Search

We explore correlations between the orientations of small galaxy groups, or "multiplets", and the large-scale gravitational tidal field. Using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Y1 survey, we detect the intrinsic alignment (IA) of multiplets to the galaxy-traced matter field out to separations of 100 Mpc/h. Unlike traditional IA measurements of individual galaxies, this estimator is not limited by imaging of galaxy shapes and allows for direct IA detection beyond redshift z = 1. Multiplet alignment is a form of higher-order clustering, for which the scale-dependence traces the underlying tidal field and amplitude is a result of small-scale (< 1 Mpc/h) dynamics. Within samples of bright galaxies (BGS), luminous red galaxies (LRG) and emission-line galaxies (ELG), we find similar scale-dependence regardless of intrinsic luminosity or colour. This is promising for measuring tidal alignment in galaxy samples that typically display no intrinsic alignment. DESI's LRG mock galaxy catalogues created from the AbacusSummit N-body simulations produce a similar alignment signal, though with a 33% lower amplitude at all scales. An analytic model using a non-linear power spectrum (NLA) only matches the signal down to 20 Mpc/h. Our detection demonstrates that galaxy clustering in the non-linear regime of structure formation preserves an interpretable memory of the large-scale tidal field. Multiplet alignment complements traditional two-point measurements by retaining directional information imprinted by tidal forces, and contains additional line-of-sight information compared to weak lensing. This is a more effective estimator than the alignment of individual galaxies in dense, blue, or faint galaxy samples., Comment: For an accessible summary of this paper, see https://cmlamman.github.io/doc/multipletIA_summary.pdf

We present ~ 126 new spectroscopically identified members of the GD-1 tidal stream obtained with the 5000-fiber Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We confirm the existence of a ``cocoon'' which is broad (FWHM~2.932deg~460pc) and kinematically hot (velocity dispersion, sigma~5-8km/s) component that surrounds a narrower (FWHM~0.353deg~55pc) and colder (sigma~ 2.2-2.6km/s) thin stream component (based on a median per star velocity precision of 2.7km/s). The cocoon extends over at least a ~ 20deg segment of the stream observed by DESI. The thin and cocoon components have similar mean values of [Fe/H]: -2.54+/- 0.04dex and -2.45+/-0.06dex suggestive of a common origin. The data are consistent with the following scenarios for the origin of the cocoon. The progenitor of the GD-1 stream was an accreted globular cluster (GC) and: (a) the cocoon was produced by pre-accretion tidal stripping of the GC while it was still inside its parent dwarf galaxy; (b) the cocoon is debris from the parent dwarf galaxy; (c) an initially thin GC tidal stream was heated by impacts from dark subhalos in the Milky Way; (d) an initially thin GC stream was heated by a massive Sagittarius dwarf galaxy; or a combination of some these. In the first two cases the velocity dispersion and mean metallicity are consistent with the parent dwarf galaxy having a halo mass of ~0^9\msun. Future DESI spectroscopy and detailed modeling may enable us to distinguish between these possible origins., Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 23 pages, 13 figures 4 tables

We present the stellar value-added catalogue based on the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Early Data Release. The catalogue contains radial velocity and stellar parameter measurements for $\simeq$ 400,000 unique stars observed during commissioning and survey validation by DESI. These observations were made under conditions similar to the Milky Way Survey (MWS) currently carried out by DESI but also include multiple specially targeted fields, such as those containing well-studied dwarf galaxies and stellar streams. The majority of observed stars have $16

We infer the growth of large scale structure over the redshift range $0.4\lesssim z \lesssim 1$ from the cross-correlation of spectroscopically calibrated Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) selected from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) legacy imaging survey with CMB lensing maps reconstructed from the latest Planck and ACT data. We adopt a hybrid effective field theory (HEFT) model that robustly regulates the cosmological information obtainable from smaller scales, such that our cosmological constraints are reliably derived from the (predominantly) linear regime. We perform an extensive set of bandpower- and parameter-level systematics checks to ensure the robustness of our results and to characterize the uniformity of the LRG sample. We demonstrate that our results are stable to a wide range of modeling assumptions, finding excellent agreement with a linear theory analysis performed on a restricted range of scales. From a tomographic analysis of the four LRG photometric redshift bins we find that the rate of structure growth is consistent with $\Lambda$CDM with an overall amplitude that is $\simeq5-7\%$ lower than predicted by primary CMB measurements with modest $(\sim2\sigma)$ statistical significance. From the combined analysis of all four bins and their cross-correlations with Planck we obtain $S_8 = 0.765\pm0.023$, which is less discrepant with primary CMB measurements than previous DESI LRG cross Planck CMB lensing results. From the cross-correlation with ACT we obtain $S_8 = 0.790^{+0.024}_{-0.027}$, while when jointly analyzing Planck and ACT we find $S_8 = 0.775^{+0.019}_{-0.022}$ from our data alone and $\sigma_8 = 0.772^{+0.020}_{-0.023}$ with the addition of BAO data. These constraints are consistent with the latest Planck primary CMB analyses at the $\simeq 1.6-2.2\sigma$ level, and are in excellent agreement with galaxy lensing surveys., Comment: 60 pages, 26 figures, comments welcome

