a more complex architecture may be necessary to reach this limit. Conversely, for data covering a smaller redshift range, fewer free parameters will be necessary to model the mapping from colours to redshift, and a simpler architecture may suffice.

### 4.3 Size of training set

Often one will have no choice concerning the size of the training set, $`N_{\mathrm{train}}`$. However, when designing surveys, it is useful to assess what size of training set is necessary to provide a given redshift accuracy. Fig. 5 plots the r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z=z_{\mathrm{model}}z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$, evaluated on a testing set of size 10000, as a function of $`N_{\mathrm{train}}`$, for the 6:6:6:6:1 architecture (using a single random seed). The r.m.s. decreases as $`N_{\mathrm{train}}`$ increases but begins to level off for large $`N_{\mathrm{train}}`$ values. Clearly there is a trade-off – one can obtain fairly good results for quite small training sets (e.g. r.m.s. $``$0.15 for $`N_{\mathrm{train}}=1000`$) but larger training sets can give significant improvements (e.g. r.m.s. $``$0.12 for $`N_{\mathrm{train}}=10000`$).

Also plotted in Fig. 5 are the r.m.s. values for different redshift bins: $`z<0.5`$, $`0.5<z<1.0`$ and $`z>1.0`$. In the testing set, galaxies are distributed between these bins in the approximate ratio 2:2:1. Since there are fewer training galaxies in the high-redshift bin, the network weights are less constrained and the r.m.s. values are larger. From $`N_{\mathrm{train}}=200`$ to $`N_{\mathrm{train}}=5000`$ the r.m.s. in the $`z<0.5`$ bin drops by about 20 per cent while the r.m.s. in the $`z>1.0`$ bin drops by more than 50 per cent. Thus larger training sets are important for tying down the redshifts of rare objects, but if this is not of particular interest (e.g. many large-scale structure surveys) then one can manage with smaller training sets.

It is important to note that the size of $`N_{\mathrm{train}}`$ required to achieve a given accuracy depends on the variation inherent in the data set. In particular, for photometric redshifts it depends on the redshift range. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$5$`\mathrm{\S }`$7, in which the same $`H<20.5`$ SAM catalogue is used, the training set size will be fixed to 10000. For low redshift/shallow surveys (e.g. SDSS – see $`\mathrm{\S }`$8), smaller training sets should suffice.

## 5 Comparisons with the template-
fitting method

Fig. 6 compares the model redshifts of 2000 test galaxies with the redshifts estimated using a committee of five 6:6:6:6:1 ANNs and a training set of 10000 galaxies. As found in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4, the r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z=z_{\mathrm{model}}z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$ is 0.12 over the redshift range $`0<z<3.5`$. Of course, the performance depends entirely on the particular set of filters and limiting magnitudes222The sample catalogue is of much poorer quality than the Hubble Deep Field, for example. so, for comparison, the results of the template-fitting code hyperz333http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/hyperz/ (Bolzonella, Miralles & Pelló 2000) are also shown (using the 8 synthetic Bruzual & Charlot 1993 GISSEL’98 evolving templates, that are distributed with hyperz, and dust extinction $`A_V`$ in the range 0.0–1.2). The hyperz results are comparable but slightly worse. Formally the r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ is 0.26, but this relatively high value may be due more to the small number of complete misidentifications – against which the ANN seems to be more robust – than to a general increased scatter. However, as a further comparison, the scatter measured by the half-range of the central 68 per cent $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ values is 0.02 for the ANN and 0.11 for hyperz.

It may be argued that hyperz is at a disadvantage here, relative to the ANN, since the ANN training and testing sets are based on the same spectral models while hyperz is trying to fit a different set of templates. For a real data set, hyperz – like all template-fitting methods – could still suffer from template mismatches while ANNs automatically fit the data. Synthetic templates were used in hyperz for the above comparison since synthetic templates, albeit from a different source, are used in the semi-analytic model. However when using hyperz on real data sets, empirical SEDs, such as the four Coleman et al. (1980, CWW) SEDs – E, Sbc, Scd and Im – distributed with the hyperz code, often produce better results. It is possible that the four CWW templates are a closer match to real galaxy SEDs than the eight GISSEL’98 evolving templates are to the semi-analytic model SEDs. Therefore as a further comparison, which maximally favours hyperz, the $`UBVRIH`$ photometry for each galaxy in the semi-analytic model was replaced by $`UBVRIH`$ photometry for the best-fitting (using rest-frame $`BI`$ colour) CWW template SED at the same model redshift. Noise was added to the new photometry as described above and an $`H<20.5`$ sample was reselected. The magnitudes and redshifts were normalized as described above and a new committee of five 6:6:6:6:1 ANNs was generated. Fig. 7 compares the new ANN with hyperz. The formal r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ is 0.10 for the ANN and 0.12 for hyperz, while the half-width of the central 68 per cent $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ values is 0.02 for the ANN and 0.04 for hyperz. Hence, even for this case maximally favouring hyperz, the ANN performs at least as well as template-fitting.

## 6 Scatter due to photometric errors

It is of interest to see what the distribution of estimated redshifts is for a particular galaxy, as a result of random photometric errors. Random noise was added, as described above, to a selection of individual model galaxies, with 1000 random simulations per galaxy. Then redshifts were estimated using the above previously trained committee of five 6:6:6:6:1 ANNs. Fig. 8 plots histograms of the estimated redshifts for each original galaxy. The width of the $`P(z)`$ distribution increases for fainter galaxies but a more pronounced trend is that it increases for galaxies at higher redshifts. There are fewer training galaxies at high redshifts which means that (a) the network weights are less constrained than at lower redshifts, and (b) the training process gives more weight to improving the accuracy for the majority of galaxies at low redshifts at the expense of accuracy at high redshifts.

## 7 Spectral type classification

One can also use ANNs to determine spectral type (independently of redshift) provided, as emphasized above, the training set is representative in terms of both spectral types and redshifts (and hence galaxy colours). As in $`\mathrm{\S }`$5, the photometry for each semi-analytic model galaxy was replaced by that for the best-fitting CWW template SED at the same model redshift. Then simulated photometric noise was added and an $`H<20.5`$ sample was selected. The best-fitting CWW spectral types E, Sbc, Scd and Im give the desired output on which the network is trained.

Since the input colour data is the same as in the photometric redshift problem of $`\mathrm{\S }`$4, a similar network architecture was used. However it was modified to produce four outputs (viz. 6:6:6:6:4), corresponding to the four spectral types (at any redshift)444Alternatively, since galaxy spectral types roughly follow a sequence (e.g. Connolly et al. 1995a; Naim et al. 1995), one could utilize a network with a single output node to classify galaxies, for example, on a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 corresponds to spectral type E and 1 corresponds to spectral type Im.. When training, the desired output is 1 for the output node corresponding to the correct type and 0 for the other three nodes. When a galaxy of unknown spectral type is run through the ANN, the output in each node may be treated approximately as a probability for the galaxy being of the corresponding type, and the galaxy is assigned the type for which the probability is greatest (cf. e.g. Storrie-Lombardi et al. 1992; Lahav et al. 1996). The input magnitudes were normalized to the range  as above, 10000 training objects were used, and a committee of five 6:6:6:6:4 ANNs was generated.

The ANN results are displayed in Table 2. The ANN spectral types agree very well with the original CWW spectral types – the mean error rate is $``$1 per cent. Table 2 also shows the equivalent hyperz results. Here the ANN and hyperz perform comparably well.

## 8 Performance of neural networks
on SDSS data

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey555Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/. The Participating Institutions are The University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, The Johns Hopkins University, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington. (SDSS; York et al. 2000) consortium have now publicly released more than 50000 spectroscopic redshifts along with $`ugriz`$ photometry and various image morphological parameters. These provide an excellent opportunity to test ANNs on real data (see also Sowards-Emmerd et al. 2000 for a polynomial-fitting approach). Objects were selected from the SDSS public data set using the following criteria: (1) the spectroscopic redshift confidence must be greater than 0.95 and there must be no warning flags, (2) $`r<17.5`$, (3) redshift $`<0.5`$. Stars were left in with the galaxies but at these magnitudes they could have been fairly robustly removed using image morphology. The order was randomized and the magnitudes, redshifts and other parameters were normalized to the range .

