Perturbation theory challenge for cosmological parameters estimation: Matter power spectrum in real space

International audienceWe study the accuracy with which cosmological parameters can be determined from a real space power spectrum of matter density contrast at weakly nonlinear scales using analytical approaches. From power spectra measured in N-body simulations and using the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, the best-fitting cosmological input parameters are determined with several analytical methods as a theoretical template, such as the standard perturbation theory, the regularized perturbation theory, and the effective field theory. We show that at redshift 1, all two-loop level calculations can fit the measured power spectrum down to scales k∼0.2 h Mpc-1, and cosmological parameters are successfully estimated in an unbiased way. Introducing the figure of bias (FoB) and figure of merit (FoM) parameter, we determine the validity range of those models and then evaluate their relative performances. With one free parameter, namely the damping scale, the regularized perturbation theory is found to be able to provide the largest FoM parameter while keeping the FoB in the acceptance range