The ACCEL2 Project: Precision Measurements of EFT Parameters and BAO Peak Shifts for the Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest

TL;DR

This paper presents high-precision measurements of Lyman-alpha forest bias parameters using EFT, assesses non-linear effects on BAO measurements, and demonstrates the robustness of BAO analysis for upcoming large-scale structure surveys.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed EFT-based bias parameter measurements for the Lyman-alpha forest and analyzes their impact on BAO scale measurements, supporting future cosmological studies.

Findings

EFT model fits flux power spectrum with <2% accuracy up to k=2 h/Mpc

Non-linear clustering introduces small biases in BAO scale measurements

Lya forest BAO measurements are robust to theoretical modeling uncertainties

Abstract

We present precision measurements of the bias parameters of the one-loop power spectrum model of the Lyman-alpha (Lya) forest, derived within the effective field theory of large-scale structure (EFT). We fit our model to the three-dimensional flux power spectrum measured from the ACCEL2 hydrodynamic simulations. The EFT model fits the data with an accuracy of below 2 percent up to a wavenumber of k = 2 h/Mpc. Further, we analytically derive how non-linearities in the three-dimensional clustering of the Lya forest introduce biases in measurements of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) scaling parameters in radial and transverse directions. From our EFT parameter measurements, we obtain a theoretical error budget of -0.2 (-0.3) percent for the radial (transverse) parameters at redshift two. This corresponds to a shift of -0.3 (0.1) percent for the isotropic (anisotropic) distance measurements. We provide an estimate for the shift of the BAO peak for Lya-quasar cross-correlation measurements assuming analytical and simulation-based scaling relations for the non-linear quasar bias parameters resulting in a shift of -0.2 (-0.1) percent for the radial (transverse) dilation parameters, respectively. This analysis emphasizes the robustness of Lya forest BAO measurements to the theory modeling. We provide informative priors and an error budget for measuring the BAO feature -- a key science driver of the currently observing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Our work paves the way for full-shape cosmological analyses of Lya forest data from DESI and upcoming surveys such as the Prime Focus Spectrograph, WEAVE-QSO, and 4MOST.