Because the SDSS redshift range is much smaller than that of the SAM catalogue used in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4 (though note the addition of stars here), a simpler architecture may suffice. However, for the sake of simplicity, a similar architecture is used in this section also. Two ANN architectures were used. One – 5:6:6:6:1 – inputing $`ugriz`$ photometry, and the other – 8:6:6:6:1 – inputing $`ugriz`$ photometry and the SDSS pipeline star/galaxy classifier (‘type’) and Petrosian 50 per cent and 90 per cent $`r`$-band flux radii, $`r_{50}`$ and $`r_{90}`$. A training set of size 10000 was used and, for each architecture, a committee of five ANNs was generated.

Fig. 9 compares the ANN redshifts with spectroscopic redshifts for a testing set of 7000 galaxies. The r.m.s. in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ are 0.023 and 0.021 for committees of five 5:6:6:6:1 and 8:6:6:6:1 networks respectively, while the mean offsets are both 0.000. These results are easily as good as, and probably better than, the best results that template-fitting photometric redshift methods can produce. There are also very few outliers. The spike at $`z=0`$ in the 5:6:6:6:1 network results is due to misidentified stars. In the 8:6:6:6:1 network the addition of morphological parameters largely removes this feature.

While 10000 training objects were used for the above networks, one can still do fairly well with much smaller training set sizes. For example, with only 500 training objects, the r.m.s. values become respectively 0.028 and 0.027 (cf. Fig. 5). Again, larger training sets are expected to be useful for pinning down the classifications of rare objects – e.g. the r.m.s. in the redshift range $`0.25<z<0.35`$ is $``$0.03 for $`N_{\mathrm{train}}=10000`$ but degrades to $``$0.06 for $`N_{\mathrm{train}}=500`$.

## 9 Conclusions

ANNs can produce photometric redshift accuracies that are comparable to or better than template-fitting procedures. However they do rely on large and representative training samples and an ANN is only applicable to the particular survey filters and redshift range upon which it has been trained. For large photometric/spectroscopic surveys, such as the SDSS and future deeper surveys such as DEEP2666http://astron.berkeley.edu/$``$marc/deep/ and the VIRMOS-VLT Deep Survey777http://www.astrsp-mrs.fr/virmos/ (VVDS; Le Fèvre et al. 2000), where large spectroscopic samples are available, it seems that ANNs offer some significant advantages over previous approaches. The VVDS, for example, is expected to include $`>100000`$ redshifts to $`I_{AB}=22.5`$, $`>40000`$ redshifts to $`I_{AB}=24`$ and $`>1000`$ redshifts to $`I_{AB}=25`$, providing ample training set sizes for the complementary deep imaging in $`UBVRIK_s`$ to $`I_{AB}=25`$ (similar to the limits used in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3).

With careful modelling of photometric errors and some loss in the Bayesian statistics, bright spectroscopic samples may also be extrapolated to provide training sets for fainter photometric samples.

In addition, ANNs may also be used where spectroscopic redshifts are unavailable, by utilizing a simulated catalogue (e.g. semi-analytic model) as a training set. By using theoretical SEDs in the training set, this method has all the disadvantages and advantages of standard template-fitting, but it also has the extra advantages (i) the ‘template’ SEDs include a (more or less) realistic distribution of complex star formation histories, dust modelling and metallicities etc., giving fully Bayesian statistics, and (ii) the weights applied to different filters (and non-linear combinations thereof) may be more optimal than simple $`\chi ^2`$-weighting.

To conclude, while template-fitting photometric redshifts may be used to good effect in pioneering studies of new populations of objects, spectroscopic confirmation will always be necessary to obtain truly robust scientific results. Instead the real power of photometric redshifts lies in extending small very resource-intensive faint spectroscopic surveys to much larger fields-of-view and sample sizes. That is to say, the area where photometric redshifts can best be used for robust and useful scientific gains is in the training-set regime. ANNs provide a powerful tool for obtaining high-quality photometric redshifts in such surveys.

## Acknowledgments

We are grateful to B. D. Ripley for providing the ANN training code, Avi Naim for related programmes and advice, Richard Ellis and Richard McMahon for discussions, and the anonymous referee for many useful suggestions. AF was supported by Trinity College, Cambridge, an Isaac Newton Studentship, and an L. B. Wood Travelling Scholarship during this work, and also gratefully acknowledges the use of facilities at the University of Otago.


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# Consequences of the extra SM Families on the Higgs Boson Production at Tevatron and LHC

## Abstract

The latest electroweak precission data allow the existence of additional chiral generations in the standard model. We study the influence of extra generations on the production of SM Higgs boson at hadron colliders. Due to the enhancement of the gluon fusion channel, the “golden mode” becomes more promising even at upgraded Tevatron. Furthermore, the formation of the fourth family quarkonia with the subsequent $`\eta Zh`$ decay introduces additional tool for the investigation of the Higgs boson properties.

1Department of Physics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Bogazici University, 80815, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey.

2Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Ankara University, 06100, Tandogan, Ankara, Turkey.

3Department of Physics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Gazi University, 06500, Teknikokullar, Ankara, Turkey.

4Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences, H. Cavid Avenue 33, 370143, Baku, Azerbaijan.

Two years ago, the existence of extra Standard Model (SM) generations seemed to be "excluded" by precission electroweak data . However, with the latest electroweak data, the situation is changed. In a recent paper , it is shown that the quality of the fit for one new generation is as good as for zero new generation; moreover, two and even three partially heavy generations are allowed when neutral fermions are relatively light, $`m_N50`$ GeV. Using LEP2 data for the process $`e^+e^{}Z^{}N\overline{N}\gamma `$ one can exclude three partially heavy generations which contain such a light $`N`$ at a level of $`3\sigma `$ while one or even two such generations may exist . Then, according to  a single extra chiral family with a constrained spectrum is consistent with precision data without requiring any other new physics source, and the precision bound on the SM-like Higgs boson mass is significantly relaxed in the presence of an extra relatively light chiral family, namely, SM Higgs mass up to about $`500`$ GeV is allowed.

Direct searches for new leptons ($`N,\text{ }L`$) and quarks ($`u_4,\text{ }d_4`$) lead to the following lower bounds on their masses : $`m_L>92.4`$ GeV, $`m_N>45`$ GeV (Dirac), $`m_N>39.5`$ GeV (Majorana), $`m_{d_4}>199`$ GeV (neutral current decays), $`m_{d_4}>128`$ GeV (charged current decays).

It is known that the SM does not predict the number of generations. In the Democratic Mass Matrix approach, the SM is extended to include extra generations (see  and references therein).

The leading production mechanism for a SM Higgs boson at hadron colliders is the gluon-fusion process via heavy quark triangle loop

$$p\overline{p}ggXhX.$$
(1)
To the lowest order, cross section is given by

$$\sigma (p\overline{p}hX)=\sigma _0\tau _h_{\tau _h}^1\frac{dx}{x}g(x,Q^2)g(\tau _h/x,Q^2)$$
(2)
where $`g(x,Q^2)`$ denotes the gluon density of proton and $`\tau _h=m_h^2/s`$. The natural values are chosen for the factorization scale $`Q^2`$ ($`=m_h^2`$) of the parton densities and the renormalization scale $`\mu `$($`=m_h`$) for the running strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$. The partonic cross section is given by

$$\sigma _0(ggh)=\frac{G_F\alpha _s^2(\mu ^2)}{\sqrt{2}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}288}\pi }\underset{Q}{}|g_QA_Q|^2.$$
(3)
The expression for the amplitude $`A_Q`$ can be found in . The Yukawa coupling is given by $`g_Q=m_Q/v`$, where $`v=246`$ GeV is the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field and $`m_Q`$ denotes the heavy quark mass. In spite of the large value of the fourth SM family quark masses, perturbation theory is still applicable for $`m_Q<870`$ GeV since $`\alpha _Q=g_Q^2/4\pi <1`$. This restriction should be considered as conservative because the scale of the corrections to Yukawa interactions of the Higgs boson with heavy quarks is given by $`g_Q^2/(4\pi )^2`$ and these corrections can be neglected for heavy quark masses upto $`m_Q`$ 3 TeV .

