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Characterization of contaminants in the Lyman-alpha forest auto-correlation with DESI

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arxiv 2404.03003 v4 pith:AXBOSGHP submitted 2024-04-03 astro-ph.CO

Characterization of contaminants in the Lyman-alpha forest auto-correlation with DESI

classification astro-ph.CO
keywords lyman-alphaauto-correlationforestcontaminantsdatadesinoiseabsorption
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Baryon Acoustic Oscillations can be measured with sub-percent precision above redshift two with the Lyman-alpha forest auto-correlation and its cross-correlation with quasar positions. This is one of the key goals of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) which started its main survey in May 2021. We present in this paper a study of the contaminants to the lyman-alpha forest which are mainly caused by correlated signals introduced by the spectroscopic data processing pipeline as well as astrophysical contaminants due to foreground absorption in the intergalactic medium. Notably, an excess signal caused by the sky background subtraction noise is present in the lyman-alpha auto-correlation in the first line-of-sight separation bin. We use synthetic data to isolate this contribution, we also characterize the effect of spectro-photometric calibration noise, and propose a simple model to account for both effects in the analysis of the lyman-alpha forest. We then measure the auto-correlation of the quasar flux transmission fraction of low redshift quasars, where there is no lyman-alpha forest absorption but only its contaminants. We demonstrate that we can interpret the data with a two-component model: data processing noise and triply ionized Silicon and Carbon auto-correlations. This result can be used to improve the modeling of the lyman-alpha auto-correlation function measured with DESI.

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Cited by 9 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. DESI 2024 VI: Cosmological Constraints from the Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

    astro-ph.CO 2024-04 accept novelty 7.0

    First-year DESI BAO data are consistent with flat LambdaCDM and, when combined with CMB, show a 2.5-3.9 sigma preference for evolving dark energy (w0 > -1, wa < 0) that strengthens with certain supernova datasets.

  2. Lyman-$\alpha$ forest holography: 3D predictions from 1D measurements

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    One-dimensional Lyman-α forest power spectrum measurements, propagated through the ForestFlow emulator, predict three-dimensional clustering that matches DESI BAO and ACCEL-2 simulation results.

  3. DESI DR2 Results IV: Alcock-Paczy\'nski Measurements from the Lyman Alpha Forest and Cosmological Constraints

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    The full shape of DESI DR2 Lyman-alpha forest correlations constrains the distance ratio DM/DH at z=2.33 to 1.0%, twice as precise as BAO alone.

  4. DESI DR2 Results IV: Alcock-Paczy\'nski Measurements from the Lyman Alpha Forest and Cosmological Constraints

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 accept novelty 6.0

    DESI DR2 Lyman-alpha forest full-shape correlations yield a 1% Alcock-Paczyński measurement at z=2.33 and 0.8% distance ratio constraints.

  5. Probing the matter-dominated expansion with multi-redshift Lyman-$\alpha$ BAO from DESI DR2

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    DESI DR2 Lyman-alpha BAO measurements split into three redshift bins trace the expansion rate H(z) over z≈2.1–2.8, yielding a power-law slope n=1.34±0.16 consistent with matter-dominated expansion.

  6. DESI DR2 Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest Multipoles

    astro-ph.CO 2026-03 conditional novelty 6.0

    A Legendre-multipole BAO analysis of the DESI DR2 Lyα forest yields αiso=0.9997±0.0096 and αAP=0.9986±0.0276, consistent with the baseline, using an unsmoothed positive-definite covariance.

  7. DESI 2024 IV: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest

    astro-ph.CO 2024-04 accept novelty 6.0

    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.

  8. Validation of the DESI DR2 Ly$\alpha$ forest full-shape analysis

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    The DESI DR2 Lyman-alpha full-shape analysis passes validation for BAO and Alcock-Paczynski parameters on 400 mocks and blinded data, while f-sigma-8 is rejected due to a roughly 10% mock bias.

  9. DESI DR2 Results I: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest

    astro-ph.CO 2025-03 accept novelty 4.0

    DESI DR2 delivers 0.65% precision BAO measurements from the LyA forest at z_eff=2.33, with D_H/r_d = 8.632 ± 0.098 ± 0.026 and D_M/r_d = 38.99 ± 0.52 ± 0.12.