Reconstruction within the Zeldovich approximation

Abstract

The Zeldovich approximation, first-order Lagrangian perturbation theory, provides a good description of the clustering of matter and galaxies on large scales. The acoustic feature in the large-scale correlation function of galaxies imprinted by sound waves in the early Universe has been successfully used as a 'standard ruler' to constrain the expansion history of the Universe. The standard ruler can be improved if a process known as density field reconstruction is employed. In this paper, we develop the Zeldovich formalism to compute the correlation function of biased tracers in both real and redshift space using the simplest reconstruction algorithm with a Gaussian kernel and compare to N-body simulations. The model qualitatively describes the effects of reconstruction on the simulations, though its quantitative success depends upon how redshift-space distortions are handled in the reconstruction algorithm.