The Cosmic Graph: Optimal Information Extraction from Large-Scale Structure using Catalogues

Abstract: We present an implicit likelihood approach to quantifying cosmological information over discrete catalogue data, assembled as graphs. To do so, we explore cosmological inference using mock dark matter halo catalogues. We employ Information Maximising Neural Networks (IMNNs) to quantify Fisher information extraction as a function of graph representation. We a) demonstrate the high sensitivity of modular graph structure to the underlying cosmology in the noise-free limit, b) show that networks automatically combine mass and clustering information through comparisons to traditional statistics, c) demonstrate that graph neural networks can still extract information when catalogues are subject to noisy survey cuts, and d) illustrate how nonlinear IMNN summaries can be used as asymptotically optimal compressed statistics for Bayesian implicit likelihood inference. We reduce the area of joint $\Omega_m, \sigma_8$ parameter constraints with small ($\sim$100 object) halo catalogues by a factor of 42 over the two-point correlation function, and demonstrate that the networks automatically combine mass and clustering information. This work utilises a new IMNN implementation over graph data in Jax, which can take advantage of either numerical or auto-differentiability. We also show that graph IMNNs successfully compress simulations far from the fiducial model at which the network is fitted, indicating a promising alternative to $n$-point statistics in catalogue-based analyses.