We present a high-significance cross-correlation of CMB lensing maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) with spectroscopically calibrated luminous red galaxies (LRGs) from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We detect this cross-correlation at a significance of 38$\sigma$; combining our measurement with the Planck Public Release 4 (PR4) lensing map, we detect the cross-correlation at 50$\sigma$. Fitting this jointly with the galaxy auto-correlation power spectrum to break the galaxy bias degeneracy with $\sigma_8$, we perform a tomographic analysis in four LRG redshift bins spanning $0.4 \le z \le 1.0$ to constrain the amplitude of matter density fluctuations through the parameter combination $S_8^\times = \sigma_8 \left(\Omega_m / 0.3\right)^{0.4}$. Prior to unblinding, we confirm with extragalactic simulations that foreground biases are negligible and carry out a comprehensive suite of null and consistency tests. Using a hybrid effective field theory (HEFT) model that allows scales as small as $k_{\rm max}=0.6$ $h/{\rm Mpc}$, we obtain a 3.3% constraint on $S_8^\times = \sigma_8 \left(\Omega_m / 0.3\right)^{0.4} = 0.792^{+0.024}_{-0.028}$ from ACT data, as well as constraints on $S_8^\times(z)$ that probe structure formation over cosmic time. Our result is consistent with the early-universe extrapolation from primary CMB anisotropies measured by Planck PR4 within 1.2$\sigma$. Jointly fitting ACT and Planck lensing cross-correlations we obtain a 2.7% constraint of $S_8^\times = 0.776^{+0.019}_{-0.021}$, which is consistent with the Planck early-universe extrapolation within 2.1$\sigma$, with the lowest redshift bin showing the largest difference in mean. The latter may motivate further CMB lensing tomography analyses at $z<0.6$ to assess the impact of potential systematics or the consistency of the $\Lambda$CDM model over cosmic time., Comment: Prepared for submission to JCAP (47 pages, 13 figures)

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) uses more than 2.4 million Emission Line Galaxies (ELGs) for 3D large-scale structure (LSS) analyses in its Data Release 1 (DR1). Such large statistics enable thorough research on systematic uncertainties. In this study, we focus on spectroscopic systematics of ELGs. The redshift success rate ($f_{\rm goodz}$) is the relative fraction of secure redshifts among all measurements. It depends on observing conditions, thus introduces non-cosmological variations to the LSS. We, therefore, develop the redshift failure weight ($w_{\rm zfail}$) and a per-fibre correction ($\eta_{\rm zfail}$) to mitigate these dependences. They have minor influences on the galaxy clustering. For ELGs with a secure redshift, there are two subtypes of systematics: 1) catastrophics (large) that only occur in a few samples; 2) redshift uncertainty (small) that exists for all samples. The catastrophics represent 0.26\% of the total DR1 ELGs, composed of the confusion between O\,\textsc{ii} and sky residuals, double objects, total catastrophics and others. We simulate the realistic 0.26\% catastrophics of DR1 ELGs, the hypothetical 1\% catastrophics, and the truncation of the contaminated $1.31

We use the forward modeling pipeline, Obiwan, to study the imaging systematics of the Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) targeted by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We update the Obiwan pipeline, which had previously been developed to simulate the optical images used to target DESI data, to further simulate WISE images in the infrared. This addition makes it possible to simulate the DESI LRGs sample, which utilizes WISE data in the target selection. Deep DESI imaging data combined with a method to account for biases in their shapes is used to define a truth sample of potential LRG targets. We simulate a total of 15 million galaxies to obtain a simulated LRG sample (Obiwan LRGs) that predicts the variations in target density due to imaging properties. We find that the simulations predict the trends with depth observed in the data, including how they depend on the intrinsic brightness of the galaxies. We observe that faint LRGs are the main contributing power of the imaging systematics trend induced by depth. We also find significant trends in the data against Galactic extinction that are not predicted by Obiwan. These trends depend strongly on the particular map of Galactic extinction chosen to test against, implying Large-Scale Structure systematic contamination (e.g. Cosmic-Infrared Background) in the Galactic extinction maps is a likely root cause. We additionally observe that the DESI LRGs sample exhibits a complex dependency on a combination of seeing, depth, and intrinsic galaxy brightness, which is not replicated by Obiwan, suggesting discrepancies between the current simulation settings and the actual observations. The detailed findings we present should be used to guide any observational systematics mitigation treatment for the clustering of the DESI LRG sample., Comment: 46 pages, 26 figures

Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) are promising probes for clustering measurements at high redshift, $z>2$, a region only covered so far by Lyman-$\alpha$ forest measurements. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of selecting LBGs by exploiting the existence of a strong deficit of flux shortward of the Lyman limit, due to various absorption processes along the line of sight. The target selection relies on deep imaging data from the HSC and CLAUDS surveys in the $g,r,z$ and $u$ bands, respectively, with median depths reaching 27 AB in all bands. The selections were validated by several dedicated spectroscopic observation campaigns with DESI. Visual inspection of spectra has enabled us to develop an automated spectroscopic typing and redshift estimation algorithm specific to LBGs. Based on these data and tools, we assess the efficiency and purity of target selections optimised for different purposes. Selections providing a wide redshift coverage retain $57\%$ of the observed targets after spectroscopic confirmation with DESI, and provide an efficiency for LBGs of $83\pm3\%$, for a purity of the selected LBG sample of $90\pm2\%$. This would deliver a confirmed LBG density of $\sim 620$ deg$^{-2}$ in the range $2.3

