RascalC: A Jackknife Approach to Estimating Single and Multi-Tracer Galaxy Covariance Matrices [CEA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1904.11070


To make use of clustering statistics from large cosmological surveys, accurate and precise covariance matrices are needed. We present a new code to estimate large scale galaxy correlation function covariances in arbitrary survey geometries that produces results comparable to a suite of $10^6$ mocks in $\sim 100$ CPU-hours, orders-of-magnitude faster than pre-existing codes. As in previous works, non-Gaussianity is encapsulated via a shot-noise rescaling, with calibrations performed by comparing models to jackknifed survey data. The approach requires data from only a single dataset (without an input correlation function model), and the deviations between large scale model covariances from a mock survey and those from a large suite of mocks are found to be be indistinguishable from noise. In addition, the choice of input mock are shown to be irrelevant for desired noise levels below $\sim 10^5$ mocks. Coupled with its generalization to multi-tracer data-sets, this shows the algorithm to be an excellent tool for analysis, reducing the need for large numbers of mock simulations to be computed.

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O. Philcox, D. Eisenstein, R. O’Connell, et. al.
Fri, 26 Apr 19
50/69

Comments: 28 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. Code is available at this http URL with documentation at this http URL