Testing one-loop galaxy bias: Cosmological constraints from the power spectrum

We investigate the impact of different assumptions in the modeling of one-loop galaxy bias on the recovery of cosmological parameters, as a follow-up of the analysis done in the first paper of the series at fixed cosmology. To carry out these tests we focus on the real-space galaxy-power spectrum from a set of three different synthetic galaxy samples whose clustering properties are meant to match the ones of the CMASS and LOWZ catalogs of BOSS and the SDSS Main Galaxy Sample. We investigate the relevance of allowing for either short range nonlocality or scale-dependent stochasticity by fitting the real-space galaxy autopower spectrum or the combination of galaxy-galaxy and galaxy-matter power spectrum. From a comparison among the goodness of fit ( χ 2 ), unbiasedness of cosmological parameters (FoB), and figure of merit (FoM) of the model, we find that a simple four-parameter model (linear, quadratic, cubic nonlocal bias, and constant shot noise) with fixed quadratic tidal bias provides a robust modeling choice for the autopower spectrum of the three galaxy samples, up to k max = 0.3 h Mpc − 1 and for an effective volume of 6 h − 3 Gpc 3 . Instead, a joint analysis of the two observables fails at larger scales, and a model extension with either higher derivatives or scale-dependent shot noise is necessary to reach a similar k max , with the latter providing the most accurate and stable results. Throughout the majority of the paper, we fix the description of the nonlinear matter evolution using a hybrid perturbative-N-body approach, respresso, that was found in the first paper to be the closest performing to the measured matter spectrum. We also test the impact of different modeling assumptions based on perturbative approaches, such as galilean-invariant Renormalised Perturbation Theory (gRPT) and effective field theory (EFT). In all cases, we find the inclusion of scale-dependent shot noise to increase the range of validity of the model in terms of FoB and χ 2 . Interestingly, these model extensions with additional free parameters do not necessarily lead to an increase in the maximally achievable FoM for the cosmological parameters ( h , Ω c h 2 , A s ) , which are generally consistent with those of the simpler model at smaller k max .A. P. and M. C. acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through Grants No. PGC2018-102021-B-100 and No. ESP2017-89838-C3-1-R, and EU Grants No. LACEGAL 734374 and No. EWC 776247 with European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) funds. IEEC is funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. A. E. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (Grant No. ERC-StG-716532-PUNCA). A. G. S. acknowledges support from the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC-2094–390783311. A. P. and A. G. S. would like to thank Daniel Farrow, Jiamin Hou, Martha Lippich and Agne Semenaite for their help and useful discussions. The analysis presented here has been performed on the high-performance computing resources of the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) in Garching. This research made use of matplotlib, a Python library for publication quality graphics [105].Peer reviewe