We present strong constraints on the spacetime variation of the fine-structure constant $\alpha$ using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). In this pilot work, we utilize $\sim110,000$ galaxies with strong and narrow O III $\lambda\lambda$4959,5007 emission lines to measure the relative variation $\Delta\alpha/\alpha$ in space and time. The O III doublet is arguably the best choice for this purpose owing to its wide wavelength separation between the two lines and its strong emission in many galaxies. Our galaxy sample spans a redshift range of $0

The Early Data Release (EDR) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) comprises spectroscopy obtained from 2020 December 14 to 2021 June 10. White dwarfs were targeted by DESI both as calibration sources and as science targets and were selected based on Gaia photometry and astrometry. Here we present the DESI EDR white dwarf catalogue, which includes 2706 spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs of which approximately 1630 (roughly 60 per cent) have been spectroscopically observed for the first time, as well as 66 white dwarf binary systems. We provide spectral classifications for all white dwarfs, and discuss their distribution within the Gaia Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. We provide atmospheric parameters derived from spectroscopic and photometric fits for white dwarfs with pure hydrogen or helium photospheres, a mixture of those two, and white dwarfs displaying carbon features in their spectra. We also discuss the less abundant systems in the sample, such as those with magnetic fields, and cataclysmic variables. The DESI EDR white dwarf sample is significantly less biased than the sample observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is skewed to bluer and therefore hotter white dwarfs, making DESI more complete and suitable for performing statistical studies of white dwarfs., Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures, not including appendix. Submitting to MNRAS. Comments and suggestions welcome

There is overwhelming evidence that white dwarfs host planetary systems; revealed by the presence, disruption, and accretion of planetary bodies. A lower limit on the frequency of white dwarfs that host planetary material has been estimated to be roughly 25-50 per cent; inferred from the ongoing or recent accretion of metals onto both hydrogen-atmosphere and warm helium-atmosphere white dwarfs. Now with the unbiased sample of white dwarfs observed by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey in their Early Data Release (EDR), we have determined the frequency of metal-enrichment around cool-helium atmosphere white dwarfs as 21 $\pm$ 3 per cent using a sample of 234 systems. This value is in good agreement with values determined from previous studies. With the current samples we cannot distinguish whether the frequency of planetary accretion varies with system age or host-star mass, but the DESI data release 1 will contain roughly an order of magnitude more white dwarfs than DESI EDR and will allow these parameters to be investigated., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments and suggestions welcome

Synthetic data sets are used in cosmology to test analysis procedures, to verify that systematic errors are well understood and to demonstrate that measurements are unbiased. In this work we describe the methods used to generate synthetic datasets of Lyman-$\alpha$ quasar spectra aimed for studies with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). In particular, we focus on demonstrating that our simulations reproduces important features of real samples, making them suitable to test the analysis methods to be used in DESI and to place limits on systematic effects on measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). We present a set of mocks that reproduce the statistical properties of the DESI early data set with good agreement. Additionally, we use full survey synthetic data to forecast the BAO scale constraining power with DESI., Comment: 42 pages, 17 figures, 7 tables

We estimate the redshift-dependent, anisotropic clustering signal in DESI's Year 1 Survey created by tidal alignments of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) and a selection-induced galaxy orientation bias. To this end, we measured the correlation between LRG shapes and the tidal field with DESI's Year 1 redshifts, as traced by LRGs and Emission-Line Galaxies (ELGs). We also estimate the galaxy orientation bias of LRGs caused by DESI's aperture-based selection, and find it to increase by a factor of seven between redshifts 0.4 - 1.1 due to redder, fainter galaxies falling closer to DESI's imaging selection cuts. These effects combine to dampen measurements of the quadrupole of the correlation function caused by structure growth on scales of 10 - 80 Mpc/h by about 0.15% for low redshifts (0.4

We search for narrow-line optical emission from dark matter decay by stacking dark-sky spectra from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at the redshift of nearby galaxies from DESI's Bright Galaxy and Luminous Red Galaxy samples. Our search uses regions separated by 5 to 20 arcsecond from the centers of the galaxies, corresponding to an impact parameter of approximately $50\,\rm kpc$. No unidentified spectral line shows up in the search, and we place a line flux limit of $10^{-19}\,\rm{ergs}/\rm{s}/\rm{cm}^{2}/\rm{arcsec}^{2}$ on emissions in the optical band ($3000\lesssim\lambda\lesssim9000 \,\mathring{\rm A}$), which corresponds to $34$ in AB magnitude in a normal broadband detection. This detection limit suggests that the line surface brightness contributed from all dark matter along the line of sight is two orders of magnitude lower than the measured extragalactic background light (EBL), which rules out the possibility that narrow optical-line emission from dark matter decay is a major source of the EBL.

