I’m Alex Smith, a cosmology postdoc in the ICC at Durham University. Previously I was a postdoc at the IfA at the University of Edinburgh (2022), and in the IRFU at CEA Saclay (2018-2021). I completed my PhD at Durham (2014-2018), supervised by Shaun Cole and Carlton Baugh. My work focuses on using large cosmological simulations to create mock galaxy catalogues for current and future spectroscopic galaxy surveys.
Publications
A full list of publications can be found here
2023
- Generating mock galaxy catalogues for flux-limited samples like the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey
A. Smith, C. Grove, S. Cole, P. Norberg, P. Zarrouk, S. Yuan, J. Aguilar, S. Ahlen, D. Brooks, T. Claybaugh, A. de la Macorra, et al. - The Uchuu-GLAM BOSS and eBOSS LRG lightcones: Exploring clustering and covariance errors
Julia Ereza, Francisco Prada, Anatoly Klypin, Tomoaki Ishiyama, Alex Smith, Carlton Baugh, Baojiu Li, César Hernández-Aguayo, José Ruedas - The DESI One-Percent Survey: Modelling the clustering and halo occupation of all four DESI tracers with Uchuu
F. Prada, J. Ereza, A. Smith, J. Lasker, R. Vaisakh, R. Kehoe, C. A. Dong-Páez, M. Siudek, M. Wang, S. Alam, F. Beutler, et al.
2022
- The Uchuu-SDSS galaxy lightcones: a clustering, RSD and BAO study
C. A. Dong-Páez, A. Smith, A. O. Szewciw, J. Ereza, M. H. Abdullah, C. Hernández-Aguayo, S. Trusov, F. Prada, A. Klypin, et al. - A lightcone catalogue from the Millennium-XXL simulation: improved spatial interpolation and colour distributions for the DESI BGS
Alex Smith, Shaun Cole, Cameron Grove, Peder Norberg, Pauline Zarrouk - Solving small-scale clustering problems in approximate lightcone mocks
Alex Smith, Shaun Cole, Cameron Grove, Peder Norberg, Pauline Zarrouk
2021
- Evidence for a high-z ISW signal from supervoids in the distribution of eBOSS quasars
A. Kovács, R. Beck, A. Smith, G. Rácz, I. Csabai, I. Szapudi - Reducing the Variance of Redshift Space Distortion Measurements from Mock Galaxy Catalogues with Different Lines of Sight
Alex Smith, Arnaud de Mattia, Etienne Burtin, Chia-Hsun Chuang, Cheng Zhao - The Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: BAO and RSD measurements from anisotropic clustering analysis of the Quasar Sample in configuration space between redshift 0.8 and 2.2
Jiamin Hou, Ariel G. Sánchez, Ashley J. Ross, Alex Smith, Richard Neveux, Julian Bautista, Etienne Burtin, Cheng Zhao, et al.
2020
- The Completed SDSS-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: N-body Mock Challenge for the Quasar Sample
Alex Smith, Etienne Burtin, Jiamin Hou, Richard Neveux, Ashley J. Ross, Shadab Alam, Jonathan Brinkmann, Kyle S. Dawson, et al. - The Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: BAO and RSD measurements from the anisotropic power spectrum of the Quasar sample between redshift 0.8 and 2.2
Richard Neveux, Etienne Burtin, Arnaud de Mattia, Alex Smith, Ashley J. Ross, Jiamin Hou, Julian Bautista, Jonathan Brinkmann, et al.
2019
- Measuring the BAO peak position with different galaxy selections
César Hernández-Aguayo, Marius Cautun, Alex Smith, Carlton M. Baugh, Baojiu Li - Linear bias forecasts for emission line cosmological surveys
Alexander Merson, Alex Smith, Andrew Benson, Yun Wang, Carlton Baugh - Correcting for Fibre Assignment Incompleteness in the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey
Alex Smith, Jian-hua He, Shaun Cole, Lee Stothert, Peder Norberg, Carlton Baugh, Davide Bianchi, Michael J. Wilson, et al.
2017
- A lightcone catalogue from the Millennium-XXL simulation
Alex Smith, Shaun Cole, Carlton Baugh, Zheng Zheng, Raul Angulo, Peder Norberg, Idit Zehavi
2016
- Satellite galaxies in semi-analytic models of galaxy formation with sterile neutrino dark matter
Mark R. Lovell, Sownak Bose, Alexey Boyarsky, Shaun Cole, Carlos S. Frenk, Violeta Gonzalez-Perez, Rachel Kennedy, Oleg Ruchayskiy, Alex Smith
Thesis
PhD Thesis
2018
Mock Catalogues for Large Scale Structure Surveys and DESI
Master’s Dissertation
2012
Occurrence of Quasi-Periodic Oscillations in Accreting Black Holes
Talks
- eBOSS QSO Mock Challenge
October 2020, Colloque National Dark Energy - eBOSS QSO Mock Challenge
March 2020, Virtual DESI Collaboration Meeting - QSO Mock Challenge Blind Analysis
September 2019, eBOSS Workshop, Saclay, France - Mock Challenge for eBOSS Quasar Clustering
July 2019, Lunchtime Talk, Durham, UK - N-body Mock Challenge for the eBOSS QSOs
June 2019, SDSS-IV Collaboration Meeting, Ensenada, Mexico - Correcting for Fibre Assignment Incompleteness in the DESI BGS
October 2018, DESI Collaboration Meeting, Barcelona, Spain (Remote attendance) - Fibre Assignment Completeness in the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey
May 2018, DESI Collaboration Meeting, Tucson, USA (Remote attendance) - DESI BGS Mock Catalogue from the MXXL Simulation
April 2018, Mock Durham, Durham, UK - Targeting Incompleteness in the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey
January 2018, DEX Workshop, Durham, UK - MXXL Mock Catalogue
June 2017, DESI Collaboration Meeting, Berkeley, USA - A Lightcone Catalogue from MXXL
January 2017, DEX Workshop, Edinburgh, UK - A Lightcone Catalogue from MXXL
October 2016, Lightcone Workshop, Garching, Germany - A Lightcone Catalogue from MXXL
June 2016, National Astronomy Meeting, Nottingham, UK - MXXL Mock Catalogue
June 2016, DESI Collaboration Meeting, Durham, UK
Links
MXXL Lightcone
Millennium database
TAO database
Code
HOD code
Rescaling cosmology
Contact
Institute for Computational Cosmology
Durham University
South Road
Durham, DH1 3LE
United Kingdom
Alex Smith 