Euclid preparation. Galaxy power spectrum modelling in redshift space

TL;DR

This paper compares three models for redshift-space distortions in galaxy power spectra to optimize cosmological parameter extraction for Euclid data, finding that the ${\rm VDG_\infty}$ and BACCO models outperform EFT, especially on smaller scales.

Contribution

It evaluates and compares the effectiveness of EFT, VDG_\infty, and BACCO models in accurately recovering cosmological parameters from galaxy power spectra.

Findings

${\rm VDG_\infty}$ and BACCO outperform EFT across all scales up to $k_{max} \lesssim 0.35 h\,Mpc^{-1}$.

BACCO saturates in constraining power at intermediate scales and higher redshift.

${\rm VDG_\infty}$ continues to improve constraints beyond $k_{max} \gtrsim 0.30 h\,Mpc^{-1}$.

Abstract

Accurate modelling of redshift-space distortions (RSD) is essential for maximizing the cosmological information extracted from large galaxy redshift surveys. In preparation for the forthcoming analysis of the Euclid spectroscopic data, we investigate three approaches to modelling RSD effects on the power spectrum multipoles of mock H$\alpha$ emission line galaxies. We focus on two one-loop perturbation theory models -- the effective field theory (EFT) and velocity difference generator (${\rm VDG_ \infty}$) -- which differ in their treatment of the real-to-redshift space mapping on small scales, and a third approach, the BACCO emulator, which adopts a hybrid strategy combining perturbation theory with high-resolution N-body simulations. We assess the ability of these models to recover key cosmological parameters, including the expansion rate $h$, the cold dark matter density parameter $\omega_{\rm c}$, and the scalar amplitude $A_{\rm s}$, across four redshift bins spanning $0.9 \leq z \leq 1.8$. In each bin, we find that ${\rm VDG_ \infty}$ and BACCO outperform the EFT model across all scales up to $k_{max} \lesssim 0.35 h\,Mpc^{-1} $. While BACCO saturates in constraining power at intermediate scales and higher redshift, the ${\rm VDG_ \infty}$ model continues to improve parameter constraints beyond $k_{max} \gtrsim 0.30 h\,Mpc^{-1}$. The EFT model, although robust on large scales, exhibits significant parameter biases for $k_{max} \gtrsim 0.25 h\,Mpc^{-1}$, limiting its applicability to Euclid-like H$\alpha$ samples. Among the full perturbation theory-based models, the enhanced treatment of small-scale RSD effects in ${\rm VDG_ \infty}$ improves cosmological parameter constraints by up to a factor of two.