Emission line galaxies (ELGs) are now the preeminent tracers of large-scale structure at z>0.8 due to their high density and strong emission lines, which enable accurate redshift measurements. However, relatively little is known about ELG evolution and the ELG-halo connection, exposing us to potential modeling systematics in cosmology inference using these sources. In this paper, we propose a physical picture of ELGs and improve ELG-halo connection modeling using a variety of observations and simulated galaxy models. We investigate DESI-selected ELGs in COSMOS data, and infer that ELGs are rapidly star-forming galaxies with a large fraction exhibiting disturbed morphology, implying that many of them are likely to be merger-driven starbursts. We further postulate that the tidal interactions from mergers lead to correlated star formation in central-satellite ELG pairs, a phenomenon dubbed "conformity." We argue for the need to include conformity in the ELG-halo connection using galaxy models such as IllustrisTNG, and by combining observations such as the DESI ELG auto-correlation, ELG cross-correlation with Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs), and ELG-cluster cross-correlation. We also explore the origin of conformity using the UniverseMachine model and elucidate the difference between conformity and the well-known galaxy assembly bias effect., Comment: 25 pages, 20 figures, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome

We present two galaxy samples, selected from DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (LS) DR9, with approximately 20,000 square degrees of coverage and spectroscopic redshift distributions designed for cross-correlations such as with CMB lensing, galaxy lensing, and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The first sample is identical to the DESI Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) sample, and the second sample is an extended LRG sample with 2-3 times the DESI LRG density. We present the improved photometric redshifts, tomographic binning and their spectroscopic redshift distributions and imaging systematics weights, and magnification bias coefficients. The catalogs and related data products will be made publicly available. The cosmological constraints using this sample and Planck lensing maps are presented in a companion paper. We also make public the new set of general-purpose photometric redshifts trained using DESI spectroscopic redshifts, which are used in this work, for all galaxies in LS DR9., Comment: Matches the journal version. Associated data files: https://data.desi.lbl.gov/public/papers/c3/lrg_xcorr_2023/. General-purpose photo-z catalogs: https://www.legacysurvey.org/dr9/files/#photo-z-sweeps-9-1-photo-z-sweep-brickmin-brickmax-pz-fits

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, consisting of 5020 robotic fiber positioners and associated systems on the Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, is carrying out a survey to measure the spectra of 40 million galaxies and quasars and produce the largest 3D map of the universe to date. The primary science goal is to use baryon acoustic oscillations to measure the expansion history of the universe and the time evolution of dark energy. A key function of the online control system is to position each fiber on a particular target in the focal plane with an accuracy of 11$\mu$m rms 2-D. This paper describes the set of software programs used to perform this function along with the methods used to validate their performance., Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures

We use angular clustering of luminous red galaxies from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) imaging surveys to constrain the local primordial non-Gaussianity parameter $\fnl$. Our sample comprises over 12 million targets, covering 14,000 square degrees of the sky, with redshifts in the range $0.2< z < 1.35$. We identify Galactic extinction, survey depth, and astronomical seeing as the primary sources of systematic error, and employ linear regression and artificial neural networks to alleviate non-cosmological excess clustering on large scales. Our methods are tested against simulations with and without $\fnl$ and systematics, showing superior performance of the neural network treatment. The neural network with a set of nine imaging property maps passes our systematic null test criteria, and is chosen as the fiducial treatment. Assuming the universality relation, we find $\fnl = 34^{+24(+50)}_{-44(-73)}$ at 68\%(95\%) confidence. We apply a series of robustness tests (e.g., cuts on imaging, declination, or scales used) that show consistency in the obtained constraints. We study how the regression method biases the measured angular power-spectrum and degrades the $\fnl$ constraining power. The use of the nine maps more than doubles the uncertainty compared to using only the three primary maps in the regression. Our results thus motivate the development of more efficient methods that avoid over-correction, protect large-scale clustering information, and preserve constraining power. Additionally, our results encourage further studies of $\fnl$ with DESI spectroscopic samples, where the inclusion of 3D clustering modes should help separate imaging systematics and lessen the degradation in the $\fnl$ uncertainty., Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, 7 tables (Appendix excluded). Published in MNRAS

We present an extended validation of semi-analytical, semi-empirical covariance matrices for the two-point correlation function (2PCF) on simulated catalogs representative of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRG) data collected during the initial two months of operations of the Stage-IV ground-based Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We run the pipeline on multiple effective Zel'dovich (EZ) mock galaxy catalogs with the corresponding cuts applied and compare the results with the mock sample covariance to assess the accuracy and its fluctuations. We propose an extension of the previously developed formalism for catalogs processed with standard reconstruction algorithms. We consider methods for comparing covariance matrices in detail, highlighting their interpretation and statistical properties caused by sample variance, in particular, nontrivial expectation values of certain metrics even when the external covariance estimate is perfect. With improved mocks and validation techniques, we confirm a good agreement between our predictions and sample covariance. This allows one to generate covariance matrices for comparable datasets without the need to create numerous mock galaxy catalogs with matching clustering, only requiring 2PCF measurements from the data itself. The code used in this paper is publicly available at https://github.com/oliverphilcox/RascalC., Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure. Published in MNRAS. Code available at https://github.com/oliverphilcox/RascalC, table and figure data available at https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7750637

