arXiv subjects

Uros Seljak

Publications and source records attributed to Uros Seljak.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

An optimal FFT-based anisotropic power spectrum estimator

Measurements of line-of-sight dependent clustering via the galaxy power spectrum's multipole moments constitute a powerful tool for testing theoretical models in large-scale structure. Recent work shows that this measurement, including a moving line-of-sight, can be accelerated using Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) by decomposing the Legendre polynomials into products of Cartesian vectors. Here, we present a faster, optimal means of using FFTs for this measurement. We avoid redundancy present in the Cartesian decomposition by using a spherical harmonic decomposition of the Legendre polynomials. Consequently, our method is substantially faster: a given multipole of order $\ell$ requires only $2\ell+1$ FFTs rather than the $(\ell+1)(\ell+2)/2$ FFTs of the Cartesian approach. For the hexadecapole ($\ell = 4$), this translates to $40\%$ fewer FFTs, with increased savings for higher $\ell$. The reduction in wall-clock time enables the calculation of finely-binned wedges in $P(k,μ)$, obtained by computing multipoles up to a large $\ell_{\rm max}$ and combining them. This transformation has a number of advantages. We demonstrate that by using non-uniform bins in $μ$, we can isolate plane-of-sky (angular) systematics to a narrow bin at $μ\simeq 0$ while eliminating the contamination from all other bins. We also show that the covariance matrix of clustering wedges binned uniformly in $μ$ becomes ill-conditioned when combining multipoles up to large values of $\ell_{\rm max}$, but that the problem can be avoided with non-uniform binning. As an example, we present results using $\ell_{\rm max}=16$, for which our procedure requires a factor of 3.4 fewer FFTs than the Cartesian method, while removing the first $μ$ bin leads only to a 7% increase in statistical error on $f σ_8$, as compared to a 54% increase with $\ell_{\rm max}=4$.

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arXiv2016

Imprint of DESI fiber assignment on the anisotropic power spectrum of emission line galaxies

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a multiplexed fiber-fed spectrograph, is a Stage-IV ground-based dark energy experiment aiming to measure redshifts for 29 million Emission-Line Galaxies (ELG), 4 million Luminous Red Galaxies (LRG), and 2 million Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSO). The survey design includes a pattern of tiling on the sky and the locations of the fiber positioners in the focal plane of the telescope, with the observation strategy determined by a fiber assignment algorithm that optimizes the allocation of fibers to targets. This strategy allows a given region to be covered on average five times for a five-year survey, but with coverage varying between zero and twelve, which imprints a spatially-dependent pattern on the galaxy clustering. We investigate the systematic effects of the fiber assignment coverage on the anisotropic galaxy clustering of ELGs and show that, in the absence of any corrections, it leads to discrepancies of order ten percent on large scales for the power spectrum multipoles. We introduce a method where objects in a random catalog are assigned a coverage, and the mean density is separately computed for each coverage factor. We show that this method reduces, but does not eliminate the effect. We next investigate the angular dependence of the contaminated signal, arguing that it is mostly localized to purely transverse modes. We demonstrate that the cleanest way to remove the contaminating signal is to perform an analysis of the anisotropic power spectrum $P(k,μ)$ and remove the lowest $μ$ bin, leaving $μ>0$ modes accurate at the few-percent level. Here, $μ$ is the cosine of the angle between the line-of-sight and the direction of $\vec{k}$. We also investigate two alternative definitions of the random catalog and show they are comparable but less effective than the coverage randoms method.

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arXiv2016

Perturbative approach to covariance matrix of the matter power spectrum

We evaluate the covariance matrix of the matter power spectrum using perturbation theory up to dominant terms at 1-loop order and compare it to numerical simulations. We decompose the covariance matrix into the disconnected (Gaussian) part, trispectrum from the modes outside the survey (beat coupling or super-sample variance), and trispectrum from the modes inside the survey, and show how the different components contribute to the overall covariance matrix. We find the agreement with the simulations is at a 10\% level up to $k \sim 1 h {\rm Mpc^{-1}}$. We show that all the connected components are dominated by the large-scale modes ($k<0.1 h {\rm Mpc^{-1}}$), regardless of the value of the wavevectors $k,\, k'$ of the covariance matrix, suggesting that one must be careful in applying the jackknife or bootstrap methods to the covariance matrix. We perform an eigenmode decomposition of the connected part of the covariance matrix, showing that at higher $k$ it is dominated by a single eigenmode. The full covariance matrix can be approximated as the disconnected part only, with the connected part being treated as an external nuisance parameter with a known scale dependence, and a known prior on its variance for a given survey volume. Finally, we provide a prescription for how to evaluate the covariance matrix from small box simulations without the need to simulate large volumes.

