Information content in mean pairwise velocity and mean relative velocity between pairs in a triplet

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the mean relative velocities in triplets of cosmic structures provide a highly precise new probe for constraining cosmological parameters, especially neutrino mass, surpassing traditional pairwise velocity methods.

Contribution

The study introduces the three-point mean relative velocity as a novel cosmological probe and quantifies its superior constraining power using extensive simulations.

Findings

Achieves better than 4-5% accuracy in analytical predictions for triplet velocities.

Constrains neutrino mass with a 1σ uncertainty of 0.065 eV, 13 times better than pairwise velocities.

Provides significantly improved constraints on multiple cosmological parameters.

Abstract

Velocity field provides a complementary avenue to constrain cosmological information, either through the peculiar velocity surveys or the kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect. One of the commonly used statistics is the mean radial pairwise velocity. Here, we consider the three-point mean relative velocity, i.e. the mean relative velocities between pairs in a triplet. Using halo catalogs from the Quijote suite of N-body simulations, we first showcase how the analytical prediction for the mean relative velocities between pairs in a triplet achieve better than 4-5% accuracy using standard perturbation theory at leading order for triangular configurations with a minimum separation of $r \geq 50\ h^{-1}$Mpc. Furthermore, we present the three-point relative velocity as a novel probe of neutrino mass estimation. We explore the full cosmological information content of the halo mean pairwise velocities, and the mean relative velocities between halo pairs in a triplet. We undertake this through the Fisher-matrix formalism using 22,000 simulations from the Quijote suite, and considering all triangular configurations with a minimum and a maximum separation of $20\ h^{-1}$Mpc and $120\ h^{-1}$Mpc, respectively. We find that the mean relative velocities in a triplet allows a 1$\sigma$ neutrino mass ($M_\nu$) constraint of 0.065 eV, that is roughly 13 times better than the mean pairwise velocity constraint (0.877 eV). This information gain is not limited only to neutrino mass, but extends to other cosmological parameters: $\Omega_{\mathrm{m}}$, $\Omega_{\mathrm{b}}$, $h$, $n_{\mathrm{s}}$ and $\sigma_{8}$ achieving a gain of 8.9, 11.8, 15.5, 20.9 and 10.9 times respectively. These results illustrate the possibility of exploiting the mean three-point relative velocities for constraining the cosmological parameters accurately from future cosmic microwave background experiments and peculiar velocity surveys.