Fewer mocks and less noise: Reducing the dimensionality of cosmological observables with subspace projections

Abstract

Creating accurate and low-noise covariance matrices represents a formidable challenge in modern-day cosmology. We present a formalism to compress arbitrary observables into a small number of bins by projection into a model-specific subspace that minimizes the prior-averaged log-likelihood error. The lower dimensionality leads to a dramatic reduction in covariance matrix noise, significantly reducing the number of mocks that need to be computed. Given a theory model, a set of priors, and a simple model of the covariance, our method works by using singular value decompositions to construct a basis for the observable that is close to Euclidean; by restricting to the first few basis vectors, we can capture almost all the constraining power in a lower-dimensional subspace. Unlike conventional approaches, the method can be tailored for specific analyses and captures non-linearities that are not present in the Fisher matrix, ensuring that the full likelihood can be reproduced. The procedure is validated with full-shape analyses of power spectra from BOSS DR12 mock catalogs, showing that the 96-bin power spectra can be replaced by 12 subspace coefficients without biasing the output cosmology; this allows for accurate parameter inference using only $\sim 100$ mocks. Such decompositions facilitate accurate testing of power spectrum covariances; for the largest BOSS data chunk, we find that: (a) analytic covariances provide accurate models (with or without trispectrum terms); and (b) using the sample covariance from the MultiDark-Patchy mocks incurs a $\sim 0.5\sigma$ shift in $\Omega_m$, unless the subspace projection is applied. The method is easily extended to higher order statistics; the $\sim 2000$-bin bispectrum can be compressed into only $\sim 10$ coefficients, allowing for accurate analyses using few mocks and without having to increase the bin sizes.