Applications of the Halo Model to Large Scale Structure Measurements of the Luminous Red Galaxies

Download or read book Applications of the Halo Model to Large Scale Structure Measurements of the Luminous Red Galaxies written by Beth Ann Reid and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power spectrum of density fluctuations in the evolved universe provides constraints on cosmological parameters that are complementary to cosmic microwave background and other astronomical probes. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) sample probes a volume of ∼ 3 (Gpc) 3, and systematic errors in modeling the nonlinearities limit our ability to extract information on the shape of the linear power spectrum. There are three main effects that distort the observed power spectrum from the linear power spectrum: nonlinear gravitational evolution, redshift space distortions, and a nonlinear relation between the galaxy density field and the underlying matter density field. In this thesis we introduce a new method to mitigate the latter two distortions and rely on carefully tuned N-body simulations to model the first.