Andrina Nicola

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. My research focus lies between theoretical and observational cosmology. I develop methods for combining the information from different cosmological probes so as to better constrain our cosmological model and shed light on its two mysterious ingredients, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

Short CV:

2018 - current: Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University
2013 - 2018: PhD student at ETH Zuerich, supervised by Alexandre Refregier
2011 - 2013: M.Sc. in Physics, ETH Zuerich
2008 - 2011: B.S. in Physics, ETH Zuerich

My recent research has mainly focused on cosmological probe combination. Recently I have also worked on the quantification of concordance between the constraints derived from different data sets and model rejection methods.

A. Nicola, A. Refregier, A. Amara, 2016, PRD
This paper presents a framework for integrated cosmological probe combination in which the probes are combined starting at the map level. The framework is then applied to current measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the Planck satellite, and galaxy clustering and weak lensing from SDSS.
View arXiv pdf

A. Nicola, A. Refregier, A. Amara, 2017, PRD
This work extends the integrated analysis to also include CMB lensing from the Planck satellite, weak lensing from the DES SV survey, Type Ia Supernovae and H0 measurements. The constraints derived from the resulting 12 auto- and cross-power spectra largely agree with those from other data sets.
View arXiv pdf

A. Nicola, A. Amara, A. Refregier, 2017, JCAP
In this work, we quantify the concordance between the cosmological parameter constraints derived from the integrated analysis and those derived by the Planck Collaboration and WMAP, SPT and ACT using the Surprise statistic [Seehars et al., 2014]. We find that all data sets considered agree with each other and the ΛCDM cosmological model.
View arXiv pdf

A. Nicola, A. Amara, A. Refregier, 2019, JCAP
In this paper, we propose a novel method to perform model rejection in cosmology, which is based on the relative entropy (or Kullback-Leibler divergence) and the posterior predictive distribution. We validate the method on toy models and apply it to a simple cosmological example.
View arXiv pdf

A. Nicola, A. Refregier, A. Amara, A. Paranjape, 2014, PRD
This paper compares two different statistics used to analyze spectroscopic cosmological surveys in three-dimensional spherical geometry. We consider the spherical harmonic tomography power spectrum as well as the spherical Fourier Bessel power spectrum and compare their forecasted constraining power for an identical survey in a Fisher analysis.
View arXiv pdf

Other things I have been working on:

E. Baxter ... A. Nicola ... et al. Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Methodology and Projections for Joint Analysis of Galaxy Clustering, Galaxy Lensing, and CMB Lensing Two-point Functions, Phys. Rev. D 99 (2019) 023508
R. Sgier, A. Refregier, A. Amara, A. Nicola, Fast Generation of Covariance Matrices for Weak Lensing, J. Cosmology Astropart. Phys. 01 (2019) 044
J. Noller, A. Nicola Cosmological parameter constraints for Horndeski scalar-tensor gravity, ArXiv e-prints (2018)
J. Noller, A. Nicola Radiative stability and observational constraints on dark energy and modified gravity, ArXiv e-prints (2018)
T. Abbott ... A. Nicola ... et al. Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Joint Analysis of Galaxy Clustering, Galaxy Lensing, and CMB Lensing Two-point Functions, ArXiv e-prints (2018)
J. Prat ... A. Nicola ... et al. Cosmological lensing ratios with DES Y1, SPT and Planck, ArXiv e-prints (2018)
M. Fagioli, J. Riebartsch, A. Nicola et al. Forward Modeling of Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys: Application to SDSS, J. Cosmology Astropart. Phys. 11 (2018) 015
C. Bruderer, A. Nicola, A. Amara, A. Refregier, J. Herbel, T. Kacprzak, Cosmic shear calibration with forward modeling, J. Cosmology Astropart. Phys. 08 (2018) 007
J. Herbel, T. Kacprzak, A. Amara, A. Refregier, C. Bruderer, A. Nicola, The redshift distribution of cosmological samples: a forward modeling approach, J. Cosmology Astropart. Phys. 08 (2017) 035
T. Kacprzak ... A. Nicola ... et al., Cosmology constraints from shear peak statistics in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data, MNRAS 463 (2016) 3653-3673
The DESI Collaboration ... A. Nicola ... et al., The DESI Experiment Part II: Instrument Design, ArXiv e-prints (2016)
The DESI Collaboration ... A. Nicola ... et al., The DESI Experiment Part I: Science,Targeting, and Survey Design, ArXiv e-prints (2016)
M. Becker ... A. Nicola ... et al., Cosmic shear measurements with Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data, Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) 022001
The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration ... A. Nicola ... et al., Cosmology from cosmic shear with Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data, Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) 022001
D. Kirk ... A. Nicola ... et al., Cross-correlation of gravitational lensing from DES Science Verification data with SPT and Planck lensing, MNRAS 459 (2016) 21-34
S. Grandis, S. Seehars, A. Refregier, A. Amara, A. Nicola, Information gains from cosmological probes, J. Cosmology Astropart. Phys. 5 (2016) 034
B. Nord ... A. Nicola ... et al., SPOKES: An end-to-end simulation facility for spectroscopic cosmological surveys, Astronomy and Computing 15 (2016) 1-15
A. Hobbs, J. Read, A. Nicola, Growing galaxies via superbubble-driven accretion flows, MNRAS, 452 (2015), 3593-3609

For a complete publication list, please see ADS.

Selected Talks:

Accelerating Universe in the dark, Kyoto (J), contributed talk, Mar. 2019
APEC seminar, IPMU, Tokyo (J), Mar. 2019
Cosmology seminar, Nagoya University, Nagoya (J), Feb. 2019
The nonlinear Universe, Šmartno (SLO), contributed talk, Jul. 2018
CCAPP seminar, Ohio State University, Columbus (USA), Jan. 2018
Dissertation talk, 231st AAS, National Harbor (USA), Jan. 2018
ICG colloquium, ICG, Portsmouth (UK), Nov. 2017
KIPAC cosmology seminar, Stanford University, Stanford (USA), Sep. 2017
Cosmology seminar, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA), Sep. 2017
Berkeley cosmology seminar, UC Berkeley, Berkeley (USA), Sep. 2017
USM physical cosmology seminar, Universitaets-Sternwarte Muenchen, Muenchen (D), Jul. 2017
Advances in theoretical cosmology in the light of data, NORDITA, Stockholm (S), contributed firetalk, Jul. 2017
Diving into the dark, Cairns (AU), contributed talk, Jul. 2016
From theory to applications: celebrating a century of gravitational lensing, Leiden (NL), contributed talk, Jul. 2016

Besides working on Cosmology, I also enjoy to be involved in outreach activities. These include talks for both children and adults as well as workshops. Recently, I also joined the Prison Teaching Initiative.
Impressions from some of these can be found below.