Pith. sign in

REVIEW 10 cited by

Profile Likelihoods in Cosmology: When, Why and How illustrated with $\Lambda$CDM, Massive Neutrinos and Dark Energy

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2408.07700 v2 pith:52Q5TBKN submitted 2024-08-14 astro-ph.CO

classification astro-ph.CO
keywords profilecosmologyparameterfrequentistgraphicallambdalikelihoodmethod
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
abstract

Frequentist parameter inference using profile likelihoods has received increased attention in the cosmology literature recently since it can give important complementary information to Bayesian credible intervals. Here, we give a pedagogical review of frequentist parameter inference in cosmology and focus on when the graphical profile likelihood construction gives meaningful constraints, i.e. confidence intervals with correct coverage. This construction rests on the assumption of the asymptotic limit of a large data set such as in Wilks' theorem. We assess the validity of this assumption in the context of three cosmological models with Planck 2018 Plik_lite data: While our tests for the $\Lambda$CDM model indicate that the profile likelihood method gives correct coverage, $\Lambda$CDM with the sum of neutrino masses as a free parameter appears consistent with a Gaussian near a boundary motivating the use of the boundary-corrected or Feldman-Cousins graphical method; for $w_0$CDM with the equation of state of dark energy, $w_0$, as a free parameter, we find indication of a violation of the assumptions. Finally, we compare frequentist and Bayesian constraints of these models. Our results motivate care when using the graphical profile likelihood method in cosmology. Along with this paper, we publish our profile-likelihood code "pinc".

Discussion (0). Sign in to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 10 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. The $H_0$ world cup. II. A comprehensive competition between proposed Hubble tension solutions

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Against a common 2025-26 dataset (Planck PR4, ACT DR6, SPT-3G, DESI DR2, Pantheon+), early dark energy and early modified gravity models win the H0 competition (~3σ residual tension), while radiation and late-time sol...

  2. Alleviating prior dependencies for DESI DR1 clustering fits through reparameterization

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Jeffreys prior over EFTofLSS coefficients mitigates projection effects in DESI DR1 power spectrum multipole fits, recentering posteriors for late-time expansion parameters.

  3. The BAO scale -- how standard is the standard ruler?

    astro-ph.CO 2026-03 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The BAO sound-horizon scale extracted from simulated galaxy clustering differs from the standard integral definition enough to bias DESI Year-5-level cosmological constraints on Ω_m and N_eff unless corrected.

  4. Debiasing inference in large-scale structure with non-flat volume measures

    astro-ph.CO 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A curvature-weighted, non-flat volume measure removes the leading-order marginalization bias in posterior means, recovering cosmological parameters in mocks to below 0.1 sigma.

  5. Monodromic Dark Energy and DESI

    astro-ph.CO 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Monodromic k-essence fits current CMB, BAO, and supernova data about as well as w0-wa dark energy, with a nonzero oscillation amplitude preferred only by DESY5 supernovae.

  6. Cosmological neutrino mass: a frequentist overview in light of DESI

    astro-ph.CO 2025-07 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

    A frequentist profile-likelihood analysis of DESI, Planck, ACT, and eBOSS Lyman-alpha data yields Σmν < 53 meV (95% C.L.) in flat ΛCDM and a CMB-independent bound of 285 meV.

  7. Searching for signatures of inflationary massive fields in DESI Imaging data and Stage-V galaxy surveys

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    DESI Imaging yields no robust beyond-local PNG detection, while Stage-V LBG forecasts give σ(Δ)≈0.17–0.50 near the local limit for f_NL,Δ^fid=4 and an empirical link to σ(f_NL^loc).

  8. The $H_0$ World Cup. I. Summary of the baseline group stage results

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    In a systematic head-to-head analysis, early dark energy and early modified gravity models reduce the Hubble tension to about 3σ and are favored over ΛCDM, while radiation and late-time alternatives are not.

  9. Determination of neutron star radius from pulse profile modeling using profile likelihood

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Profile-likelihood maximization over nuisance parameters in X-PSI recovers injected neutron-star radius to <1σ on synthetic data, with precision comparable to MultiNest Bayesian inference but ~400× lower CPU cost.

  10. Bayesian and frequentist perspectives agree on dynamical dark energy

    astro-ph.CO 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Frequentist profile-likelihood constraints on the CPL dark-energy parameters w0 and wa agree with Bayesian posteriors across DESI, CMB, and SN datasets, corroborating the evidence for dynamical dark energy.

Pith tools