Fisher Matrix Preloaded -- Fisher4Cast

TL;DR

Fisher4Cast is an open-source, user-friendly software framework for cosmological Fisher Matrix forecasting, featuring visualization tools, GUI, and compatibility with open-source platforms, aiding future survey analysis.

Contribution

It introduces Fisher4Cast, a versatile, extendable Fisher Matrix software with GUI and visualization capabilities, tailored for cosmological survey forecasting.

Findings

New 3-D and 4-D visualizations of forecasting landscape

Analysis of growth and curvature effects on surveys

Open-source release with comprehensive documentation

Abstract

The Fisher Matrix is the backbone of modern cosmological forecasting. We describe the Fisher4Cast software: a general-purpose, easy-to-use, Fisher Matrix framework. It is open source, rigorously designed and tested and includes a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with automated LATEX file creation capability and point-and-click Fisher ellipse generation. Fisher4Cast was designed for ease of extension and, although written in Matlab, is easily portable to open-source alternatives such as Octave and Scilab. Here we use Fisher4Cast to present new 3-D and 4-D visualisations of the forecasting landscape and to investigate the effects of growth and curvature on future cosmological surveys. Early releases have been available at http://www.cosmology.org.za since May 2008 with 750 downloads in the first year. Version 2.2 is made public with this paper and includes a Quick Start guide and the code used to produce the figures in this paper, in the hope that it will be useful to the cosmology and wider scientific communities.