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arXiv2015

Galaxy power spectrum in redshift space: combining perturbation theory with the halo model

Theoretical modeling of the redshift-space power spectrum of galaxies is crucially important to correctly extract cosmological information from redshift surveys. The task is complicated by the nonlinear biasing and redshift space distortion effects, which change with halo mass, and by the wide distribution of halo masses and their occupations by galaxies. One of the main modeling challenges is the existence of satellite galaxies that have both radial distribution and large virial velocities inside halos, a phenomenon known as the Finger-of-God effect. We present a model for the galaxy power spectrum of in which we decompose a given galaxy sample into central and satellite galaxies and relate different contributions to 1- and 2-halo terms in a halo model. Our primary goal is to ensure that any parameters that we introduce have physically meaningful values, and are not just fitting parameters. For the 2-halo terms we use the previously developed RSD modeling of halos in the context of distribution function and perturbation theory approach. This term needs to be multiplied by the effect of radial distances and velocities of satellites inside the halo. To this one needs to add the 1-halo terms, which are non-perturbative. We show that the real space 1-halo terms can be modeled as almost constant, with the finite extent of the satellites inside the halo inducing a small k^2R^2 term, where R is related to the size of the halo. We adopt a similar model for FoG in redshift space, ensuring that FoG velocity dispersion is related to the halo mass. For FoG k^2 type expansions do not work and FoG resummation must be used instead. We test several damping functions to model the velocity dispersion FoG effect. Applying the formalism to mock galaxies modeled after the "CMASS" sample of the BOSS survey, we find that our predictions for the redshift-space power spectra are accurate up to k~0.4Mpc/h.

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arXiv2015

Optimizing BAO measurements with non-linear transformations of Lyman-alpha forest

We explore the effect of applying a non-linear transformation to the Lyman-$α$ forest transmitted flux $F=e^{-τ}$ and the ability of analytic models to predict the resulting clustering amplitude. Both the large-scale bias of the transformed field (signal) and the amplitude of small scale fluctuations (noise) can be arbitrarily modified, but we were unable to find a transformation that increases significantly the signal-to-noise ratio on large scales using Taylor expansion up to third order. In particular, however, we achieve a 33% improvement in signal to noise for Gaussianized field in transverse direction. On the other hand, we explore an analytic model for the large-scale biasing of the Ly$α$ forest, and present an extension of this model to describe the biasing of the transformed fields. Using hydrodynamic simulations we show that the model works best to describe the biasing with respect to velocity gradients, but is less successful in predicting the biasing with respect to large-scale density fluctuations, especially for very nonlinear transformations.

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arXiv2014

Wide Angle Effects in Future Galaxy Surveys

Current and future galaxy surveys cover a large fraction of the entire sky with a significant redshift range, and the recent theoretical development shows that general relativistic effects are present in galaxy clustering on very large scales. This trend has renewed interest in the wide angle effect in galaxy clustering measurements, in which the distant-observer approximation is often adopted. Using the full wide-angle formula for computing the redshift-space correlation function, we show that compared to the sample variance, the deviation in the redshift-space correlation function from the simple Kaiser formula with the distant-observer approximation is negligible in galaxy surveys such as the SDSS, Euclid and the BigBOSS, if the theoretical prediction from the Kaiser formula is properly averaged over the survey volume. We also find corrections to the wide-angle formula and clarify the confusion in literature between the wide angle effect and the velocity contribution in galaxy clustering. However, when the FKP method is applied, substantial deviations can be present in the power spectrum analysis in future surveys, due to the non-uniform distribution of galaxy pairs.

