Reconstruction of halo power spectrum from redshift-space galaxy distribution: Cylinder-grouping method and halo exclusion effect

Abstract

The peculiar velocity field measured by redshift-space distortions (RSD) in galaxy surveys provides a unique probe of the growth of large-scale structure. However, systematic effects arise when including satellite galaxies in the clustering analysis. Since satellite galaxies tend to reside in massive haloes with a greater halo bias, the inclusion boosts the clustering power. In addition, virial motions of the satellite galaxies cause a significant suppression of the clustering power due to non-linear RSD effects. We develop a novel method to recover the redshiftspace power spectrum of haloes from the observed galaxy distribution by minimizing the contamination of satellite galaxies. The cylinder-grouping method (CGM)we study effectively excludes satellite galaxies from a galaxy sample. However, we find that this technique produces apparent anisotropies in the reconstructed halo distribution over all the scales which mimic RSD. On small scales, the apparent anisotropic clustering is caused by exclusion of haloes within the anisotropic cylinder used by the CGM. On large scales, the misidentification of different haloes in the large-scale structures, aligned along the line of sight, into the same CGM group causes the apparent anisotropic clustering via their cross-correlation with the CGM haloes. We construct an empirical model for the CGM halo power spectrum, which includes correction terms derived using the CGM window function at small scales as well as the linear matter power spectrum multiplied by a simple anisotropic function at large scales. We apply this model to a mock galaxy catalogue at z = 0.5, designed to resemble Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS galaxies, and find that our model can predict both the monopole and quadrupole power spectra of the host haloes up to k < 0.5 h Mpc-1 to within 5 per cent.