Minimally Parametric Power Spectrum Reconstruction from the Lyman-alpha Forest

Details Minimally Parametric Power Spectrum Reconstruction from the Lyman-alpha Forest Minimally Parametric Power Spectrum Reconstruction from the Lyman-alpha Forest

2010-10-07

arxiv.org/abs/1010.1519v2

MNRAS, May 2011,Vol 413, Issue 3, 1717--1728

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

11 pages plus appendices, 8 figures. v2: matches version published in MNRAS. Some clarifications to discussion and exposition,

Scientific paper

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18245.x

Current results from the Lyman alpha forest assume that the primordial power spectrum of density perturbations follows a simple power law form, with running. We present the first analysis of Lyman alpha data to study the effect of relaxing this strong assumption on primordial and astrophysical constraints. We perform a large suite of numerical simulations, using them to calibrate a minimally parametric framework for describing the power spectrum. Combined with cross-validation, a statistical technique which prevents over-fitting of the data, this framework allows us to reconstruct the power spectrum shape without strong prior assumptions. We find no evidence for deviation from scale-invariance; our analysis also shows that current Lyman alpha data do not have sufficient statistical power to robustly probe the shape of the power spectrum at these scales. In contrast, the ongoing Baryon Oscillation Sky Survey (BOSS) will be able to do so with high precision. Furthermore, this near-future data will be able to break degeneracies between the power spectrum shape and astrophysical parameters.

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