The One-Percent survey of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collected ~ 270k emission line galaxies (ELGs) at 0.8 < z < 1.6. The high completeness of the sample allowed the clustering to be measured down to scales never probed before, 0.04 Mpc/h in rp for the projected 2-point correlation function (2PCF) and 0.17 Mpc/h in galaxy pair separation s for the 2PCF monopole and quadrupole. The most striking feature of the measurements is a strong signal at the smallest scales, below 0.2 Mpc/h in rp and 1 Mpc/h in s. We analyze these data in the halo occupation distribution framework. We consider different distributions for central galaxies, a standard power law for satellites with no condition on the presence of a central galaxy and explore several extensions of these models. For all considered models, the mean halo mass of the sample is found to be log10 ~ 11.9. We obtain a satellite mean occupation function which agrees with physically motivated ELG models only if we introduce central-satellite conformity, meaning that the satellite occupation is conditioned by the presence of central galaxies of the same type. To achieve in addition a good modeling of the clustering between 0.1 and 1 Mpc/h in rp, we allow for ELG positioning outside of the halo virial radius and find 0.5% of ELGs residing in the outskirts of halos. Furthermore, the satellite velocity dispersion inside halos is found to be ~ 30% larger than that of the halo dark matter particles. These are the main findings of our work. We investigate assembly bias as a function of halo concentration, local density or local density anisotropies and observe no significant change in our results. We split the data sample in two redshift bins and report no significant evolution with redshift. Lastly, changing the cosmology in the modeling impacts only slightly our results.

We present the one-dimensional Lyman-$\alpha$ forest power spectrum measurement using the first data provided by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). The data sample comprises $26,330$ quasar spectra, at redshift $z > 2.1$, contained in the DESI Early Data Release and the first two months of the main survey. We employ a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) estimator and compare the resulting power spectrum to an alternative likelihood-based method in a companion paper. We investigate methodological and instrumental contaminants associated to the new DESI instrument, applying techniques similar to previous Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) measurements. We use synthetic data based on log-normal approximation to validate and correct our measurement. We compare our resulting power spectrum with previous SDSS and high-resolution measurements. With relatively small number statistics, we successfully perform the FFT measurement, which is already competitive in terms of the scale range. At the end of the DESI survey, we expect a five times larger Lyman-$\alpha$ forest sample than SDSS, providing an unprecedented precise one-dimensional power spectrum measurement., Comment: 23 pages, 23 figures, Journal version

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is currently measuring the spectra of 40\,million galaxies and quasars, the largest such survey ever made to probe the nature of cosmological dark energy. The 4-meter Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory has been adapted for DESI, including the construction of a 3.2-degree diameter prime focus corrector that focuses astronomical light onto a 0.8-meter diameter focal surface with excellent image quality over the DESI bandpass of 360-980nm. The wide-field corrector includes six lenses, as large as 1.1-meters in diameter and as heavy as 237\,kilograms, including two counter-rotating wedged lenses that correct for atmospheric dispersion over Zenith angles from 0 to 60 degrees. The lenses, cells, and barrel assembly all meet precise alignment tolerances on the order of tens of microns. The barrel alignment is maintained throughout a range of observing angles and temperature excursions in the Mayall dome by use of a hexapod, which is itself supported by a new cage, ring, and truss structure. In this paper we describe the design, fabrication, and performance of the new corrector and associated structure, focusing on how they meet DESI requirements. In particular we describe the prescription and specifications of the lenses, design choices and error budgeting of the barrel assembly, stray light mitigations, and integration and test at the Mayall telescope. We conclude with some validation highlights that demonstrate the successful corrector on-sky performance, and list some lessons learned during the multi-year fabrication phase., Comment: 68 pages, 56 figures, 22 tables. Submitted to the Astronomical Journal

Millions of quasar spectra will be collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), leading to a four-fold increase in the number of known quasars. High accuracy quasar classification is essential to tighten constraints on cosmological parameters measured at the highest redshifts DESI observes ($z>2.0$). We present the spectral templates for identification and redshift estimation of quasars in the DESI Year 1 data release. The quasar templates are comprised of two quasar eigenspectra sets, trained on spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The sets are specialized to reconstruct quasar spectral variation observed over separate yet overlapping redshift ranges and, together, are capable of identifying DESI quasars from $0.05 < z <7.0$. The new quasar templates show significant improvement over the previous DESI quasar templates regarding catastrophic failure rates, redshift precision and accuracy, quasar completeness, and the contamination fraction in the final quasar sample., Comment: to be published in Astronomical Journal; 21 pages, 8 figures

