Past exam of the cosmology course of the University of Oxford / 2025 / 3 / d / Solution

The $z\simeq 0.3$ sample is expected to show the stronger late Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect correlation, for comparable galaxy bias and selection quality. In the stated flat Lambda-CDM model, neglecting radiation in cosmology,At $z\simeq 4$ the universe is nearly matter-dominated universe, $D\propto a$ and $f\simeq 1$, so the cosmological Newtonian potential $\psi \propto D/a$ is nearly constant. A photon then receives little net Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect shift. At $z\simeq 0.3$, dark energy has substantially suppressed the linear growth factor relative to $a$, so $f<1$ and the potentials decay appreciably.

For a quantitative indication, the approximation $f\simeq {\Omega }_m(z{)}^{0.55}$ gives $1-f\simeq 0.328$ at $z=0.3$ and $1-f\simeq 0.0101$ at $z=4$. Thus fractional potential evolution, $d\ln |\psi |/d\ln a=f-1$, is much larger for the nearby sample. The high-cosmological redshift matter power spectrum also has a smaller growth amplitude. The entire correlation still depends on $H$, galaxy bias, $p(z)$, and the matter power spectrum at the sampled wavenumber; redshift alone does not fix a universal numerical ratio or guarantee an ordering at every multipole. The robust expectation is