KIPAC Tea Talk, Speaker: Shirley Ho (LBL)

Title:

The signature of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Primordial Non-gaussianities on Lyman-alpha forest

Abstract:

We present the first simulation of signatures of Baryon Acoustic

Oscillations and Primordial Non-gaussianities on Lyman-alpha forest  data

containing mock quasar sight-lines. We use large dark-matter only

simulations onto which we paint the Lyman alpha field using the  fluctuating

Gunn-Peterson approximation. We argue that this approach  should be

sufficient for the mean signature on the scales of interest.  Our results

indicate that Lyman alpha flux provides a good tracer of  the underlying

dark matter field on large scales and that redshift  space distortions are

well described by a simple linear theory  prescription.

We also investigate the effect of a fluctuating photo-ionizing  background

using a simplified model and show that both the signature  of BAO and fnl

are not affected by the fluctuating UV background when  the amplitude of

fluctuation is small.