Quarks from extra generations contribute to the loop mediated process in Higgs boson production $`ggh`$ at hadron colliders resulting in an enhancement of $`\sigma _0`$ by a factor of $`ϵ`$. It is obvious that in the infinitely heavy quark mass limit , the expected enhancement factors are $`ϵ=`$9, 25 and 49 in the case of one, two and three extra generations, respectively. In Fig. 1, we plotted $`ϵ`$ as a function of $`m_h`$ assuming quarks from extra generations to be infinitely heavy.

Extra generations will also effect $`h\gamma \gamma `$, $`Z\gamma `$ decay widths. In addition, if $`m_h>2m_N`$ a new channel, namely $`hN\overline{N}`$ appears. Branching ratios of the main decay modes of the Higgs boson are plotted in Fig. 2 for zero, one and two extra SM generations. In our calculations, we use  with minor modifications due to extra SM generations. According to , extra generations will give a negative corrections to the $`hZZ`$ vertex. Since the same corrections take place also for the $`hWW`$ vertex, this effect can be neglected for $`m_h>150`$ GeV where $`hWW^{()}`$ channel is dominant. For $`m_h<150`$ GeV these corrections can be neglected for relatively light extra generations ($`m_Q<300`$ GeV).

In this study, we concentrate on the golden mode $`hZZ^{()}4l`$, where $`l=e,\mu `$. In Table 2 we present production cross section for golden events in the cases of three, four, five and six SM generations at Tevatron with $`\sqrt{s}=2`$ TeV. The cross sections for LHC with $`\sqrt{s}=14`$ TeV are given in Table 2. In our calculations we use PYTHIA 6.2  with the CTEQ5L parton distribution  and have normalized our signal cross section to include NLO QCD corrections .

The most important background is the pair production of Z bosons, $`p\overline{p}(pp)ZZ^{()}X`$ $`(Zl^+l^{})`$, which has $`\sigma 8`$ fb at Tevatron and $`\sigma 45`$ fb at LHC. Since the Higgs boson width grows rapidly with $`m_h`$, a variable mass window of width $`\sigma _m`$ (given by the convolution of the Higgs decay width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_h`$ and of the experimental resolution estimated to be 2% of the Higgs boson mass)

$$\sigma _m=\sqrt{\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_h}{2.36}\right)^2+\left(0.02m_h\right)^2}$$
(4)
is used in order to estimate the numbers of signal and background events. In this case, the acceptance for signal events is $`90\%`$ in a mass window of $`\pm 1.64\sigma _m`$ around $`m_h`$. The integral luminosities needed to achieve a $`3\sigma `$ ($`5\sigma `$) significance level of Higgs boson observation at Tevatron and LHC are shown in Fig. 3 (4). In our calculations we assume rather conservative value of 25% for the overall acceptance in four lepton final states, and the integrated luminosities to achieve the desired statistical significances are obtained using Poisson statistics.

From Fig. 3, one can see that Higgs boson with mass around 150 and 200 GeV will be observed at upgraded Tevatron with $`L_{int}=30`$ fb-1 if the fourth SM family exists. In this case, Higgs boson with $`110<m_h<500`$ GeV will be seen at LHC via golden mode even at low luminosity of $`L_{int}=10`$ fb-1. In the case of partially heavy extra generations, $`m_N=50`$ GeV, Higgs boson with mass $`180<m_h<350`$ GeV ($`170<m_h<450`$ GeV) will be observed at a $`3\sigma `$ level at upgraded Tevatron if there are five (six) SM generations. In other words, Tevatron can exclude two (three) extra generations at $`3\sigma `$ level if Higgs mass lies between 180 (170) GeV and 350 (450) GeV and golden mode is not seen.

Fig. 4 shows that two extra generations can be excluded at $`5\sigma `$ level by upgraded Tevatron (before LHC start) if Higgs mass lies between 180 and 250 GeV. Three extra generations will be excluded for $`175<m_h<350`$ GeV. On the other hand, LHC with moderate integrated luminosity of 10 fb-1, will exclude (or confirm) degenerate extra SM generations via golden mode practically for the whole region of Higgs masses. In the case of partially heavy extra generations and $`m_h<140`$ GeV, higher integrated luminosity (up to 100 fb-1) is needed.

A non degenerate multiplet of heavy extra fermions will affect the parameter $`\rho `$ . For example, assuming degenerate fourth generation quarks, one can easily obtain a condition for non-degenerate leptons:

$$1+x^2\frac{4x^2}{1x^2}\text{ln}\frac{1}{x}\frac{3\times 10^4}{m_N^2}$$
(5)
where $`x=m_L/m_N`$. Therefore, fourth generation charged lepton mass limits are $`m_L208`$ GeV and $`350m_L650`$ GeV for $`m_N=50`$ GeV and $`m_N=500`$ GeV, respectively.

According to  in the case of partially heavy extra generations with $`m_N50`$ GeV the preferable mass value of the fourth generation charged lepton is around $`130`$ GeV. For the Higgs mass larger than $`2m_L`$ the decay channel $`hL^+L^{}`$ will contribute to Higgs decay and branchings. Concerning the golden mode this contribution will decrease the branching ratio approximately $`5\%`$. Our results will not change for $`m_h<2m_L`$ and slightly change for $`m_h>2m_L.`$

An additional opportunity for investigation of Higgs boson properties at hadron colliders appears if the quarks from extra generations form a quarkonia. The condition for forming ($`Q\overline{Q}`$) quarkonia states with new heavy quarks is :

$$m_Q(125\text{ GeV})|V_{Qq}|^{2/3}$$
(6)
where $`Q`$ and q denote new heavy quarks and known quarks, respectively; $`V_{Qq}`$ is the corresponding Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element. In the case of four SM generations this condition is satisfied by parametrization given in . The Higgs boson will be produced via the subprocess $`gg\eta (Q\overline{Q})Zh`$. In Fig. 5, we plot branching ratio $`BR(\eta Zh)`$ as a function of $`m_h`$ for different values of the masses of the fourth SM generation quarks. Here, we use corresponding formulas from  in the framework of Coulomb potential model. Production cross sections for $`\eta `$ quarkonia at Tevatron and LHC are plotted in Fig. 6. At Tevatron, it is obvious that the considered mechanism is a matter of interest only for relatively light new quarks. For example, if $`m_\eta =400`$ GeV and $`m_h=150`$ GeV, one expects 600 $`Zh`$ events at $`L_{int}=30`$ fb-1. This channel seems to be much more promising at LHC: with the same statements we expect more than $`3\times 10^4`$ $`Zh`$ events for $`L_{int}=100`$ fb-1. More comprehensive results on the subject including the effects of specific mass patterns on quarkonia decays will be reported elsewhere .

In conclusion, existence of the extra generations will significantly affect Higgs boson production at hadron colliders. In this paper, we examined the golden mode $`hZZ^{()}4l`$. Of course, the same statement is valid for other decay channels, too. For example, the modes $`hWW^{()}l\nu jj`$ and $`hWW^{()}l\overline{\nu }\overline{l}\nu `$ are very promising at Tevatron for $`135<m_h<180`$ GeV . Another promising channel for Higgs boson production is the formation of pseudoscalar $`\eta `$ quarkonia with subsequent decay $`\eta Zh`$. Finally, both upgraded Tevatron and LHC will give opportunity to determine the actual number of SM generations.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank A. Celikel, A.K. Ciftci and R. Ciftci for useful discussions. We are also grateful to H.-J. He and J. Lorenzo Diaz-Cruz for useful remarks. This work is partially supported by Turkish Planning Organization (DPT) under the Grant No 2002K120250.


