The RSD Sorting Hat: Unmixing Radial Scales in Projection

Abstract

Future data sets will enable cross-correlations between redshift space distortions (RSD) and weak lensing (WL). While photometric lensing and clustering cross-correlations have provided some of the tightest cosmological constraints to date, it is not well understood how to optimally perform similar RSD/WL joint analyses in a lossless way. RSD is typically measured in $3D$ redshift space, but WL is inherently a projected signal, making angular statistics a natural choice for the combined analysis. Thus, we determine the amount of RSD information that can be extracted using projected statistics. Specifically we perform a Fisher analysis to forecast constraints and model bias comparing two different Fingers-of-God (FoG) models using both, the $3D$ power spectrum, $P(k, \mu)$, and tomographic $C(\ell)$. We find that because na\"ive tomographic projection mixes large scales with poorly modelled nonlinear radial modes, it does not provide competitive constraints to the $3D$ RSD power spectrum without the model bias becoming unacceptably large. This is true even in the limit of narrow tomographic bins. In light of this we propose a new radial weighting scheme which unmixes radial RSD scales in projection yielding competitive constraints to the $3D$ RSD power spectrum, while keeping the model bias small. This work lays the groundwork for optimal joint analyses of RSD and cosmic shear.