Pryer, Dan, Smith, Robert, Booth, Robin, Blake, Chris, Eggemeier, Alexander and Loveday, Jonathan (2022) The galaxy power spectrum on the lightcone: deep, wide-angle redshift surveys and the turnover scale. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2022. pp. 1-44. ISSN 1475-7516

PDF - Accepted Version Restricted to SRO admin only until 12 August 2023. Download (2MB)

Abstract

We derive expressions for the survey-window convolved galaxy power spectrum in real space for a full sky and deep redshift survey, but taking into account the geometrical lightcone effect. We investigate the impact of using the standard mean redshift approximation as a function of survey depth, and show that this assumption can lead to both an overall amplitude suppression and scale-dependent error when compared to the 'true' spectrum. However, we also show that by using a carefully chosen 'effective fixed-time', one can find a range of scales where the approximation to the full model is highly accurate, but only on a more restricted set of scales. We validate the theory by constructing dark matter and galaxy lightcone mock surveys from a large N-body simulation with a high cadence of snapshots. We do this by solving the light cone equation exactly for every particle, where the particle worldlines are obtained in a piecewise fashion with cubic interpolation between neighbouring snapshots. We find excellent agreement between our measurements and the theory (∼ ±5%) over scales (0.004 h Mpc-1 ≤ k ≤ 0.54 h Mpc-1) and for a variety of magnitude limits. Finally, we look to see how accurately we can measure the turnover scale of the galaxy power spectrum k 0. Using the lightcone mocks we show that one can detect the turnover scale with a probability P ≥ 95% in an all-sky catalogue limited to an apparent magnitude m lim ∼ 21. We also show that the detection significance would remain high for surveys with m lim ∼ 22 and 20% sky coverage.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2022/08/019.
Schools and Departments:	School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences > Physics and Astronomy
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	11 Oct 2022 08:37
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2022 08:45
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/108420

View download statistics for this item

📧 Request an update