The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) embarked on an ambitious 5 yr survey in 2021 May to explore the nature of dark energy with spectroscopic measurements of 40 million galaxies and quasars. DESI will determine precise redshifts and employ the baryon acoustic oscillation method to measure distances from the nearby universe to beyond redshift z > 3.5, and employ redshift space distortions to measure the growth of structure and probe potential modifications to general relativity. We describe the significant instrumentation we developed to conduct the DESI survey. This includes: a wide-field, 3.°2 diameter prime-focus corrector; a focal plane system with 5020 fiber positioners on the 0.812 m diameter, aspheric focal surface; 10 continuous, high-efficiency fiber cable bundles that connect the focal plane to the spectrographs; and 10 identical spectrographs. Each spectrograph employs a pair of dichroics to split the light into three channels that together record the light from 360–980 nm with a spectral resolution that ranges from 2000–5000. We describe the science requirements, their connection to the technical requirements, the management of the project, and interfaces between subsystems. DESI was installed at the 4 m Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and has achieved all of its performance goals. Some performance highlights include an rms positioner accuracy of better than 0.″1 and a median signal-to-noise ratio of 7 of the [O ii] doublet at 8 × 10−17 erg s−1 cm−2 in 1000 s for galaxies at z = 1.4–1.6. We conclude with additional highlights from the on-sky validation and commissioning, key successes, and lessons learned.

Consistency between cosmological data sets is essential for ongoing and future cosmological analyses. We first investigate the questions of stability and applicability of some moment-based inconsistency measures to multiple data sets. We show that the recently introduced index of inconsistency (IOI) is numerically stable while it can be applied to multiple data sets. We use an illustrative construction of constraints as well as an example with real data sets (i.e. WMAP versus Planck) to show some limitations of the application of the Karhunen-Loeve decomposition to discordance measures. Second, we perform various consistency analyzes using IOI between multiple current data sets while working with the entire common parameter spaces. We find current Large-Scale-Structure (LSS) data sets (Planck CMB lensing, DES lensing-clustering and SDSS RSD) all to be consistent with one another. This is found to be not the case for Planck temperature (TT) versus polarization (TE,EE) data, where moderate inconsistencies are present. Noteworthy, we find a strong inconsistency between joint LSS probes and Planck with IOI=5.27, and a moderate tension between DES and Planck with IOI=3.14. Next, using the IOI metric, we compare the Hubble constant from five independent probes. We confirm previous strong tensions between local measurement (SH0ES) and Planck as well as between H0LiCOW and Planck, but also find new strong tensions between SH0ES measurement and the joint LSS probes with IOI=6.73 (i.e. 3.7-σ in 1D) as well as between joint LSS and combined probes SH0ES+H0LiCOW with IOI=8.59 (i.e. 4.1-σ in 1D). Whether due to systematic effects in the data sets or problems with the underlying model, sources of these old and new tensions need to be identified and dealt with.PACS numbers: 98.80. Es,95.36.+x,

We introduce a new version of the Integrated Software in Testing General Relativity (ISiTGR) which is a patch to the software CAMB and CosmoMC. ISiTGR is intended to test deviations from GR at cosmological scales using cosmological data sets. While doing so, it allows for various extensions to the standard flat ΛCDM model. In this new release, we have support for the following: 1) dynamical dark energy parametrizations with a constant or time-dependant equation of state; 2) a consistent implementation of anisotropic shear to model massive neutrinos throughout the full formalism; 3) multiple commonly-used parametrizations of modified growth (MG) parameters; 4) functional, binned and hybrid time-and scale-dependencies for all MG parameters; 5) spatially flat or curved backgrounds. ISiTGR is designed to allow cosmological analyses to take full advantage of ongoing and future surveys to test simultaneously or separately various extensions to the standard model. We describe here the formalism and its implementation in the CMB code, the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect, and the 3x2 point statistics. Next, we apply ISiTGR to current data sets from Planck2015, Dark Energy Survey YR1 release, Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), Redshift Space Distortions (RSD) from the BOSS Data Release 12, the 6DF Galaxy Survey and the SDSS Data Release 7 Main Galaxy Sample, and Supernova from the Pantheon compilation, joint SNLS/SDSS data analysis and the Hubble Space Telescope. We derive constraints on MG parameters for various combinations of the five features above and find that GR is consistent with current data sets in all cases. The code is made publicly available at https://github.com/mishakb/ ISiTGR.

We constrain deviations from general relativity (GR) including both redshift and scale dependencies in the modified gravity (MG) parameters. In particular, we employ the under-used binning approach and compare the results to functional forms. We use available datasets such as Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from Planck 2018, Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Redshift Space Distortions (BAO/RSD) from the BOSS Data Release 12, the 6DF Galaxy Survey, the SDSS Data Release 7 Main Galaxy Sample, the correlation of Lyman-α forest absorption and quasars from SDSS-DR14, Supernova Type Ia (SNe) from the Pantheon compilation, and DES Y1 data. Moreover, in order to maximize the constraining power from available datasets, we analyze MG models where we alternatively set some of the MG parameters to their GR values and vary the others. Using functional forms, we find an up to 3.5-σ tension with GR in Σ (while μ is fixed) when using Planck+SNe+BAO+BAO/RSD; this goes away when lensing data is included, i.e. CMB lensing and DES Y1 (CMBL+DES) . Using different binning methods, we find that a tension with respect to GR above 2-σ in the (high-z, high-k) bin is persistent even when including CMBL+DES to Planck+SNe+BAO+BAO/RSD . Also, we find another tension above 2-σ in the (low-z, high-k) bin, but that can be reduced with the addition of lensing data. Furthermore, we perform a model comparison using the Deviance Information Criterion statistical tool and find that the MG model (μ=1, Σ) is weakly favored by the data compared to ΛCDM, except when DES data is included. Another noteworthy result is that we find that the binning methods do not agree with the widely-used functional parameterization where the MG parameters are proportional to ΩDE(a), and this is clearly apparent in the high-z and high-k regime where this parameterization underestimates the deviations from GR.

An important route to testing General Relativity (GR) at cosmological scales is usually done by constraining modified gravity (MG) parameters added to the Einstein perturbed equations. Most studies have analyzed so far constraints on pairs of MG parameters, but here, we explore constraints on one parameter at a time while fixing the other at its GR value. This allows us to analyse various models while benefiting from a stronger constraining power from the data. We also explore which specific datasets are in tension with GR. We find that models with (μ = 1, η) and (μ, η = 1) exhibit a 3.9-σ and 3.8-σ departure from GR when using Planck18+SNe+BAO, while (μ, η) shows a tension of 3.4-σ. We find no tension with GR for models with the MG parameter Σ fixed to its GR value. Using a Bayesian model selection analysis, we find that some one-parameter MG models are moderately favored over ΛCDM when using all dataset combinations except Planck CMB Lensing and DES data. Namely, Planck18 shows a moderate tension with GR that only increases when adding any combination of RSD, SNe, or BAO. However, adding lensing diminishes or removes these tensions, which can be attributed to the ability of lensing in constraining the MG parameter Σ. The two overall groups of datasets are found to have a dichotomy when performing consistency tests with GR, which may be due to systematic effects, lack of constraining power, or modelling. These findings warrant further investigation using more precise data from ongoing and future surveys.