Tests of redshift-space distortions models in configuration space for the analysis of the BOSS final data release

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2014 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reservedObservations of redshift-space distortions in spectroscopic galaxy surveys offer an attractive method for observing the build-up of cosmological structure, which depends both on the expansion rate of the Universe and our theory of gravity. In preparation for analysis of redshiftspace distortions from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) final data release, we compare a number of analytic and phenomenological models, specified in configuration space, to mock catalogues derived in different ways from several N-body simulations. The galaxies in each mock catalogue have properties similar to those of the higher redshift galaxies measured by BOSS but differ in the details of how small-scale velocities and halo occupancy are determined. We find that all of the analytic models fit the simulations over a limited range of scales while failing at small scales.We discuss which models are most robust and on which scales they return reliable estimates of the rate of growth of structure: we find that models based on some form of resummation can fit our N_body data for BOSS-like galaxies above 30 h-1 Mpc well enough to return unbiased parameter estimatesThe MultiDark Database used in this paper and the web application providing online access to it were constructed as part of the activities of the German Astrophysical Virtua lObservatory as result of a collaboration between the Leibniz-Institute forAstrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Spanish MultiDark Consolider Project CSD2009-0006