The Effect of Covariance Estimator Error on Cosmological Parameter Constraints

By Scott Dodelson, M. Schneider. 2013

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Extracting parameter constraints from cosmological observations requires accurate determination of the covariance matrix for use in the likelihood function. We show here that uncertainties in the elements of the covariance matrix propagate directly to increased uncertainties in cosmological parameters. When the covariance matrix is determined by simulations, the resulting variance of the each parameter increases by a factor of order $1+N_b/N_s$ where $N_b$ is the number of bands in the measurement and $N_s$ is the number of simulations.

Subfields: Applied Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd81c1eb611e126381fc0c2a1b62f8e5a895ce6b

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In Applied Mathematics

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: observational systematics and baryon acoustic oscillations in the correlation function (2016, methodology): “These factors are defined in Hartlap et al. (2007); Dodelson & Schneider (2013); Percival et al. (2014) and we apply them in the same way as in, e.g., Anderson et al. (2014b).”
The clustering of the SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR14 quasar sample: First measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations between redshift 0.8 and 2.2 (2017, methodology): “These factors are defined in Hartlap, Simon & Schneider (2007), Dodelson & Schneider (2013) and Percival et al. (2014); we apply the factors in the same way as in, e.g. Anderson et al. (2014).”
COSMOLIKE - cosmological likelihood analyses for photometric galaxy surveys (2016, background): “The number of total bins in the joint data vector can also be limited by the number of independent realizations that can be generated for covariance estimation (Hartlap et al. 2007; Dodelson & Schneider 2013; Taylor et al. 2013).”
The clustering of the SDSS main galaxy sample – II. Mock galaxy catalogues and a measurement of the growth of structure from redshift space distortions at z = 0.15 (2014, background): “There are additional factors that one must apply to uncertainties determined using a covariance matrix that is constructed from a finite number of realisations and to standard deviations determined from those realizations (Dodelson & Schneider 2013; Percival et al. 2014).”
The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Cosmological implications of the configuration-space clustering wedges (2016, background): “…measurements obtained as described in Section 5. used (Taylor, Joachimi & Kitching 2013), its propagation to the derived parameter uncertainties (Dodelson & Schneider 2013; Taylor & Joachimi 2014) and the correct way to include this additional uncertainty in the obtained constraints (Percival…”
The completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: BAO and RSD measurements from anisotropic clustering analysis of the quasar sample in configuration space between redshift 0.8 and 2.2 (2020, background): “In Dodelson & Schneider (2013) it was shown that if the precision matrix is contaminated by the error Ψ = Ψtrue + ∆Ψ, it leads to an additional term in the covariance when expanding the covariance to second order.”
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: mock galaxy catalogues for the BOSS Final Data Release (2015, methodology): “…models may deliver an almost direct computation of error bars and covariance matrices (Hartlap, Simon & Schneider 2007; Hamaus et al. 2010; Dodelson & Schneider 2013; Taylor et al. 2013; MNRAS 456, 4156–4173 (2016) Downloaded from…”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, background): “Vobs×Nbins for the resulting error estimates to be accurate at the ∼ 10% level (Dodelson & Schneider 2013).”
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillation scale in the distribution of galaxies to redshift 1 (2017, background): “These factors are defined in Hartlap, Simon & Schneider (2007), Dodelson & Schneider (2013), and Percival et al. (2014).”