Abstract
We present a method for fast evaluation of the covariance matrix for a two-point galaxy correlation function (2PCF) measured with the Landy-Szalay estimator. The standard way of evaluating the covariance matrix consists in running the estimator on a large number of mock catalogs, and evaluating their sample covariance. With large random catalog sizes (random-to-data objects' ratio M >> 1) the computational cost of the standard method is dominated by that of counting the data-random and random-random pairs, while the uncertainty of the estimate is dominated by that of data-data pairs. We present a method called Linear Construction (LC), where the covariance is estimated for small random catalogs with a size of M = 1 and M = 2, and the covariance for arbitrary M is constructed as a linear combination of the two. We show that the LC covariance estimate is unbiased. We validated the method with PINOCCHIO simulations in the range r = 20-200 h(-1) Mpc. With M = 50 and with 2h(-1) Mpc bins, the theoretical speedup of the method is a factor of 14. We discuss the impact on the precision matrix and parameter estimation, and present a formula for the covariance of covariance.
Dokumententyp: | Zeitschriftenartikel |
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Fakultät: | Physik > Astronomie und Astrophysik, Kosmologie |
Themengebiete: | 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik |
ISSN: | 0004-6361 |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Dokumenten ID: | 112758 |
Datum der Veröffentlichung auf Open Access LMU: | 02. Apr. 2024, 07:41 |
Letzte Änderungen: | 10. Mai 2024, 09:29 |