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# Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies beyond the third peak

## 1 Introduction

The last several years have been an exciting period for observational cosmology, particularly in the field of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) research. With recent CMB balloon-borne and ground-based experiments such as TOCO Miller et al. (1999), BOOMERanG de Bernardis et al. (2000); Mauskopf et al. (2000); Netterfield et al. (2001), MAXIMA Hanany et al. (2000); Lee et al. (2001); Stompor et al. (2001), and DASI Halverson et al. (2001), we are entering a new era of precision cosmology that enables us to use the CMB anisotropy measurements to constrain the cosmological parameters and the underlying theoretical models. From all of these experiments, a firm detection of the first peak in the CMB anisotropy angular power spectrum has now been obtained. Moreover, in the framework of adiabatic cold dark matter (CDM) models, the position, amplitude and width of the measured peak provide strong evidence for the inflationary predictions of a low curvature (flat) universe and a scale-invariant primordial spectrum Dodelson & Knox (2000); Melchiorri et al. (2000). Furthermore, the latest results from BOOMERanG Netterfield et al. (2001) and DASI Halverson et al. (2001) point to the presence of second and third peaks, confirming the theoretical prediction of acoustic oscillations in the primeval plasma and shedding new light on various cosmological and inflationary parameters de Bernardis et al. (2002); Pryke et al. (2001); Wang et al. (2001). The locations and amplitudes of three acoustic peaks and two dips in the last releases of the CMB data have been determined in a model-independent way in recent work (see e.g. Durrer et al. (2001)). In general, the location and amplitude of the first acoustic peak is determined at more than $`3\sigma `$ confidence. The next two peaks and dips are determined at a confidence level above $`1\sigma `$ but below $`2\sigma `$. It is however worth mentioning the work of Miller et al. (2002), which finds that the second peak is a $`2\sigma `$ detection and that the third peak is not detected to any reasonable significance.

The next generation of CMB experiments will be even more powerful as they are designed to achieve, down to arcminute scales, accurate measurements of both the temperature anisotropies and polarised emission of the CMB. Through these data, we expect multiple oscillations in the spectrum to be unambiguously detected and, thanks to the polarisation measurements, this should enable us to remove some of the degeneracies that are still affecting parameter estimation.

However, the present CMB data, as we will see in one of the following sections, already constrain the shape of the angular power spectrum of primary anisotropies with good accuracy. The present poor determination of some of the cosmological and astrophysical parameters is more related to intrinsic degeneracies (different models leading to the same spectrum) rather than to the precision of the actual CMB measurements. Given this uncertainty, we can forecast in a reliable way the level of primary anisotropies on arcminute and sub-arcminute scales, where the effect of secondary anisotropies (i.e. produced well after matter-radiation decoupling) should start to dominate and hence significantly affect the CMB measurements. The secondary anisotropies can be generated due to photon interactions with the matter potential wells for example in the Rees-Sciama effect Rees & Sciama (1986), lensing Seljak (1996) and the “butterfly” effect Birkinshaw & Gull (1983). The other secondary anisotropies are induced by the interaction of CMB photons with free electrons such as in the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect Sunyaev & Zel’dovich (1980), the Ostriker-Vishniac (OV) effect Ostriker & Vishniac (1986); Vishniac (1987), and form the effects of early inhomogeneous reionisation Aghanim et al. (1996); Gruzinov & Hu (1998); Knox et al. (1998).

In the present work, we first forecast the level of primary anisotropies on arcminute and sub-arcminute scales by comparing the recent CMB data with a template of cosmological models (Section 2). We then quantify, in Section 3, the contribution of the secondary scattering effects that are likely the dominant contributions at small scales. The contributions are computed for a set of cosmological parameters allowed by the present data (within $`2\sigma `$ error bars). The corresponding power spectra are presented together with our results in Section 4. Our discussion and conclusions are given in Section 5.

## 2 Forecasting primary anisotropies

Our goal in this section is to forecast the level of primary anisotropies on very small scales ($`\mathrm{}>1000`$), given the actual CMB measurements that span an interval in angular scales of $`2<\mathrm{}<1000`$. The first step in our procedure consists of building a template of cosmological models and in comparing each model with the CMB observations through a likelihood. The theoretical models of our template are computed using the publicly available cmbfast program. They are defined by 6 parameters sampled as follows: $`\omega _{cdm}=\mathrm{\Omega }_{cdm}h^2=0.01,\mathrm{}0.40`$ (step $`0.01`$); $`\omega _b=\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.001,\mathrm{},0.040`$ (step $`0.001`$); $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.0,\mathrm{},1.0`$ (step $`0.05`$) and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.1,\mathrm{},1.0`$ (step $`0.05`$). The value of the Hubble constant is not an independent parameter, since $`h=\sqrt{(\omega _{cdm}+\omega _b)/(1\mathrm{\Omega }_k\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda })}`$. We vary the spectral index of the primordial density perturbations within the range $`n_s=0.60,\mathrm{},1.40`$ (step $`0.02`$) and we rescale the amplitude of fluctuations by a pre-factor $`C_{10}`$, in units of $`C_{10}^{COBE}`$, with $`0.50<C_{10}<1.40`$.

The models of the template are then compared with the recent BOOMERanG-98, DASI and MAXIMA-1 results. The power spectra from these experiments were estimated in $`19`$, $`9`$ and $`13`$ bins respectively, spanning the range $`25\mathrm{}1150`$. For the DASI and MAXIMA-I experiments, we use the publicly available correlation matrices and window functions. For the BOOMERanG experiment, we assign a flat space for the spectrum in each bin $`\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)C_{\mathrm{}}/2\pi =C_B`$; we approximate the signal $`C_B`$ inside the bin to a Gaussian variable and we consider $`10\%`$ correlations between the various bins. We consider $`10\%`$, $`4\%`$ and $`5\%`$ Gaussian distributed calibration errors (in $`\mu K`$) for the BOOMERanG-98, DASI and MAXIMA-1 experiments respectively and we included the beam uncertainties by the analytical marginalisation method presented in Bridle et al. (2001). We also include the COBE data using Lloyd Knox’s RADPack packages. The likelihood for a given cosmological model is then defined by $`2\mathrm{l}\mathrm{n}=(C_B^{th}C_B^{ex})M_{BB^{}}(C_B^{}^{th}C_B^{}^{ex})`$ where $`M_{BB^{}}`$ is the Gaussian curvature of the likelihood matrix at the peak. We then plot in the $`\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)C_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{}`$ plane the envelope of all the models that are consistent at $`95\%`$ c.l. with the CMB data (Fig. 2). This provides us with the predicted power spectrum of the primary anisotropies as deduced from the actual data. We consequently define above this band the region where, at $`95\%`$ c.l., a contribution from primary anisotropies is unlikely to be present. In performing the envelope of all the models, we have neglected the correlations between different $`\mathrm{}`$ modes for a single model: This simple procedure is also the most conservative approach. Moreover, our computations rely on two main assumptions:

* The primary CMB can be described by one of the theoretical models in our template (i.e. we do not consider possible deviations such as scale-dependent spectral indexes, isocurvature primordial perturbations or topological defects).
* The present CMB data are not affected by unknown foregrounds or systematics.

The first assumption is a theoretical prior mainly supported by the good agreement between the theoretical template and the present CMB data. The same underlying model seems also to fit the shape of the matter power spectrum on small scales obtained, for example, from recent galaxy surveys. The second assumption is based on the numerous tests performed by the experimental teams to estimate the Galactic contamination in the so-called CMB channels (150 or 30 GHz). It also relies, in particular, on the point source extraction carried out by the DASI team. Moreover, the overall consistency of the CMB data from these experiments that have sampled various regions of the sky, at different frequencies and with different techniques (bolometres and radiometres) reinforces our confidence in this second assumption. In the following, we will generalise the standard concept of foregrounds to include the secondary anisotropies that cannot be spectrally disentangled from the primary anisotropies, and thus corrected for, by the present experiments, and we will investigate their possible contributions.