We detect the cross-correlation between 2.7 million DESI quasar targets across 14,700 deg$^2$ (180 quasars deg$^{-2}$) and Planck 2018 CMB lensing at $\sim$30$\sigma$. We use the cross-correlation on very large scales to constrain local primordial non-Gaussianity via the scale dependence of quasar bias. The DESI quasar targets lie at an effective redshift of 1.51 and are separated into four imaging regions of varying depth and image quality. We select quasar targets from Legacy Survey DR9 imaging, apply additional flux and photometric redshift cuts to improve the purity and reduce the fraction of unclassified redshifts, and use early DESI spectroscopy of 194,000 quasar targets to determine their redshift distribution and stellar contamination fraction (2.6%). Due to significant excess large-scale power in the quasar autocorrelation, we apply weights to mitigate contamination from imaging systematics such as depth, extinction, and stellar density. We use realistic contaminated mocks to determine the greatest number of systematic modes that we can fit, before we are biased by overfitting and spuriously remove real power. We find that linear regression with one to seven imaging templates removed per region accurately recovers the input cross-power, $f_{\textrm{NL}}$ and linear bias. As in previous analyses, our $f_{\textrm{NL}}$ constraint depends on the linear primordial non-Gaussianity bias parameter, $b_{\phi} = 2(b - p)\delta_c$ assuming universality of the halo mass function. We measure $f_{\textrm{NL}} = -26^{+45}_{-40}$ with $p=1.6$ $(f_{\textrm{NL}} = -18^{+29}_{-27}$ with $p=1.0$), and find that this result is robust under several systematics tests. Future spectroscopic quasar cross-correlations with Planck lensing lensing can tighten the $f_{\textrm{NL}}$ constraints by a factor of 2 if they can remove the excess power on large scales in the quasar auto power spectrum., Comment: 57 pages, 25 figures, updated to match accepted version

We report the first results of a high-redshift ($z$ >~ 5) quasar survey using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). As a DESI secondary target program, this survey is designed to carry out a systematic search and investigation of quasars at $z$ >~ 5, up to redshift 6.8. The target selection is based on the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (the Legacy Surveys) DR9 photometry, combined with the Pan-STARRS1 data and $J$-band photometry from public surveys. A first quasar sample has been constructed from the DESI Survey Validation 3 (SV3) and first-year observations until May 2022. This sample includes more than 400 new quasars at redshift 4.7 <= $z$ < 6.6, down to 21.5 magnitude in the $z$ band, discovered from 35% of the entire target sample. Remarkably, there are 220 new quasars identified at $z$ >= 5, more than one third of existing quasars previously published at this redshift. The observations so far result in an average success rate of 23% at $z$ > 4.7. The current spectral dataset has already allowed analysis of interesting individual objects (e.g., quasars with damped Ly$\alpha$ absorbers and broad absorption line features), and statistical analysis will follow the survey's completion. A set of science projects will be carried out leveraging this program, including quasar luminosity function, quasar clustering, intergalactic medium, quasar spectral properties, intervening absorbers, and properties of early supermassive black holes. Additionally, a sample of 38 new quasars at $z$ ~ 3.8-5.7 discovered from a pilot survey in the DESI SV1 is also published in this paper., Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures, and 2 tables; Published in ApJS

We introduce the DESI LOW-Z Secondary Target Survey, which combines the wide-area capabilities of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) with an efficient, low-redshift target selection method. Our selection consists of a set of color and surface brightness cuts, combined with modern machine learning methods, to target low-redshift dwarf galaxies ($z$ < 0.03) between $19 < r < 21$ with high completeness. We employ a convolutional neural network (CNN) to select high-priority targets. The LOW-Z survey has already obtained over 22,000 redshifts of dwarf galaxies (M$_* < 10^9$ M$_\odot$), comparable to the number of dwarf galaxies discovered in SDSS-DR8 and GAMA. As a spare fiber survey, LOW-Z currently receives fiber allocation for just ~50% of its targets. However, we estimate that our selection is highly complete: for galaxies at $z < 0.03$ within our magnitude limits, we achieve better than 95% completeness with ~1% efficiency using catalog-level photometric cuts. We also demonstrate that our CNN selections $z<0.03$ galaxies from the photometric cuts subsample at least ten times more efficiently while maintaining high completeness. The full five-year DESI program will expand the LOW-Z sample, densely mapping the low-redshift Universe, providing an unprecedented sample of dwarf galaxies, and providing critical information about how to pursue effective and efficient low-redshift surveys., Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, data to reproduce figures: https://zenodo.org/record/7422591

We describe the spectroscopic data processing pipeline of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is conducting a redshift survey of about 40 million galaxies and quasars using a purpose-built instrument on the 4-m Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The main goal of DESI is to measure with unprecedented precision the expansion history of the Universe with the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation technique and the growth rate of structure with Redshift Space Distortions. Ten spectrographs with three cameras each disperse the light from 5000 fibers onto 30 CCDs, covering the near UV to near infrared (3600 to 9800 Angstrom) with a spectral resolution ranging from 2000 to 5000. The DESI data pipeline generates wavelength- and flux-calibrated spectra of all the targets, along with spectroscopic classifications and redshift measurements. Fully processed data from each night are typically available to the DESI collaboration the following morning. We give details about the pipeline's algorithms, and provide performance results on the stability of the optics, the quality of the sky background subtraction, and the precision and accuracy of the instrumental calibration. This pipeline has been used to process the DESI Survey Validation data set, and has exceeded the project's requirements for redshift performance, with high efficiency and a purity greater than 99 percent for all target classes., Comment: AJ, revised version, 55 pages, 55 figures, 4 tables

In this white paper, we present the MegaMapper concept. The MegaMapper is a proposed ground-based experiment to measure Inflation parameters and Dark Energy from galaxy redshifts at $2