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arXiv2014

Analytic model for the matter power spectrum, its covariance matrix, and baryonic effects

We develop a model for the matter power spectrum as the sum of Zeldovich approximation and even powers of $k$, i.e., $A_0 - A_2k^2 + A_4k^4 - ...$, compensated at low $k$. With terms up to $k^4$ the model can predict the true power spectrum to a few percent accuracy up to $k\sim 0.7 h \rm{Mpc}^{-1}$, over a wide range of redshifts and models. The $A_n$ coefficients contain information about cosmology, in particular amplitude of fluctuations. We write a simple form of the covariance matrix as a sum of Gaussian part and $A_0$ variance, which reproduces the simulations remarkably well. In contrast, we show that one needs an N-body simulation volume of more than 1000 $({\rm Gpc}/h)^3$ to converge to 1\% accuracy on covariance matrix. We investigate the super-sample variance effect and show it can be modeled as an additional parameter that can be determined from the data. This allows a determination of $σ_8$ amplitude to about 0.2\% for a survey volume of 1$({\rm Gpc}/h)^3$, compared to 0.4\% otherwise. We explore the sensitivity of these coefficients to baryonic effects using hydrodynamic simulations of van Daalen (2011). We find that because of baryons redistributing matter inside halos all the coefficients $A_{2n}$ for $n>0$ are strongly affected by baryonic effects, while $A_0$ remains almost unchanged, a consequence of halo mass conservation. Our results suggest that observations such as weak lensing power spectrum can be effectively marginalized over the baryonic effects, while still preserving the bulk of the cosmological information contained in $A_0$ and Zeldovich terms.

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arXiv2014

Peculiar velocities in redshift space: formalism, N-body simulations and perturbation theory

Direct measurements of peculiar velocities of galaxies and clusters of galaxies can in principle provide explicit information on the three dimensional mass distribution, but this information is modulated by the fact that velocity field is sampled at galaxy positions, and is thus probing galaxy momentum. We derive expressions for the cross power spectrum between the density and momentum field and the auto spectrum of the momentum field in redshift space, by extending the distribution function method to these statistics. The resulting momentum cross and auto power spectra in redshift space are expressed as infinite sums over velocity moment correlators in real space, as is the case for the density power spectrum in redshift space. We compute each correlator using Eulerian perturbation theory (PT) and halo biasing model and compare the resulting redshift-space velocity statistics to those measured from N-body simulations for both dark matter and halos. We find that in redshift space linear theory predictions for the density-momentum cross power spectrum as well as for the momentum auto spectrum fail to predict the N-body results at very large scales. On the other hand, our nonlinear PT prediction for these velocity statistics, together with real-space power spectrum for dark matter from simulations, improves the accuracy for both dark matter and halos. We also present the same analysis in configuration space, computing the redshift-space pairwise mean infall velocities and velocity correlation function and compare to nonlinear PT.

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arXiv2013

Signatures of First Stars in Galaxy Surveys: Multi-Tracer Analysis of the Supersonic Relative Velocity Effect and the Constraints from the BOSS Power Spectrum Measurements

We study the effect of the supersonic relative velocity between dark matter and baryons on large-scale galaxy clustering and derive the constraint on the relative velocity bias parameter from the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) power spectrum measurements. Recent work has shown that the relative velocity effect may have a dramatic impact on the star formation at high redshifts, if first stars are formed in minihalos around z~20, or if the effect propagates through secondary effects to stars formed at later redshifts. The relative velocity effect has particularly strong signatures in the large scale clustering of these sources, including the BAO position. Assuming that a small fraction of stars in low-redshift massive galaxies retain the memory of the primordial relative velocity effect, galaxy clustering measurements can be used to constrain the signatures of the first stars. Luminous red galaxies contain some of the oldest stars in the Universe and are ideally suited to search for this effect. Using the BOSS power spectrum measurements from the Sloan Data Release 9, in combination with Planck, we derive the upper limit on the fraction of the stars sensitive to relative velocity effect f_star<3.3% at the 95% confidence level in the CMASS galaxy sample. If additional galaxy sample not sensitive to the effect is available in a given survey, a joint multi-tracer analysis can be applied to construct a sample-variance cancelling combination, providing a model-independent way to verify the presence of the relative velocity effect in the galaxy power spectrum on large scales. Such a multi-tracer analysis in future galaxy surveys can greatly improve the current constraint, achieving a 0.1% level in f_star.