## 3 Secondary contributions

An increasingly large number of studies has been devoted to the CMB anisotropies in general, and the secondary anisotropies in particular. We refer the reader to Hu & Dodelson (2002) and White & Cohn (2002). The latter give a rather comprehensive guide to the literature on the topics related to the CMB, including secondary anisotropies. In the present study, we concentrate on the dominant contributions due to secondary effects generated through interactions with electrons. The induced temperature anisotropies contribute to the total signal at different angular scales. Between a few arcminutes to a few tens of arcminutes, the SZ effect dominates, whereas at smaller angular scales typically down to arcminute scales the extra power essentially comes from the OV effect.

### 3.1 Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect

The SZ effect (see Birkinshaw (1999) for a recent review) is a well-studied effect which designates the inverse Compton interaction of the CMB photons with the free electrons of the hot intra-cluster medium. This effect is usually “decomposed” into two parts: The so-called thermal SZ (TSZ), and the kinetic SZ (KSZ) effects. The TSZ amplitude is a measure of the pressure integral along the line of sight. It is directly linked to the intra-cluster gas properties (temperature $`T_e`$ and optical depth $`\tau `$). It has a very peculiar spectral signature that translates into an excess of brightness at high frequencies (850 $`\mu `$m) and a decrement at low frequencies (2 mm). For hot clusters, it can be modified to include relativistic corrections (see Rephaeli (1995) for example). The KSZ effect corresponds to a first-order Doppler effect when a galaxy cluster moves with respect to the CMB rest frame with a radial peculiar velocity $`v_r`$. The KSZ anisotropies have the same spectral signature as the primary CMB anisotropies.

The SZ effect is one of the most important sources of secondary anisotropies. Due to its spectral signature, the TSZ can in principle be separated from the other components (in particular from the CMB primary anisotropies) by means of accurate multi-wavelength observations in the millimetre/submillimetre range Hobson et al. (1998); Bouchet & Gispert (1999); Snoussi et al. (2001). The only remaining contribution is therefore that associated with the KSZ anisotropies which cannot be separated from the primary fluctuations via multi-wavelength measurements. However, most of the present and future CMB experiments due to their lack of frequency coverage are unable to detect and subtract the TSZ anisotropies from the measurements. This contribution is thus likely to be present in the measured signal. In the present study, we investigate the SZ anisotropies using a semi-analytical model, the most recent version of which (assumptions and procedures) is described in detail in Aghanim et al. (2001). It is based on the computation of predicted cluster number counts from a Press-Schechter Press & Schechter (1974) mass function modified, according to Sheth & Tormen (1999) and Wu (2000), to better fit the numerical predictions of the number of dark matter halos in the mass range $`\mathrm{5.\hspace{0.17em}10}^{13}`$ to $`10^{16}`$ solar masses. Each cluster is physically described by its intra-cluster gas temperature (assumed isothermal) and electron density distribution (following the well-known $`\beta `$-profile, $`\beta =2/3`$). Provided with these quantities and the cluster peculiar velocities, both TSZ and KSZ anisotropies are computed for the cluster population. The SZ contribution (power spectrum) is then computed via simulated maps of both KSZ and TSZ components.

Several techniques, based on analytic or semi-analytic computations and on numerical simulations, can be used to predict the SZ signal of a cluster population (as for example in Cooray (2000), da Silva et al. (2000), Komatsu et al. (2000), Refregier & Teyssier (2000), Majumdar (2001), Springel et al. (2001) (and references therein). These authors give different predictions, especially for the power spectrum. An illuminating comparison illustrating this point has been performed by Springel et al. (2001). The most noticeable result of the comparison is a scatter of about one order of magnitude in the SZ power spectra at all angular scales. This scatter is partially due to the differences between the different methods used for the computation, and to their intrinsic limitations. We note, for example, that the semi-analytic predictions apparently give somehow higher amplitudes than numerical simulations. As for the latter, they are limited by numerical resolution, which especially affects the results at small angular scales. In addition, the amplitude of the SZ contribution crucially depends on the physical assumptions entering in the computation. The observed variations in the predicted power spectra can be due on the one hand to the predicted number of structures and on the other hand to the physical description of the intra-cluster gas, and its evolution with redshift. In this context, one of the most influencial parameters for the number count computations is the normalisation factor $`\sigma _8`$ which is also rather uncertain. The amplitude of the SZ power spectrum can indeed vary by an order of magnitude with rather small variations of $`\sigma _8`$. This dependence is illustrated in figure 1 where we use the expression given in Viana & Liddle (1999): $`\sigma _8=\sigma _8^0\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{0.47}`$ with $`\sigma _8^0=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.4}`$ (dashed line), 0.5 (solid line) and 0.6 (dotted line), and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$. It is therefore important to realise that due to our present limited understanding of the structure formation and evolution (especially for the gaseous part), the predicted SZ power spectra only provide an order of magnitude estimate of the effect rather than exact and precise amplitudes.

### 3.2 Inhomogeneous reionisation

It has become common knowledge that the universe underwent reionisation that was completed around a redshift $`z_i6`$. The evidence for reionisation relies on observations of the Gunn-Peterson Gunn & Peterson (1965) effect (both in hydrogen and helium) towards distant quasars Becker et al. (2001). Several physical processes have been proposed to achieve the total reionisation of the universe. Among them, photoionisation by early luminous sources (stars, quasars, dwarf galaxies) has recently been the most favoured. Indeed, it is a rather simple and natural scenario in which the first luminous sources emit ionising photons that ionise hydrogen atoms in their vicinities. In this model, reionisation starts as an inhomogeneous process, and the total reionisation is reached when the ionised bubbles overlap (due to their increasing number and to their expansion). The most recent observations of very distant quasars ($`z6`$) are now suggesting that we have reached the point where we are starting to observe the period of inhomogeneous reionisation (IHR) Becker et al. (2001); Gnedin (2001). As pointed out by Aghanim et al. (1996), inhomogeneous reionisation can induce secondary anisotropies of the KSZ type, when the ionised bubbles move with respect to the CMB rest frame. The inhomogeneous, or patchy, reionisation has been during the few last years the subject of numerous recent studies. Among these, we cite for example Benson et al. (2001),Ciardi et al. (2001),Gnedin& Jaffe (2001) and Bruscoli et al. (2002)

We estimate the possible contribution (in terms of the power spectrum) of the anisotropies due to the IHR by using the simple model proposed by Gruzinov & Hu (1998), which we have generalised to a non-critical universe (open or flat with non-zero cosmological constant). This is an empirical model of the IHR based on three parameters: The redshift at which ionisation starts $`z_s`$, its duration $`\delta z`$ and the typical size of the ionised bubble $`R`$. In our case, we add the constraint that reionisation is completed at $`z_i=6`$, i.e. for a given $`z_s`$ this fixes $`\delta z`$. In addition, we set $`z_s=10`$ which is a reasonable assumption for the formation of the first objects, i.e. when ionisation starts. However, this simple model is limited by the fact that it gives a predicted power spectrum for a specified bubble size that for illustration we set to 10 Mpc. It therefore introduces an artificial cut-off at small angular scales. A smaller (larger) size, shifts the power spectrum to smaller (larger) angular scales and decreases (increases) the amplitude.

### 3.3 Ostriker-Vishniac effect

Along with the IHR effect produced during the first stages of reionisation and independently of any physical model to explain the sources of photoionisation, we have to take into account the well-studied Ostriker-Vishniac effect OV Ostriker & Vishniac (1986); Vishniac (1987); Hu et al. (1994); Dodelson & Jubas (1995); Jaffe & Kamionkowski (1998) which arises during the linear regime of the cosmological density fluctuation evolution. Contrary to the IHR, this second order effect assumes a homogeneous ionisation fraction and relies entirely on the modulation of the Doppler effect by spatial variations of the density field which affect the probability of scattering. Due to its density squared weighting, it peaks at small angular scales, typically arcminute scales in low matter-density flat models, and produces $`\mu K`$ rms temperature anisotropies.

