DESI Mock Challenge VII: halo and galaxy catalogs with the Bias Assignment Method by Andrés Balaguera-Antolínez et al. on Monday 21 November

This paper presents the generation of a suit of mock catalogs of dark matter

halos and galaxies, aiming at the assessment of precise covariance matrix for

cosmological analysis. The set of halo mock catalogs display accurate summary

statistics and detailed assignment of halo properties (e.g., velocity

dispersion, halo mass), enabling the possibility of using models of halo

occupation distribution (HOD) to construct mock catalogs with different galaxy

types. In particular, we generate mock catalogs based on HOD for emission-line

galaxies, key target for experiments such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic

Instrument (DESI). To this end, we rely on the Bias Assignment Method (BAM), in

conjunction with the Scinet LIghtCone Simulations of halo mock catalogs (at

$z\sim 1$) as training set. We demonstrate the high accuracy of the mocks in

the one (abundance), two-(e.g. power spectrum), three- (e.g. bispectrum), four-

(covariance matrices of two point statistics), and six-point statistics

(covariance matrices of three-point statistics), both in real and redshift

space. BAM offers a robust way to produce fast and accurate halo distributions

which can be used to generate a variety of multi-tracer catalogs with precise

covariance matrices of a number of cosmological probes.

arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10640v1