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arXiv2013

Cosmological parameter constraints from galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering with the SDSS DR7

Recent studies have shown that the cross-correlation coefficient between galaxies and dark matter is very close to unity on scales outside a few virial radii of galaxy halos, independent of the details of how galaxies populate dark matter halos. This finding makes it possible to determine the dark matter clustering from measurements of galaxy-galaxy weak lensing and galaxy clustering. We present new cosmological parameter constraints based on large-scale measurements of spectroscopic galaxy samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7). We generalise the approach of Baldauf et al. (2010) to remove small scale information (below 2 and 4 Mpc/h for lensing and clustering measurements, respectively), where the cross-correlation coefficient differs from unity. We derive constraints for three galaxy samples covering 7131 sq. deg., containing 69150, 62150, and 35088 galaxies with mean redshifts of 0.11, 0.28, and 0.40. We clearly detect scale-dependent galaxy bias for the more luminous galaxy samples, at a level consistent with theoretical expectations. When we vary both σ_8 and Ω_m (and marginalise over non-linear galaxy bias) in a flat LCDM model, the best-constrained quantity is σ_8 (Ω_m/0.25)^{0.57}=0.80 +/- 0.05 (1-sigma, stat. + sys.), where statistical and systematic errors have comparable contributions, and we fixed n_s=0.96 and h=0.7. These strong constraints on the matter clustering suggest that this method is competitive with cosmic shear in current data, while having very complementary and in some ways less serious systematics. We therefore expect that this method will play a prominent role in future weak lensing surveys. When we combine these data with WMAP7 CMB data, constraints on σ_8, Ω_m, H_0, w_{de} and \sum m_ν become 30--80 per cent tighter than with CMB data alone, since our data break several parameter degeneracies.

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arXiv2012

Testing General Relativity on Horizon Scales and the Primordial non-Gaussianity

The proper general relativistic description of the observed galaxy power spectrum is substantially different from the standard Newtonian description on large scales, providing a unique opportunity to test general relativity on horizon scales. Using the Einstein equations, the general relativistic effects can be classified as two new terms that represent the velocity and the gravitational potential, coupling to the time evolution of galaxy number density and Hubble parameter. Compared to the dominant density and velocity redshift-space distortion terms, the former scales as H/k and correlates the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier modes, while the latter scales as (H/k)^2, where k is the comoving wave number and H is the conformal Hubble parameter. We use the recently developed methods to reduce the sampling variance and shot noise to show that in an all sky galaxy redshift survey at low redshift the velocity term can be measured at 10-sigma confidence level, if one can utilize halos of mass M>10^{10} Msun, while the gravitational potential term itself can only be marginally detected. We also demonstrate that the general relativistic effect is not degenerate with the primordial non-Gaussian signature in galaxy bias, and the ability to detect the primordial non-Gaussianity is little compromised.

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arXiv2012

Joint Analysis of Gravitational Lensing, Clustering and Abundance: Toward the Unification of Large-Scale Structure Analysis

We explore three different methods based on weak lensing to extract cosmological constraints from the large-scale structure. In the first approach (method I), small-scale galaxy lensing measurements of their halo mass provide a constraint on the halo bias, which can be combined with the large-scale galaxy clustering to measure the dark matter clustering. In the second approach (method II), large-scale galaxy clustering and large-scale galaxy-galaxy lensing can be combined into a direct measurement of the dark matter clustering. These two methods can be combined into one method I+II to make use of lensing measurements on all scales. In the third approach (method III), we add abundance information to the method I. We explore the statistical power of these three approaches as a function of galaxy luminosity to investigate the optimal mass range for each method and their cosmological constraining power. In the case of the SDSS, we find that the three methods give comparable constraints, but not in the same mass range: the method II works best for halos of M~10^13 Msun, and the methods I and III work best for halos of M~10^14 Msun. We discuss the robustness of each method against various systematics. Furthermore, we extend the analysis to the future large-scale galaxy surveys and find that the cluster abundance method is not superior to the combined method I+II, both in terms of statistical power and robustness against systematic errors. The cosmic shear-shear correlation analysis in the future surveys yields constraints as strong as the combined method, but suffer from additional systematic effects. We thus advocate the combined analysis of clustering and lensing (method I+II) as a powerful alternative to other large-scale probes. Our analysis provides a guidance to observers planning large-scale galaxy surveys such as the DES, Euclid, and the LSST.

