Catalog-level blinding on the bispectrum for DESI-like galaxy surveys

TL;DR

This paper assesses a catalog-level blinding technique for galaxy surveys, demonstrating its effectiveness in preserving unbiased cosmological parameters in bispectrum analyses, crucial for precision cosmology.

Contribution

It evaluates and validates a novel catalog-level blinding scheme tailored for DESI-like surveys, ensuring unbiased cosmological inference in bispectrum analyses.

Findings

Blinding preserves the integrity of cosmological parameters.

The AP+RSD blinding pipeline is effective in realistic survey conditions.

The technique is difficult to unblind accidentally, ensuring analysis integrity.

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of the catalog-level blind analysis technique (blinding) presented in Brieden et al. (2020) in the context of a fixed template power spectrum and bispectrum analysis. This blinding scheme, which is tailored for galaxy redshift surveys similar to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), has two components: the so-called "AP blinding" (concerning the dilation parameters $\alpha_\parallel,\alpha_\bot$) and "RSD blinding'' (redshift space distortions, affecting the growth rate parameter $f$). Through extensive testing, including checks for the RSD part in cubic boxes, the impact of AP blinding on mocks with realistic survey sky coverage, and the implementation of a full AP+RSD blinding pipeline, our analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the technique in preserving the integrity of cosmological parameter estimation when the analysis includes the bispectrum statistic. We emphasize the critical role of sophisticated -- and difficult to accidentally unblind -- blinding methods in precision cosmology.