We measure the tidal alignment of the major axes of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the Legacy Imaging Survey and use it to infer the artificial redshift-space distortion signature that will arise from an orientation-dependent, surface-brightness selection in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. Using photometric redshifts to down-weight the shape-density correlations due to weak lensing, we measure the intrinsic tidal alignment of LRGs. Separately, we estimate the net polarization of LRG orientations from DESI's fiber-magnitude target selection to be of order 10^-2 along the line of sight. Using these measurements and a linear tidal model, we forecast a 0.5% fractional decrease on the quadrupole of the 2-point correlation function for projected separations of 40-80 Mpc/h. We also use a halo catalog from the Abacus Summit cosmological simulation suite to reproduce this false quadrupole., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. For an accessible summary of this paper, see https://cmlamman.github.io/doc/fakeRSD_summary.pdf

In this white paper, we present an experimental road map for spectroscopic experiments beyond DESI. DESI will be a transformative cosmological survey in the 2020s, mapping 40 million galaxies and quasars and capturing a significant fraction of the available linear modes up to z=1.2. DESI-II will pilot observations of galaxies both at much higher densities and extending to higher redshifts. A Stage-5 experiment would build out those high-density and high-redshift observations, mapping hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in three dimensions, to address the problems of inflation, dark energy, light relativistic species, and dark matter. These spectroscopic data will also complement the next generation of weak lensing, line intensity mapping and CMB experiments and allow them to reach their full potential., Comment: Contribution to Snowmass 2021

We present DESI observations of the inner halo of M31, which reveal the kinematics of a recent merger - a galactic immigration event - in exquisite detail. Of the 11,416 sources studied in 3.75 hour of on-sky exposure time, 7,438 are M31 sources with well measured radial velocities. The observations reveal intricate coherent kinematic structure in the positions and velocities of individual stars: streams, wedges, and chevrons. While hints of coherent structures have been previously detected in M31, this is the first time they have been seen with such detail and clarity in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way. We find clear kinematic evidence for shell structures in the Giant Stellar Stream, the Northeast Shelf and Western Shelf regions. The kinematics are remarkably similar to the predictions of dynamical models constructed to explain the spatial morphology of the inner halo. The results are consistent with the interpretation that much of the substructure in the inner halo of M31 is produced by a single galactic immigration event 1 - 2 Gyr ago. Significant numbers of metal-rich stars ([Fe/H]$>-0.5$) are present in all of the detected substructures, suggesting that the immigrating galaxy had an extended star formation history. We also investigate the ability of the shells and Giant Stellar Stream to constrain the gravitational potential of M31, and estimate the mass within a projected radius of 125 kpc to be ${\rm log_{10}}\, M_{\rm NFW}(<125\,{\rm kpc})/M_\odot = 11.80_{-0.10}^{+0.12}$. The results herald a new era in our ability to study stars on a galactic scale and the immigration histories of galaxies., Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures, 8 tables; Astrophysical Journal in press; Data at https://zenodo.org/record/6977494

In 2021 May, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) began a 5 yr survey of approximately 50 million total extragalactic and Galactic targets. The primary DESI dark-time targets are emission line galaxies (ELGs), luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and quasars (QSOs). In bright time, DESI will focus on two surveys known as the Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) and the Milky Way Survey (MWS). DESI also observes a selection of "secondary" targets for bespoke science goals. This paper gives an overview of the publicly available pipeline (desitarget) used to process targets for DESI observations. Highlights include details of the different DESI survey targeting phases, the targeting ID (TARGETID) used to define unique targets, the bitmasks used to indicate a particular type of target, the data model and structure of DESI targeting files, and examples of how to access and use the desitarget code base. This paper will also describe "supporting" DESI target classes, such as standard stars, sky locations, and random catalogs that mimic the angular selection function of DESI targets. The DESI target selection pipeline is complex and sizable; this paper attempts to summarize the most salient information required to understand and work with DESI targeting data., Comment: AJ, accepted, 27 pages, 4 figures, 10 tables, one of a suite of 8 papers detailing targeting for DESI. Minor textual updates to better match the final, accepted version. Also added two missing co-authors

A key component of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey validation (SV) is a detailed visual inspection (VI) of the optical spectroscopic data to quantify key survey metrics. In this paper we present results from VI of the quasar survey using deep coadded SV spectra. We show that the majority (~70%) of the main-survey targets are spectroscopically confirmed as quasars, with ~16% galaxies, ~6% stars, and ~8% low-quality spectra lacking reliable features. A non-negligible fraction of the quasars are misidentified by the standard spectroscopic pipeline but we show that the majority can be recovered using post-pipeline "afterburner" quasar-identification approaches. We combine these "afterburners" with our standard pipeline to create a modified pipeline to improve the overall quasar yield. At the depth of the main DESI survey both pipelines achieve a good-redshift purity (reliable redshifts measured within 3000 km/s) of ~99%; however, the modified pipeline recovers ~94% of the visually inspected quasars, as compared to ~86% from the standard pipeline. We demonstrate that both pipelines achieve an median redshift precision and accuracy of ~100 km/s and ~70 km/s, respectively. We constructed composite spectra to investigate why some quasars are missed by the standard spectroscopic pipeline and find that they are more host-galaxy dominated (i.e., distant analogs of "Seyfert galaxies") and/or dust reddened than the standard-pipeline quasars. We also show example spectra to demonstrate the overall diversity of the DESI quasar sample and provide strong-lensing candidates where two targets contribute to a single spectrum., Comment: Astronomical journal (in press). 26 pages, 15 figures, 9 tables, one of a suite of 8 papers detailing targeting for DESI. Figure data available from Zenodo (see paper for details)