To estimate its power spectrum, and therefore its contribution to the temperature anisotropies, we follow the Jaffe & Kamionkowski (1998) approach. The OV effect can be expressed as the time integral of the velocity field projection along the line of sight modulated by the density field and weighted by the so-called visibility function. The visibility function gives the probability of rescattering of the photons as a function of time (or $`z`$) and encodes all the information relevant for reionisation. The usual approach is to consider that the visibility function follows a Gaussian centred near $`z_i`$ with a width corresponding to the interval of reionisation $`\delta z`$. This describes an idealised model for the evolution of the reionisation process. However, cosmological simulations Gnedin (2000, 2001), supported by recent observational data from SLOAN Becker et al. (2001), indicate a slow first stage of reionisation, called the pre-overlap phase, followed by a fast overlap and post-overlap periods around $`z_i6`$. We thus propose a more realistic model for the visibility function which shape consists of a curve with a smooth growing slope at redshifts higher than $`z_i`$ and a steep decrease just before $`z_i`$. This approach increases the amplitude of the OV power spectrum by $`50\%`$ at all scales and produces a slight shift of its peak to smaller multipoles (larger angular scales) as compared to previous works. This simple but efficient analytical modeling of the OV effect will depend on the reionisation redshift, its duration and the cosmological model.

## 4 Results

The main results of our work are plotted in figure 2. Constraints on the primary anisotropies are plotted assuming the template of models described in Section 2. As we can see, even if multiple oscillations in the CMB data have not been detected at a level better than $`2\sigma `$ (see, e.g. Douspis & Ferreira (2001)) the actual data can constrain the region of compatible theoretical models. In particular, the level of primary anisotropies for $`\mathrm{}>1000`$ can be well defined, suggesting that measurements of the power around the first $`3`$ peaks constrain the intrinsic parameters of the model template. Together with the primary anisotropies, we have computed predicted power spectra for the secondary anisotropies. For each contributing signal, we give the power spectra for the so-called “concordance model” ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, $`h=0.71`$) (solid line within the heavy shaded region). Taking the values allowed by the CMB analysis Melchiorri & Silk (2002) and the HST measurements of the Hubble parameter Freedman et al. (2001), we compute the power spectra of the $`2\sigma `$ envelope (with parameters $`\omega _{cdm}=0.060.18`$, $`h=0.550.87`$ and $`\omega _b=0.0180.022`$), and of the $`1\sigma `$ envelope (with parameters $`\omega _{cdm}=0.090.15`$, $`h=0.630.79`$ and $`\omega _b=0.0190.021`$). In figure 2, we display both the $`2\sigma `$ envelopes (light shaded regions) and $`1\sigma `$ envelopes (heavy shaded regions) for the different contributions.

As far as the SZ effect is concerned, we emphasize that the majority of present experiments cannot disentangle it from the primary CMB due to their observing frequencies. We therefore calculate the TSZ contribution at two frequencies representative of the present experiments: 30 GHz for the radiometric (DASI and CBI-like) experiments and 150 GHz for the bolometric (BOOMERanG, MAXIMA and ARCHEOPS-like) experiments. This component is then added to the KSZ contribution; the total SZ power is then plotted. The SZ power spectrum peaks between $`\mathrm{}3200`$ and $`3600`$ depending on the cosmological model (but independently of the frequency). Its maximum power, in turn, depends more strongly on the set of cosmological parameters and obviously on the frequency. At 30 GHz, the $`\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)C_{\mathrm{}}`$ for the “concordance model” is $`\mathrm{2.\hspace{0.17em}10}^{10}`$. At 150 GHz, the maximum is about $`\mathrm{4.\hspace{0.17em}10}^{11}`$. We emphasize again that these predictions ought not to be taken at face value, but rather as indicative amplitudes for the SZ effect. The two other secondary effects induce temperature fluctuations which can be directly expressed in terms of their power spectra regardless of the frequency. The power spectrum of secondary anisotropies generated during the inhomogeneous reionisation peaks in between $`\mathrm{}1100`$ and 1800 with an amplitude $`\mathrm{3.\hspace{0.17em}10}^{12}`$ in the “concordance model”. As for the OV contribution, the power spectrum peaks around the multipoles $`\mathrm{}2000`$ and $`4000`$, where the primary anisotropies become subdominant, and its amplitude in the “concordance model” peaks around $`\mathrm{}3000`$ with amplitude $`3.10^{12}`$.

It is worth noting that the SZ anisotropies constitute the dominant secondary contribution when the TSZ effect is not removed, as is the case in the present study. When we compare the power of the primary and secondary anisotropies (Fig. 2), we find that within the $`2\sigma `$ envelope, the secondary contribution equals the primary power spectrum between $`\mathrm{}1600`$ and $`\mathrm{}2000`$. At 30 GHz, the total power spectrum (Fig. 3, upper panel) is already significantly modified beyond the third acoustic peak and the power spectrum is expected to remain almost flat down to $`\mathrm{}=5000`$. At 150 GHz, the amplitude of the secondary contributions (dominated by the TSZ effect in our case) is smaller. The observed (total) power spectrum in this case (Fig. 3, lower panel) is noticeably affected only at the position of the sixth acoustic peak. In this case, we do not observe a plateau; the power slowly decreases with increasing $`\mathrm{}`$s.

## 5 Discussion and Conclusions

In this study, we have examined the sub-arcminute structure of the angular power spectrum of the CMB anisotropies. Using a Bayesian approach, we have shown that under the assumption of a wide class of inflationary adiabatic CDM models, the present CMB data on degree and sub-degree scales can be used to forecast the level of anisotropies. We have therefore put strong bounds on the level of contribution from primary CMB anisotropies to the overall spectrum for $`\mathrm{}>1000`$ (on sub-arcminutes scales). These predictions rely on the experimental results and assume that the present CMB data are free from any unknown foreground contamination including secondary anisotropies.

We have checked that this hypothesis, and the underlying results, remain valid when we generalise the foreground to include the secondary anisotropies. We have therefore computed theoretical predictions for three dominant “candidates” for the secondary anisotropies: SZ effect, OV effect and IHR. Future multi-frequency experiments observing in the millimetre and sub-millimetre will be able to remove most of the TSZ contribution. In this case, the remaining SZ signal will be associated with the KSZ effect. It is one order of magnitude lower than the values quoted in figure 2, and has the same spectral signature as the primary anisotropies. The remaining SZ contribution will therefore be larger than, or of the same order of, the OV and IHR contributions (which are at the same level). Since all three signals are spectrally confused, the multi-frequency experiments will measure the sum of the three contributions. The resulting signal is rather small; it is thus not expected to significantly alter the primary anisotropies. However nowadays, the present status of the CMB experiments (specifically, their frequency coverage) does not allow us to remove a possible contribution from the TSZ effect of a cluster population. In this context, the secondary contribution to the CMB power spectrum is dominated by TSZ.

We have shown that such a contribution can be large enough to significantly modify the CMB power spectrum beyond the third acoustic peak. This alteration is more pronounced at 30 GHz than at 150 GHz, which could be the case if the errors bars for the 30 GHz-experiment are found to be larger than for the 150 GHz-experiments. The predicted $`2\sigma `$ envelope for the total power spectrum (Fig. 3, upper panel, dotted lines) is displayed together with the upper limits (95%) obtained from small scale experiments quoted in Springel et al. (2001) Subrahmanyan et al. (1993); Church et al. (1997); Ganga et al. (1997); Jones et al. (1997); Partridge et al. (1997); Subrahmanyan et al. (1998); Holzapfel et al. (2000). We note that the upper limits are close to our $`2\sigma `$ region defined by the cosmological parameters allowed by the actual constrains. The good consistency between BOOMERanG and DASI data (at 150 and 30 GHz respectively) together with the upper limits at small scales indicates that the present CMB data can already constrain the contribution from the secondary effects, TSZ effect in particular. However, this contribution is highly dependent on the cluster abundance and their internal physics which can modify our predictions. In addition, this result has been obtained under a theoretical prior. The possible presence of “non-standard” mechanisms like primordial voids Sakai et al. (1999); Cooray (2002); Griffiths et al. (2002), bumps Griffiths et al. (2001), scale dependence of the primordial spectral index Kosowsky & Turner (1995) or topological defects Avelino & Martins (2000), for example, can significantly change our conclusions. Fortunately, these mechanisms can be distinguished in principle from the models reported here by combination with different datasets such as those from deep redshift galaxy surveys, for example.

