Simulating redshift-space distortions for galaxy pairs with wide angular separation

Abstract

The analysis of redshift-space distortions (RSD) within galaxy surveys provides constraints on the amplitude of peculiar velocities induced by structure growth, thereby allowing tests of General Relativity on extremely large scales. The next generation of galaxy redshift surveys, such as the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and the Euclid experiment, will survey galaxies out to z= 2, over 10 000–20 000 deg2. In such surveys, galaxy pairs with large comoving separation will preferentially have a wide angular separation. In standard plane-parallel theory the displacements of galaxy positions due to RSD are assumed to be parallel for all galaxies, but this assumption will break down for wide-angle pairs. Szalay, Matsubara & Landy, Szapudi, and Papai & Szapudi provided a methodology, based on tripolar spherical harmonics expansion, for computing the redshift-space correlation function for all angular galaxy pair separations. In this paper, we introduce a new procedure for analysing wide-angle effects in numerical simulations. We are able to separate, demonstrate and fit each of the effects described by the wide-angle RSD theory. Our analysis highlights some of the nuances of dealing with wide-angle pairs and shows that the effects are not negligible even for relatively small angles. This analysis will help to ensure the full exploitation of future surveys for RSD measurements, which are currently confined to pair separations less than ∼80 h−1 Mpc out to z≃ 0.5.