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey has obtained a set of spectroscopic measurements of galaxies to validate the final survey design and target selections. To assist in these tasks, we visually inspect (VI) DESI spectra of approximately 2,500 bright galaxies, 3,500 luminous red galaxies (LRGs), and 10,000 emission line galaxies (ELGs), to obtain robust redshift identifications. We then utilize the VI redshift information to characterize the performance of the DESI operation. Based on the VI catalogs, our results show that the final survey design yields samples of bright galaxies, LRGs, and ELGs with purity greater than $99\%$. Moreover, we demonstrate that the precision of the redshift measurements is approximately 10 km/s for bright galaxies and ELGs and approximately 40 km/s for LRGs. The average redshift accuracy is within 10 km/s for the three types of galaxies. The VI process also helps improve the quality of the DESI data by identifying spurious spectral features introduced by the pipeline. Finally, we show examples of unexpected real astronomical objects, such as Ly$\alpha$ emitters and strong lensing candidates, identified by VI. These results demonstrate the importance and utility of visually inspecting data from incoming and upcoming surveys, especially during their early operation phases., Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables, one of a suite of 8 papers detailing targeting for DESI. ApJ accepted version with minor textual updates

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is carrying out a 5-year survey that aims to measure the redshifts of tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, including 8 million luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the redshift range of $0.4

We describe the Milky Way Survey (MWS) that will be undertaken with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Mayall 4m telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Over the next 5 yr DESI MWS will observe approximately seven million stars at Galactic latitudes |b|>20 degrees, with an inclusive target selection scheme focused on the thick disk and stellar halo. MWS will also include several high-completeness samples of rare stellar types, including white dwarfs, low-mass stars within 100pc of the Sun, and horizontal branch stars. We summarize the potential of DESI to advance understanding of Galactic structure and stellar evolution. We introduce the final definitions of the main MWS target classes and estimate the number of stars in each class that will be observed. We describe our pipelines for deriving radial velocities, atmospheric parameters, and chemical abundances. We use ~500,000 spectra of unique stellar targets from the DESI Survey Validation program (SV) to demonstrate that our pipelines can measure radial velocities to ~1 km/s and [Fe/H] accurate to ~0.2 dex for typical stars in our main sample. We find the stellar parameter distributions from ~100 sq. deg of SV observations with >90% completeness on our main sample are in good agreement with expectations from mock catalogs and previous surveys., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 44 pages, 25 figures, 4 tables, one of a suite of 8 papers detailing targeting for DESI; v2 added links to data shown in figures, added citations to other DESI papers, corrected author list and minor typos; v3 fixed minor errors in Fig. 6 and clarified associated text; v4 updated to include minor changes in response to review

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will precisely constrain cosmic expansion and the growth of structure by collecting $\sim$40 million extra-galactic redshifts across $\sim$80\% of cosmic history and one third of the sky. The Emission Line Galaxy (ELG) sample, which will comprise about one-third of all DESI tracers, will be used to probe the Universe over the $0.6 < z < 1.6$ range, which includes the $1.1

Over the next five years, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will use 10 spectrographs with 5000 fibers on the 4m Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory to conduct the first Stage-IV dark energy galaxy survey. At $z < 0.6$, the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) will produce the most detailed map of the Universe during the dark energy dominated epoch with redshifts of >10 million galaxies over 14,000 deg$^2$. In this work, we present and validate the final BGS target selection and survey design. From the Legacy Surveys, BGS will target a $r < 19.5$ magnitude-limited sample (BGS Bright); a fainter $19.5 < r < 20.175$ sample, color-selected to have high redshift efficiency (BGS Faint); and a smaller low-z quasar sample. BGS will observe these targets using exposure times, scaled to achieve uniform completeness, and visit each point on the footprint three times. We use observations from the Survey Validation programs conducted prior to the main survey along with realistic simulations to show that BGS can complete its strategy and make optimal use of `bright' time. We demonstrate that BGS targets have stellar contamination <1% and that their densities do not depend strongly on imaging properties. We also confirm that BGS Bright will achieve >80% fiber assignment efficiency. Finally, we show that BGS Bright and Faint will achieve >95% redshift success rates with no significant dependence on observing conditions. BGS meets the requirements for an extensive range of scientific applications. BGS will yield the most precise Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Redshift-Space Distortions measurements at $z < 0.4$. It also presents opportunities to exploit new methods that require highly complete and dense galaxy samples (e.g. N-point statistics, multi-tracers). BGS further provides a powerful tool to study galaxy populations and the relations between galaxies and dark matter., Comment: AJ, submitted, 34 pages, 22 figures, one of a suite of 8 papers detailing targeting for DESI