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arXiv2012

Optical-to-virial velocity ratios of local disk galaxies from combined kinematics and galaxy-galaxy lensing

In this paper, we measure the optical-to-virial velocity ratios Vopt/V200c of disk galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at a mean redshift of = 0.07 and with stellar masses 10^9 M_sun < M_* < 10^11 M_sun. Vopt/V200c, the ratio of the circular velocity measured at the virial radius of the dark matter halo (\sim150 kpc) to that at the optical radius of the disk (\sim10 kpc), is a powerful observational constraint on disk galaxy formation. It links galaxies to their dark matter haloes dynamically and constrains the total mass profile of disk galaxies over an order of magnitude in length scale. For this measurement, we combine Vopt derived from the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR) from Reyes et al. with V200c derived from halo masses measured with galaxy-galaxy lensing. In anticipation of this combination, we use similarly-selected galaxy samples for both the lensing and TFR analysis. For three M_* bins with lensing-weighted mean stellar masses of 0.6, 2.7, and 6.5 x 10^10 M_sun, we find halo-to-stellar mass ratios M_vir/M_* = 41, 23, and 26, with 1-sigma statistical uncertainties of around 0.1 dex, and Vopt/V200c = 1.27\pm0.08, 1.39\pm0.06, 1.27\pm0.08 (1σ). Our results suggest that the dark matter and baryonic contributions to the mass within the optical radius are comparable, if the dark matter halo profile has not been significantly modified by baryons. The results obtained in this work will serve as inputs to and constraints on disk galaxy formation models, which will be explored in future work. Finally, we note that this paper presents a new and improved galaxy shape catalogue for weak lensing that covers the full SDSS DR7 footprint.

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arXiv2012

Distribution function approach to redshift space distortions, Part III: halos and galaxies

It was recently shown that the power spectrum in redshift space can be written as a sum of cross-power spectra between number weighted velocity moments. We investigate the properties of these power spectra for simulated galaxies and dark matter halos and compare them to the dark matter power spectra, generalizing the concept of the bias. Because all of the quantities are number weighted this approach is well defined even for sparse systems such as massive halos, in contrasts to the previous approaches to RSD where velocity correlations have been explored. We find that the number density weighting leads to a strong scale dependence of the bias terms for momentum density auto-correlation and cross-correlation with density. This trend becomes more significant for the more biased halos and leads to an enhancement of RSD power relative to the linear theory. Fingers-of-god effects, which in this formalism come from the correlations of the higher order moments beyond the momentum density, lead to smoothing of the power spectrum and can reduce this enhancement of power, but are relatively small for halos with no small-scale velocity dispersion. In comparison, for a more realistic galaxy sample with satellites the velocity dispersion generated by satellite motions inside the halos leads to a larger power suppression on small scales, but this depends on the satellite fraction. We investigate several statistics such as the two-dimensional power spectrum, its multipole moments, its powers of mu^2, and configuration space statistics. Overall we find that the nonlinear effects in realistic galaxy samples such as luminous red galaxies affect the redshift space clustering on very large scales: for example, the quadrupole moment is affected by 10% for k<0.1h/mpc, which means that these effects need to be understood if we want to extract cosmological information from the redshift space distortions.

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arXiv2012

Separating intrinsic alignment and galaxy-galaxy lensing

The coherent physical alignment of galaxies is an important systematic for gravitational lensing studies as well as a probe of the physical mechanisms involved in galaxy formation and evolution. We develop a formalism for treating this intrinsic alignment (IA) in the context of galaxy-galaxy lensing and present an improved method for measuring IA contamination, which can arise when sources physically associated with the lens are placed behind the lens due to photometric redshift scatter. We apply the technique to recent Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) measurements of Luminous Red Galaxy lenses and typical (L*) source galaxies with photometric redshifts selected from the SDSS imaging data. Compared to previous measurements, this method has the advantage of being fully self-consistent in its treatment of the IA and lensing signals, solving for the two simultaneously. We find an IA signal consistent with zero, placing tight constraints on both the magnitude of the IA effect and its potential contamination to the lensing signal. While these constraints depend on source selection and redshift quality, the method can be applied to any measurement that uses photometric redshifts. We obtain a model-independent upper-limit of roughly 10% IA contamination for projected separations of approximately 0.1-100 Mpc/h. With more stringent photo-z cuts and reasonable assumptions about the physics of intrinsic alignments, this upper limit is reduced to 1-2%. These limits are well below the statistical error of the current lensing measurements. Our results suggest that IA will not present intractable challenges to the next generation of galaxy-galaxy lensing experiments, and the methods presented here should continue to aid in our understanding of alignment processes and in the removal of IA from the lensing signal.