Future small-scale CMB data such as that expected from CBI Mason et al. (2002), ARCHEOPS Amblard et al. (2001); Benoit et al. (2001), MAP and, ultimately, Planck will be helpful for refining our results. The measurements of the CMB anisotropies after the third peak will not only constrain the cosmological model through parameter estimation, but will also unable us to probe, via the secondary anisotropies (e.g. SZ), the formation and evolution of structures<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1When we were about to submit this article, a similar study came out (Cooray 2002) in which the author examined the contributions from secondaries including IWS and weak lensing for the fiducial $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model..

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was partially supported by the European TMR CMBnet. PGC is supported by the Fundação para a Ciêcia e a Tecnologia. NA thanks T.F. and the Denys Wilkinson Building for “hospitality”. The authors thank M. Douspis and P. Ferreira for helpful discussion, and M. Kunz for his comments. We also thank an anonymous referee for the comments and suggestions that helped in improving the paper.


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# References

Detection of the velocity dipole in the radio galaxies of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey

Chris Blake & Jasper Wall

Astrophysics, Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory,
Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH, UK

E-mail: cab@astro.ox.ac.uk

We are in motion against the cosmic backdrop. This motion is evidenced by the systematic temperature shift – or dipole anisotropy – observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) . Because of the Doppler effect, the temperature of the CMB is 0.1 per cent higher in our direction of motion through the Universe. If our standard cosmological understanding is correct, this dipole should also be present as an enhancement in the surface density of distant galaxies . The main obstacle in finding this signal is the very uneven distribution of nearby galaxies in the Local Supercluster, which drowns out the small cosmological imprint. Here we report the first detection of the expected dipole anisotropy in the galaxy distribution, in a survey of galaxies detected in radio waves. Radio galaxies are mostly located at cosmological distances, so the contamination from nearby clusters should be small. With local radio sources removed, we find a dipole anisotropy in the radio galaxy distribution in the same direction as the CMB, close to the expected amplitude. This result is confirmation of the standard cosmological interpretation of the CMB.

The dipole anisotropy in the galaxy distribution due to our motion – the “velocity dipole” – has two causes. Firstly, emissions from galaxies ahead of us are Doppler boosted with respect to those behind, enhancing their fluxes; hence more are detected above a given flux threshold. Secondly, aberration of angles (as predicted by special relativity) causes the position vectors of galaxies to be displaced towards our direction of motion. We must distinguish the velocity dipole – an imprint in the distribution of distant, evenly distributed galaxies – from the anisotropic distribution of local galaxies due to the Local Supercluster. We describe the latter as the “clustering dipole”; it will not be a dipole distribution, but will have a dipole component. The clustering dipole is the cause of our motion through the Universe (the gravitational pull of the Local Supercluster), whilst the velocity dipole is the consequence of it. To measure the velocity dipole we must remove the contamination of the clustering dipole.

The velocity dipole is a small effect, causing a surface density enhancement of $`1`$ per cent. In order to detect it we must identify a sufficient quantity of distant objects and maintain uniformity in calibration to better than 1 per cent over the sky. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are situated in galaxies at cosmological distances and are therefore ideal probes of the velocity dipole. Unsuccessful attempts have been made to detect it in AGN X-ray surveys  and radio surveys . In contrast, the clustering dipole has been detected and quantified in studies probing the local distribution of galaxies at both optical  and infra-red  wavelengths. In particular, Rowan-Robinson et al.  used the Infra-Red Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) PSCz catalogue to compute the implied motion of the Local Group of galaxies.

We measure the galaxy dipole using the NRAO VLA Sky Survey of radio sources (NVSS) . The NVSS covers a large fraction of the celestial sphere (82 per cent) and is deep ($`50`$ sources deg-2), thus providing sufficient sources for good statistics. Moreover, the radio AGN in the survey are at a median redshift $`\overline{z}1`$ , so that the contamination from local sources should be minimal. To prevent pollution from Galactic radio sources, we restrict our analysis to Galactic latitudes greater than $`15^o`$. The expected dipole amplitude is so small that systematic fluctuations above 1 per cent over wide angles will drown dipole signal. At flux-densities below 15 mJy, the NVSS does suffer from spurious systematic fluctuations in source surface density of this magnitude (Figure 1).

To eliminate the clustering dipole we remove from the sample radio sources within 30 arc-seconds of known nearby galaxies as listed in the IRAS PSCz catalogue  and the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (RCBG3) . The IRAS galaxies eliminate local spiral galaxies obeying the far-infrared/radio correlation, and the RCBG3 sources remove radio sources powered by AGN in local elliptical galaxies.

To measure the dipole from the remaining distribution of galaxies, we measure the spherical harmonics of the distribution. Any density field across the sky $`\sigma (\theta ,\varphi )`$ – where $`\theta `$ ($`0\pi `$) and $`\varphi `$ ($`02\pi `$) are ordinary spherical polar co-ordinates – can be expanded as a sum of spherical harmonics $`Y_{l,m}(\theta ,\varphi )`$ with coefficients $`A_{l,m}`$:

$$\sigma (\theta ,\varphi )=\underset{l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{m=l}{\overset{+l}{}}A_{l,m}Y_{l,m}(\theta ,\varphi )$$
(1)
The $`l`$th spherical harmonics produce fluctuations on angular scales $`180^o/l`$ and are described by $`2l+1`$ independent coefficients. A dipole distribution across the sky will produce signal in the three $`l=1`$ spherical harmonic coefficients, but no signal in the others. To estimate the coefficients $`A_{l,m}`$ from $`N`$ discrete objects with positions $`(\theta _i,\varphi _i)`$, we calculate

$$A_{l,m}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}Y_{l,m}^{}(\theta _i,\varphi _i)$$
(2)
We measure the harmonic coefficients $`A_{l,m}`$ of the NVSS galaxy distribution for $`1l3`$ using equation 2 (a total of 15 independent coefficients). We measure the $`l>1`$ coefficients because, as the sky is incomplete (containing blank regions below declination $`40^o`$ and inside Galactic latitude $`15^o`$), higher harmonics are influenced by a dipole distribution. Further, any calibration gradients would (in general) bias all harmonics. Having measured the coefficients, we then determine how well they are fit by a dipole model (with the same blank regions).

A dipole model has three parameters: an amplitude $`\delta `$ and direction described by two angles $`(\theta ,\varphi )`$. We define $`\delta `$ as the total fractional fluctuation in surface density from maximum to minimum. Table 1 displays the best-fitting dipole parameters and errors for a sequence of flux-density thresholds and describes the method used. The dipole model is a good fit ($`\chi _{red}^21`$) down to 15 mJy. Below this level the NVSS data-reduction biases of Figure 1 become significant, producing a sudden increase in $`\chi _{red}^2`$ and a significant shift in the best-fitting $`\theta `$ (but not $`\varphi `$), anticipated because the biases are declination-dependent. Figure 2 illustrates the best-fitting direction $`(\theta ,\varphi )`$ of the measured dipole at intensity levels above 20 mJy. The direction does not change with flux-density threshold and is in good agreement with the direction of the CMB velocity dipole $`\theta =97.2\pm 0.1^o,\varphi =168.0\pm 0.1^o`$ . The local clustering dipole typically contributes $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta =0.5\times 10^2`$ to the total amplitude.

