Optimally Mapping Large-scale Structures with Luminous Sources
Abstract
Intensity mapping has emerged as a promising tool to probe the three-dimensional structure of the universe. The traditional approach of galaxy redshift surveys is based on individual galaxy detection, typically performed by thresholding and digitizing large-scale intensity maps. By contrast, intensity mapping uses the integrated emission from all sources in a 3D pixel (or voxel) as an analog tracer of large-scale structure. In this work, we develop a formalism to quantify the performance of both approaches when measuring large-scale structures. We compute the Fisher information of an arbitrary observable, derive the optimal estimator, and study its performance as a function of source luminosity function, survey resolution, instrument sensitivity, and other survey parameters. We identify regimes where each approach is advantageous and discuss optimal strategies for different scenarios. To determine the best strategy for any given survey, we develop a metric that is easy to compute from the source luminosity function and the survey sensitivity, and we demonstrate the application with several planned intensity mapping surveys.
Additional Information
© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2018 September 17; revised 2019 February 7; accepted 2019 April 18; published 2019 May 29. We are grateful to helpful discussions with the Caltech ObsCos group and the participants in the workshop "Cosmological Signals from Cosmic Dawn to the Present" held in the Aspen Center for Physics. Part of the research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. R.d.P. and O.D. acknowledge the generous support from the Heising-Simons Foundation.Attached Files
Published - Cheng_2019_ApJ_877_86.pdf
Submitted - 1809.06384.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 95893
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190529-155805403
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- Created
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2019-05-29Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-03-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field