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arXiv2012

Cluster Density Profiles as a Test of Modified Gravity

We present a new test of gravitational interactions at the r\sim(0.2-20)Mpc scale, around the virial radius of dark matter halos measured through cluster-galaxy lensing of maxBCG clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We employ predictions from self-consistent simulations of f(R) gravity to find an upper bound on the background field amplitude of f_R0<3.5x10^-3 at the 1D-marginalized 95% confidence level. As a model-independent assessment of the constraining power of cluster profiles measured through weak gravitational lensing, we also constrain the amplitude F_0 of a phenomenological modification based on the profile enhancement induced by f(R) gravity when not including effects from the increased cluster abundance in f(R). In both scenarios, dark-matter-only simulations of the concordance model corresponding to f_R0=0 and F_0=0 are consistent with the lensing measurements, i.e., at the 68% and 95% confidence level, respectively.

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arXiv2012

Distribution function approach to redshift space distortions. Part II: N-body simulations

Measurement of redshift-space distortions (RSD) offers an attractive method to directly probe the cosmic growth history of density perturbations. A distribution function approach where RSD can be written as a sum over density weighted velocity moment correlators has recently been developed. We use Nbody simulations to investigate the individual contributions and convergence of this expansion for dark matter. If the series is expanded as a function of powers of mu, cosine of the angle between the Fourier mode and line of sight, there are a finite number of terms contributing at each order. We present these terms and investigate their contribution to the total as a function of wavevector k. For mu^2 the correlation between density and momentum dominates on large scales. Higher order corrections, which act as a Finger-of-God (FoG) term, contribute 1% at k~0.015h/Mpc, 10% at k~0.05h/Mpc at z=0, while for k>0.15h/Mpc they dominate and make the total negative. These higher order terms are dominated by density-energy density correlations which contribute negatively to the power, while the contribution from vorticity part of momentum density auto-correlation is an order of magnitude lower. For mu^4 term the dominant term on large scales is the scalar part of momentum density auto-correlation, while higher order terms dominate for k>0.15h/Mpc. For mu^6 and mu^8 we find it has very little power for k<0.15h/Mpc. We also compare the expansion to the full 2D P^ss(k,mu) as well as to their multipoles. For these statistics an infinite number of terms contribute and we find that the expansion achieves percent level accuracy for kmu<0.15h/Mpc at 6th order, but breaks down on smaller scales because the series is no longer perturbative. We explore resummation of the terms into FoG kernels, which extend the convergence up to a factor of 2 in scale. We find that the FoG kernels are approximately Lorentzian.

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arXiv2012

Evidence for Quadratic Tidal Tensor Bias from the Halo Bispectrum

The relation between the clustering properties of luminous matter in the form of galaxies and the underlying dark matter distribution is of fundamental importance for the interpretation of ongoing and upcoming galaxy surveys. The so called local bias model, where galaxy density is a function of local matter density, is frequently discussed as a means to infer the matter power spectrum or correlation function from the measured galaxy correlation. However, gravitational evolution generates a term quadratic in the tidal tensor and thus non-local in the density field, even if this term is absent in the initial conditions (Lagrangian space). Because the term is quadratic, it contributes as a loop correction to the power spectrum, so the standard linear bias picture still applies on large scales, however, it contributes at leading order to the bispectrum for which it is significant on all scales. Such a term could also be present in Lagrangian space if halo formation were influenced by the tidal field. We measure the corresponding coupling strengths from the matter-matter-halo bispectrum in numerical simulations and find a non-vanishing coefficient for the tidal tensor term. We find no scale dependence of the bias parameters up to k=0.1 h/Mpc and that the tidal effect is increasing with halo mass. While the Lagrangian bias picture is a better description of our results than the Eulerian bias picture, our results suggest that there might be a tidal tensor bias already in the initial conditions. We also find that the coefficients of the quadratic density term deviate quite strongly from the theoretical predictions based on the spherical collapse model and a universal mass function. Both quadratic density and tidal tensor bias terms must be included in the modeling of galaxy clustering of current and future surveys if one wants to achieve the high precision cosmology promise of these datasets.

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