Ellis & Baldwin  derived the expected amplitude of the velocity dipole assuming radio sources to have identical power-law spectra $`S(\nu )\nu ^\alpha `$ and an integral source-count $`N(>S)S^x`$:

$$\delta _{pred}=2(v/c)[\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}+x(1+\alpha )]$$
(3)
where $`v`$ is the peculiar velocity of our reference frame with respect to the frame in which the radio source population is (assumed) isotropic, and $`c`$ is the speed of light. CMB dipole measurements imply $`v=370\pm 2`$ km s-1 . Taking $`x1`$ and a mean spectral index $`\alpha 0.75`$, we find $`\delta _{pred}=0.9\times 10^2`$. Note that $`v`$ is the peculiar velocity of the Sun in the CMB frame. (The speed of the Earth around the Sun is $`30`$ km s-1 and can be neglected). Our observed values of $`\delta `$ are on average $`1.5\sigma `$ away from this prediction.

We can be confident that our measured surface-density dipole is due to velocity rather than residual local clustering. Almost all the contribution to the local clustering dipole comes from redshifts $`z<0.03`$ – analysis of the IRAS PSCz dipole  shows that the dipole amplitude has almost converged by $`100h^1`$ Mpc. This result is verified in Figure 3, where we plot the strength of the dipole contribution in redshift shells from the PSCz and RCBG3 catalogues. Furthermore, these catalogues contain almost all the radio galaxies to $`z=0.03`$. This is demonstrated by Figure 4 which gives magnitude-redshift plots for PSCz and RCBG3 galaxies matched with NVSS sources. The distributions make it clear that we are missing a negligible fraction of radio galaxies at $`z<0.03`$.

It is hard to conceive of any other effect that can produce our measured dipole. A signal originating from instrumental or data reduction effects would tend to skew the dipole direction towards the north or south poles, as such effects only depend on declination. However, our measured dipole points to declination $`0^o`$ in agreement with the CMB dipole. Moreover instrumental effects would (in general) produce signal in higher (non-dipole) harmonics, but the best-fit dipole model is a good fit with $`\chi _{red}^21`$. Furthermore, the dipole amplitude is extremely unlikely to be a chance fluctuation of an isotropic universe. For example, for a flux-density threshold of 20 mJy, the isotropic universe ($`\delta =0`$) model fits the observed harmonics with $`\chi _{red}^2=2.28`$, rejecting this model at a confidence level of $`>99.5`$ per cent. It is difficult to see what else could produce the dipole, particularly one pointing (within the $`1\sigma `$ direction contours) in the CMB dipole direction. For the 20 mJy measurement, the $`1\sigma `$ confidence region for the direction encompasses just 5 per cent of the sky.

The alignment of our measured velocity dipole with the CMB dipole supports the predictions of fundamental assumptions about the cosmological origin of the CMB, the lynchpin of much present-day observational cosmology. This result indicates that objects at $`z1`$ (such as distant radio galaxies) can define the cosmic frame and have an isotropic distribution in that frame.

We are grateful to Lance Miller and Steve Rawlings for comments on early drafts. We also acknowledge the referee Jim Condon for detailed and helpful criticism.

Table 1: The dipole amplitude and direction that best fit the galaxy distribution. The Table lists the best-fitting dipole model parameters $`(\delta ,\theta ,\varphi )`$ together with $`1\sigma `$ errors for NVSS sources above various flux thresholds, after local sources have been removed. $`\delta `$ is expressed as a percentage. $`N`$ is the number of sources left in the unmasked survey region and the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ values of the fit to the observed survey harmonics are also shown. The expected (CMB) velocity dipole parameters are $`\delta =0.9\times 10^2`$, $`\varphi =168^o`$, $`\theta =97^o`$. To find the best-fitting parameters, we vary the values of $`(\delta ,\theta ,\varphi )`$ over a grid. For each set of parameters, we randomly generate a dipole galaxy distribution and mask it in the same way as the real data (below declination $`40^o`$ and inside Galactic latitude $`15^o`$). We then measure the $`A_{l,m}`$’s of this test distribution, averaging over 100 realizations to increase accuracy. We hence obtain a mean and standard deviation for each $`A_{l,m}`$ in the set corresponding to the parameters $`(\delta ,\theta ,\varphi )`$. We can then compute the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic with the observed survey harmonics. The best-fitting dipole parameters are found by minimizing $`\chi ^2`$; this minimum value (goodness-of-fit) indicates how well the dipole model fits the data. The errors on the best-fitting parameters are properly described by $`\chi ^2`$ contours in the parameter space. For example, with all three parameters varying, the $`1\sigma `$ and $`2\sigma `$ error regions are enclosed by $`\chi ^2`$ increases of 3.53 and 8.02.

Figure 1: The NVSS suffers from systematic fluctuations in source surface density across the sky at low flux-densities. Here we plot the surface density as a function of declination, in declination bins of width $`10^o`$, for flux-density thresholds 3.5 mJy (filled circles) and 15 mJy (open circles). The declination range of each array configuration (D or DnC) is shown. The 2 per cent fluctuations present at the completeness limit 3.5 mJy largely disappear when the threshold is raised to 15 mJy. These biases result from the sparse uv-plane sampling of the NVSS (W. Cotton, private communication, 2001). The fluctuations are a function of declination only, as the NVSS beam and analysis procedure have no way of knowing the right ascension of objects. The NVSS was carried out with the Very Large Array at 1.4 GHz in D and DnC configurations during 1993 to 1996. The survey covers all the sky north of declination $`40^o`$; the catalogue contains $`1.8\times 10^6`$ sources and is claimed to be $`99`$ per cent complete at integrated flux density 3.5 mJy. The Full-Width Half-Maximum of the synthesized beam is $`45`$ arcsec. Prior to analysis, we masked 22 regions around bright and extended radio galaxies; these can appear in the NVSS catalogue as clusters of many point sources by virtue of the source-finding algorithm. These regions constitute a tiny fraction of the surveyed area and were filled with random distributions of sources at the mean surface density of the rest of the survey. The large NVSS beam means that only a small fraction of galaxies are resolved into double sources – this is important because a large number of doubles would increase the source surface density and hence the observed dipole amplitude.

Figure 2: Our measured dipole direction agrees with that of the CMB dipole. Here we plot $`1\sigma `$ and $`2\sigma `$ contours for the best-fitting dipole direction for flux-density thresholds of 40 mJy (dotted), 30 mJy (dashed) and 20 mJy (solid). These contours are defined by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=2.30`$ and $`6.17`$ (with $`\theta `$ and $`\varphi `$ varying and $`\delta `$ fixed at its best-fitting value). The filled circle illustrates the direction of the CMB dipole, which is consistent with our measurements.

Figure 3: The clustering dipole originates from redshifts $`z<0.03`$. Here we measure the strength of the clustering dipole in the PSCz and RCBG3 catalogues as a function of redshift. At each redshift $`z`$, we average over a redshift range $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=0.01`$ and thus the plot starts at $`z=0.005`$. For each redshift shell, the $`y`$-axis plots $`\sqrt{D^2N}`$ where $`D=|_i\widehat{r}_i|`$ for the galaxies in that shell . This expression is proportional to the imbalance in the total number of sources across the sky, the quantity to which the total dipole amplitude is sensitive. The peak in RCBG3 at $`z=0.025`$ is due to the Coma cluster. Hence it seems that once we get past Coma, the local clustering dipole is negligible.

Figure 4: The PSCz and RCBG3 catalogues include almost all nearby NVSS galaxies. Here we present magnitude-redshift scatter plots for PSCz galaxies (left-hand panel) and RCBG3 galaxies (right-hand panel) matched with NVSS sources brighter than 15 mJy. The horizontal lines are the stated completeness limits for the two catalogues. Clearly the bulk of the radio galaxies lie safely above the completeness limits up to at least $`z=0.03`$. Although the number of RCBG3 matches starts to die away at $`z0.025`$, this is likely due to the $`N(z)`$ of the radio population rather than any serious incompleteness in RCBG3 – doing the same plot for all RCBG3 galaxies shows no such fall-off until the magnitude threshold is reached.