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Author (up) de Putter, R.; Wagner, C.; Mena, O.; Verde, L.; Percival, W.J.
Title Thinking outside the box: effects of modes larger than the survey on matter power spectrum covariance Type Journal Article
Year 2012 Publication Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Abbreviated Journal J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.
Volume 04 Issue 4 Pages 019 - 31pp
Keywords galaxy clustering; power spectrum; cosmological simulations; dark matter simulations
Abstract Accurate power spectrum (or correlation function) covariance matrices are a crucial requirement for cosmological parameter estimation from large scale structure surveys. In order to minimize reliance on computationally expensive mock catalogs, it is important to have a solid analytic understanding of the different components that make up a covariance matrix. Considering the matter power spectrum covariance matrix, it has recently been found that there is a potentially dominant effect on mildly non-linear scales due to power in modes of size equal to and larger than the survey volume. This beat coupling effect has been derived analytically in perturbation theory and while it has been tested with simulations, some questions remain unanswered. Moreover, there is an additional effect of these large modes, which has so far not been included in analytic studies, namely the effect on the estimated average density which enters the power spectrum estimate. In this article, we work out analytic, perturbation theory based expressions including both the beat coupling and this local average effect and we show that while, when isolated, beat coupling indeed causes large excess covariance in agreement with the literature, in a realistic scenario this is compensated almost entirely by the local average effect, leaving only similar to 10% of the excess. We test our analytic expressions by comparison to a suite of large N-body simulations, using both full simulation boxes and subboxes thereof to study cases without beat coupling, with beat coupling and with both beat coupling and the local average effect. For the variances, we find excellent agreement with the analytic expressions for k < 0.2 hMpc(-1) at z = 0.5, while the correlation coefficients agree to beyond k = 0.4 hMpc(-1). As expected, the range of agreement increases towards higher redshift and decreases slightly towards z = 0. We finish by including the large-mode effects in a full covariance matrix description for arbitrary survey geometry and confirming its validity using simulations. This may be useful as a stepping stone towards building an actual galaxy (or other tracer's) power spectrum covariance matrix.
Address [de Putter, Roland; Wagner, Christian; Verde, Lica] Univ Barcelona IEEC UB, ICC, Barcelona 08028, Spain, Email: rdeputter@berkeley.edu;
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Iop Publishing Ltd Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 1475-7516 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes WOS:000303665000019 Approved no
Is ISI yes International Collaboration yes
Call Number IFIC @ pastor @ Serial 1016
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Author (up) Wagner, C.; Verde, L.; Boubekeur, L.
Title N-body simulations with generic non-Gaussian initial conditions I: power spectrum and halo mass function Type Journal Article
Year 2010 Publication Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Abbreviated Journal J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.
Volume 10 Issue 10 Pages 022 - 24pp
Keywords power spectrum; cosmological simulations; initial conditions and eternal universe; galaxy clusters
Abstract We address the issue of setting up generic non-Gaussian initial conditions for N-body simulations. We consider inflationary-motivated primordial non-Gaussianity where the perturbations in the Bardeen potential are given by a dominant Gaussian part plus a non-Gaussian part specified by its bispectrum. The approach we explore here is suitable for any bispectrum, i.e. it does not have to be of the so-called separable or factorizable form. The procedure of generating a non-Gaussian field with a given bispectrum (and a given power spectrum for the Gaussian component) is not univocal, and care must be taken so that higher-order corrections do not leave a too large signature on the power spectrum. This is so far a limiting factor of our approach. We then run N-body simulations for the most popular inflationary-motivated non-Gaussian shapes. The halo mass function and the non-linear power spectrum agree with theoretical analytical approximations proposed in the literature, even if they were so far developed and tested only for a particular shape (the local one). We plan to make the simulations outputs available to the community via the non-Gaussian simulations comparison project web site http://icc.ub.edu/similar to liciaverde/NGSCP.html.
Address [Wagner, Christian; Verde, Licia] Univ Barcelona, ICCUB IEEC, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain, Email: cwagner@icc.ub.edu
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Iop Publishing Ltd Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 1475-7516 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes ISI:000283577600013 Approved no
Is ISI yes International Collaboration no
Call Number IFIC @ elepoucu @ Serial 339
Permanent link to this record