Relativistic and wide-angle corrections to galaxy power spectra

Abstract

Galaxy surveys contain information on the largest scales via wide-angle and relativistic contributions. By combining two different galaxy populations, we can suppress the strong cosmic variance on ultra-large scales and thus enhance the detectability of the signals. The relativistic Doppler and Sachs-Wolfe effects are of a similar magnitude to the leading wide-angle corrections, so that it is important to treat them together, especially since they can partially cancel. The power spectra depend on the choice of line of sight for each galaxy pair and we present results for a general line of sight. Then we estimate the detection significance of the auto- and cross-power spectra for a variety of cases. We use two futuristic galaxy samples based on a `beyond-DESI' survey and a SKA Phase 2 survey, covering 15,000 deg2 up to z=1. We find a detection significance for the total relativistic wide-angle effects that ranges from ~ 5σ to >15σ, depending on the line-of-sight configuration.