Dark Energy Survey Year-1 results: galaxy mock catalogues for BAO

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2018 papers

Abstract

Mock catalogues are a crucial tool in the analysis of galaxy surveys data, both for the accurate computation of covariance matrices, and for the optimization of analysis methodology and validation of data sets. In this paper, we present a set of 1800 galaxy mock catalogues designed to match the Dark Energy Survey Year-1 BAO sample The simulated samples were built upon HALOGEN (Avila et al. 2015) halo catalogues, based on a 2LPT density field with an empirical halo bias. For each of them, a light-cone is constructed by the superposition of snapshots in the redshift range 0.45 < z < 1.4. Uncertainties introduced by so-called photometric redshifts estimators were modelled with a double-skewed-Gaussian curve fitted to the data. We populate haloes with galaxies by introducing a hybrid halo occupation distribution-halo abundance matching model with two free parameters. These are adjusted to achieve a galaxy bias evolution b(z ph ) that matches the data at the 1 level in the range 0.6 < z ph < 1.0. We further analyse the galaxy mock catalogues and compare their clustering to the data using the angular correlation function w( ), the comoving transverse separation clustering < 0.8 (s ) and the angular power spectrum C , finding them in agreement. This is the first large set of three-dimensional {RA,Dec.,z} galaxy mock catalogues able to simultaneously accurately reproduce the photometric redshift uncertainties and the galaxy clustering.

Related Papers

• → Constraining dark energy with Hubble parameter measurements: an analysis including future redshift-drift observations(2016)66 cited
• → The Stromlo-APM Redshift Survey. IV. The Redshift Catalog(1996)69 cited
• → Constraints on the Physical Parameters of the Dark Energy Using a Model-Independent Approach(2005)3 cited
• → Redshift Survey of 12 Moderate-redshift Clusters(2022)