- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Improving constraints on baryon acoustic oscillations with field-level inference

Ivana Babić*, Fabian Schmidt†, and Beatriz Tucci‡

  • *Contact author: I.Babic@physik.uni-muenchen.de
  • †Contact author: fabians@mpa-garching.mpg.de
  • ‡Contact author: tucci@mpa-garching.mpg.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 113, L061304 – Published 25 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rkzj-q18k

Abstract

We present results of field-level inference of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale rs on rest-frame dark matter halo catalogs. Our field-level constraint on rs is obtained by explicitly sampling the initial conditions along with the bias and noise parameters via the LEFTfield EFT-based forward model. Comparing with a standard reconstruction pipeline applied to the same data and over the same scales, the field-level constraint on the BAO scale improves by a factor of ∼1.2–1.4 over standard BAO reconstruction. We point to a surprisingly simple source of additional information.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (51)

  1. M. Abdul-Karim et al. (DESI Collaboration), arXiv:2503.14738.
  2. D. J. Eisenstein, H. Seo, E. Sirko, and D. N. Spergel, Astrophys. J. 664, 675 (2007).
  3. D. J. Eisenstein, H. Seo, and M. White, Astrophys. J. 664, 660 (2007).
  4. N. Padmanabhan, M. White, and J. D. Cohn, Phys. Rev. D 79, 063523 (2009).
  5. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/rkzj-q18k for details on the forward model, priors, posterior validation, and the Fisher calculation.
  6. Y. Shi, M. Cautun, and B. Li, Phys. Rev. D 97, 023505 (2018).
  7. Y. Noh, M. White, and N. Padmanabhan, Phys. Rev. D 80, 123501 (2009).
  8. S. Tassev and M. Zaldarriaga, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 10 (2012) 006.
  9. A. Burden, W. J. Percival, and C. Howlett, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 453, 456 (2015).
  10. M. Schmittfull, Y. Feng, F. Beutler, B. Sherwin, and M. Y. Chu, Phys. Rev. D 92, 123522 (2015).
  11. X. Wang, H.-R. Yu, H.-M. Zhu, Y. Yu, Q. Pan, and U.-L. Pen, Astrophys. J. 841, L29 (2017).
  12. M. Schmittfull, T. Baldauf, and M. Zaldarriaga, Phys. Rev. D 96, 023505 (2017).
  13. C. Modi, Y. Feng, and U. Seljak, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 10 (2018) 028.
  14. M. McQuinn, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 06 (2021) 024.
  15. C. J. Shallue and D. J. Eisenstein, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 520, 6256 (2023).
  16. X. Chen, F. Zhu, S. Gaines, and N. Padmanabhan, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 523, 6272 (2023).
  17. L. Parker, A. E. Bayer, and U. Seljak, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 09 (2025) 039.
  18. N.-M. Nguyen, F. Schmidt, G. Lavaux, and J. Jasche, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 03 (2021) 058.
  19. P. Villanueva-Domingo and F. Villaescusa-Navarro, Astrophys. J. 937, 115 (2022).
  20. A. Kostić, N.-M. Nguyen, F. Schmidt, and M. Reinecke, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2023) 063.
  21. F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2021) 033.
  22. D. Baumann, A. Nicolis, L. Senatore, and M. Zaldarriaga, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2012) 051.
  23. J. J. M. Carrasco, M. P. Hertzberg, and L. Senatore, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2012) 082.
  24. S. M. Carroll, S. Leichenauer, and J. Pollack, Phys. Rev. D 90, 023518 (2014).
  25. V. Desjacques, D. Jeong, and F. Schmidt, Phys. Rep. 733, 1 (2018).
  26. F. Schmidt, G. Cabass, J. Jasche, and G. Lavaux, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2020) 008.
  27. F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2021) 032.
  28. I. Babić, F. Schmidt, and B. Tucci, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 08 (2022) 007.
  29. J. Stadler, F. Schmidt, and M. Reinecke, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2025) 089.
  30. D. K. Ramanah, G. Lavaux, J. Jasche, and B. D. Wandelt, Astron. Astrophys. 621, A69 (2019).
  31. I. Babić, F. Schmidt, and B. Tucci, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2025) 066.
  32. A. Barreira, T. Lazeyras, and F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 08 (2021) 029.
  33. E. Krause et al. (Beyond-2pt Collaboration), Astrophys. J. 990, 99 (2025).
  34. P. S. Behroozi, R. H. Wechsler, and H.-Y. Wu, Astrophys. J. 762, 109 (2013).
  35. T. Ishiyama et al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 506, 4210 (2021).
  36. F. Schmidt, F. Elsner, J. Jasche, N. M. Nguyen, and G. Lavaux, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 01 (2019) 042.
  37. N.-M. Nguyen, F. Schmidt, B. Tucci, M. Reinecke, and A. Kostić, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 221006 (2024).
  38. G. Cabass and F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2020) 051.
  39. G. Cabass and F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2020) 042.
  40. F. Elsner, F. Schmidt, J. Jasche, G. Lavaux, and N.-M. Nguyen, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 01 (2020) 029.
  41. J. Jasche and G. Lavaux, Astron. Astrophys. 625, A64 (2019).
  42. R. Neal, in Handbook of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (Chapman and Hall, New York, 2011), pp. 113–162.
  43. R. M. Neal, arXiv:physics/0009028.
  44. D. Forero-Sánchez et al., J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2025) 055.
  45. H. Rubira and F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 01 (2024) 031.
  46. F. Schmidt, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 09 (2025) 056.

  47. Due to the limited sample size, we do not show the inferred error bar for these inferences, but we expect them to be very similar to the Λ=kmax cases.

  48. G. Cabass, M. Simonović, and M. Zaldarriaga, Phys. Rev. D 109, 043526 (2024).
  49. J. Stadler, F. Schmidt, M. Reinecke, and M. Esposito, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2025) 055.
  50. https://www.aquila-consortium.org/.
  51. https://www.mpcdf.mpg.de/.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 113, L061304– Published 25 March, 2026
  • Received 4 June 2025
  • Accepted 4 March 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation