DarkAI: Reconstructing the density, velocity and tidal field of dark matter from a DESI-like bright galaxy sample

TL;DR

This paper introduces a machine learning framework using a UNet CNN to accurately reconstruct dark matter's density, velocity, and tidal fields from galaxy survey data, accounting for observational effects.

Contribution

The work presents a novel CNN-based method that effectively reconstructs dark matter fields from realistic galaxy survey mocks, including RSD and selection effects, with high accuracy.

Findings

High correlation (>0.985) between reconstructed and true density fields.

Accurate velocity field capturing large-scale flows and small-scale turbulence.

Bias-free tidal field reconstruction of cosmic web features.

Abstract

Reconstructing the mass density, velocity, and tidal (MTV) fields of dark matter from galaxy surveys is essential for advancing our understanding of the LSS of the Universe. In this work, we present a machine learning-based framework using a UNet convolutional neural network to reconstruct the MTV fields from mock samples of the DESI bright galaxy survey within the redshift range $0.1 < z < 0.4$. Our approach accounts for realistic observational effects, including geometric selection, flux-limited data, and redshift space distortion (RSD) effects, thereby improving the fidelity of the reconstructed fields. Testing on mock galaxy catalogs generated from the Jiutian N-body simulation, our method achieves significant accuracy level. The reconstructed density field exhibits strong consistency with the true field, effectively eliminating most RSD effects and achieving a cross-correlation power spectrum coefficient greater than 0.985 on scales with $k < 0.1 \, h \, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$. The velocity field reconstruction accurately captures large-scale coherent flows and small-scale turbulent features, exhibiting slopes of grid-to-grid relationships close to unity and scatter below $\sim$100 $\mathrm{km} \, \mathrm{s}^{-1}$. Additionally, the tidal field is reconstructed without bias, successfully recovering the features of the large-scale cosmic web, including clusters, filaments, sheets, and voids. Our results confirm that the proposed framework effectively captures the large-scale distribution and dynamics of dark matter while addressing key systematic challenges. These advancements provide a reliable and robust tool for analyzing current and future galaxy surveys, paving the way for new insights into cosmic structure formation and evolution.