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Register a new userAn optimized correlation function estimator for galaxy surveys
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Added by
Mariana Vargas-Maga\\~na
Publication date
2012
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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Measuring the two-point correlation function of the galaxies in the Universe gives access to the underlying dark matter distribution, which is related to cosmological parameters and to the physics of the primordial Universe. The estimation of the correlation function for current galaxy surveys makes use of the Landy-Szalay estimator, which is supposed to reach minimal variance. This is only true, however, for a vanishing correlation function. We study the Landy-Szalay estimator when these conditions are not fulfilled and propose a new estimator that provides the smallest variance for a given survey geometry. Our estimator is a linear combination of ratios between paircounts of data and/or random catalogues (DD, RR and DR). The optimal combination for a given geometry is determined by using lognormal mock catalogues. The resulting estimator is biased in a model-dependent way, but we propose a simple iterative procedure for obtaining an unbiased model- independent estimator.Our method can be easily applied to any dataset and requires few extra mock catalogues compared to the standard Landy-Szalay analysis. Using various sets of simulated data (lognormal, second-order LPT and N-Body), we obtain a 20-25% gain on the error bars on the two-point correlation function for the SDSS geometry and $Lambda$CDM correlation function. When applied to SDSS data (DR7 and DR9), we achieve a similar gain on the correlation functions, which translates into a 10-15% improvement over the estimation of the densities of matter $Omega_m$ and dark energy $Omega_Lambda$ in an open $Lambda$CDM model. The constraints derived from DR7 data with our estimator are similar to those obtained with the DR9 data and the Landy-Szalay estimator, which covers a volume twice as large and has a density that is three times higher.
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Measuring the clustering of galaxies from surveys allows us to estimate the power spectrum of matter density fluctuations, thus constraining cosmological models. This requires careful modelling of observational effects to avoid misinterpretation of data. In particular, signals coming from different distances encode information from different epochs. This is known as light-cone effect and is going to have a higher impact as upcoming galaxy surveys probe larger redshift ranges. Generalising the method by Feldman et al. (1994), I define a minimum-variance estimator of the linear power spectrum at a fixed time, properly taking into account the light-cone effect. An analytic expression for the estimator is provided, and that is consistent with the findings of previous works in the literature. I test the method within the context of the halo model, assuming Planck 2014 cosmological parameters. I show that the estimator presented recovers the fiducial linear power spectrum at present time within 5% accuracy up to $k sim 0.80;h,mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ and within 10% up to $k sim 0.94;h,mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, well into the non-linear regime of the growth of density perturbations. As such, the method could be useful in the analysis of the data from future large-scale surveys, like Euclid.
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a powerful probe to study the early universe and various cosmological models. Weak gravitational lensing affects the CMB by changing its power spectrum, but meanwhile, it also carries information about the distribution of lensing mass and hence, the large scale structure (LSS) of the universe. When studies of the CMB is combined with the tracers of LSS, one can constrain cosmological models, models of LSS development and astrophysical parameters simultaneously. The main focus of this project is to study the cross-correlations between CMB lensing and the galaxy matter density to constrain the galaxy bias ($b$) and the amplitude scaling parameter ($A$), to test the validity of $Lambda$CDM model. We test our approach for simulations of the Planck CMB convergence field and galaxy density field, which mimics the density field of the Herschel Extragalactic Legacy Project (HELP). We use maximum likelihood method to constrain the parameters.
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We investigate the properties of the 2-point galaxy correlation function at very large scales, including all geometric and local relativistic effects -- wide-angle effects, redshift space distortions, Doppler terms and Sachs-Wolfe type terms in the gravitational potentials. The general three-dimensional correlation function has a nonzero dipole and octupole, in addition to the even multipoles of the flat-sky limit. We study how corrections due to primordial non-Gaussianity and General Relativity affect the multipolar expansion, and we show that they are of similar magnitude (when f_NL is small), so that a relativistic approach is needed. Furthermore, we look at how large-scale corrections depend on the model for the growth rate in the context of modified gravity, and we discuss how a modified growth can affect the non-Gaussian signal in the multipoles.
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