Lensing convergence and the neutrino mass scale in galaxy redshift surveys

TL;DR

This paper highlights the critical role of lensing effects in galaxy clustering analyses, showing that neglecting lensing biases the estimation of key cosmological parameters, especially the neutrino mass scale.

Contribution

It demonstrates that including lensing contributions is essential for accurate cosmological parameter estimation in galaxy redshift surveys, particularly for neutrino mass.

Findings

Neglecting lensing biases scalar spectral index estimation.

Ignoring lensing causes significant shifts in neutrino mass estimates.

Including lensing improves the accuracy of cosmological parameter constraints.

Abstract

We demonstrate the importance of including the lensing contribution in galaxy clustering analyses with large galaxy redshift surveys. It is well known that radial cross-correlations between different redshift bins of galaxy surveys are dominated by lensing. But we show here that also neglecting lensing in the autocorrelations within one bin severely biases cosmological parameter estimation with redshift surveys. It leads to significant shifts for several cosmological parameters, most notably the scalar spectral index and the neutrino mass scale. Especially the latter parameter is one of the main targets of future galaxy surveys.