A catalog-level Alcock-Paczynski wavelength-shift blinding scheme for the Lyman-alpha forest robustly hides the expansion history and correctly shifts the BAO peak on DESI DR1 data and mocks.
Direct cosmological inference from three-dimensional correlations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest
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abstract
When performing cosmological inference, standard analyses of the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) three-dimensional correlation functions only consider the information carried by the distinct peak produced by baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). In this work, we address whether this compression is sufficient to capture all the relevant cosmological information carried by these functions. We do this by performing a direct fit to the full shape, including all physical scales without compression, of synthetic Ly$\alpha$ auto-correlation functions and cross-correlations with quasars at effective redshift $z_{\rm{eff}}=2.3$, assuming a DESI-like survey, and providing a comparison to the classic method applied to the same dataset. Our approach leads to a $3.5\%$ constraint on the matter density $\Omega_{\rm{M}}$, which is about three to four times better than what BAO alone can probe. The growth term $f \sigma_{8} (z_{\rm{eff}})$ is constrained to the $10\%$ level, and the spectral index $n_{\rm{s}}$ to $\sim 3-4\%$. We demonstrate that the extra information resulting from our `direct fit' approach, except for the $n_{\rm{s}}$ constraint, can be traced back to the Alcock-Paczy\'nski effect and redshift space distortion information.
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An EFT-based field-level forward model for the Lyman-alpha forest matches simulations at the percent level on quasi-linear scales and generates mocks for DESI and DESI-II analyses.
Using idealized synthetic data, knowing the true continuum in Lyα forest auto- and cross-correlations reduces uncertainties on the AP parameter and Ω_m by ~10%, with extension to 240 h^{-1}Mpc scales adding up to ~15% further improvement equivalent to a 40% larger survey area.
DESI measures BAO from the Lyα forest at z_eff=2.33, reporting H(z) = (239.2 ± 4.8) (147.09 Mpc/rd) km/s/Mpc and DM(z) = (5.84 ± 0.14) (rd/147.09 Mpc) Gpc.
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Alcock-Paczynski Blinding Scheme for the Ly-$\alpha$ Forest Analysis
A catalog-level Alcock-Paczynski wavelength-shift blinding scheme for the Lyman-alpha forest robustly hides the expansion history and correctly shifts the BAO peak on DESI DR1 data and mocks.
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Lyman-Alpha Forest and its Cross-Correlation with High-Redshift Galaxies in Effective Field Theory at the Field Level
An EFT-based field-level forward model for the Lyman-alpha forest matches simulations at the percent level on quasi-linear scales and generates mocks for DESI and DESI-II analyses.
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Probing the limits of cosmological information from the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest 2-point correlation functions
Using idealized synthetic data, knowing the true continuum in Lyα forest auto- and cross-correlations reduces uncertainties on the AP parameter and Ω_m by ~10%, with extension to 240 h^{-1}Mpc scales adding up to ~15% further improvement equivalent to a 40% larger survey area.
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DESI 2024 IV: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest
DESI measures BAO from the Lyα forest at z_eff=2.33, reporting H(z) = (239.2 ± 4.8) (147.09 Mpc/rd) km/s/Mpc and DM(z) = (5.84 ± 0.14) (rd/147.09 Mpc) Gpc.