Synthetic spectra for Lyman-α forest analysis in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Herrera-Alcantar, Hiram K., Muñoz-Gutiérrez, Andrea, Tan, Ting, González-Morales, Alma X., Font-Ribera, Andreu, Guy, Julien, Moustakas, John, Kirkby, David, Armengaud, E., Bault, A., Cabayol-Garcia, L., Chaves-Montero, J., Cuceu, A., de la Cruz, R., García, L., Gordon, C., Iršič, V., Karaçaylı, N., Le Goff, J., Montero-Camacho, P., Niz, G., Pérez-Ràfols, I., Ramírez-Pérez, C., Ravoux, C., Walther, M., Aguilar, J., Ahlen, S., Brooks, D., Claybaugh, T., Dawson, K., de la Macorra, A., Doel, P., Forero-Romero, J., Gaztañaga, E., Gontcho, S. Gontcho A., Honscheid, K., Kehoe, R., Kisner, T., Landriau, M., Levi, Michael E., Manera, M., Martini, P., Meisner, A., Miquel, R., Nie, J., Palanque-Delabrouille, N., Poppett, C., Rezaie, M., Rossi, G., Sanchez, E., Seo, H., Tarlé, G., Weaver, B. and Zhou, Z. (2025) Synthetic spectra for Lyman-α forest analysis in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics: 141. ISSN 1475-7516
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Synthetic data sets are used in cosmology to test analysis procedures, to verify that systematic errors are well understood and to demonstrate that measurements are unbiased. In this work we describe the methods used to generate synthetic datasets of Lyman-α quasar spectra aimed for studies with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). In particular, we focus on demonstrating that our simulations reproduces important features of real samples, making them suitable to test the analysis methods to be used in DESI and to place limits on systematic effects on measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). We present a set of mocks that reproduce the statistical properties of the DESI early data set with good agreement. Additionally, we use a synthetic dataset to forecast the BAO scale constraining power of the completed DESI survey through the Lyman-α forest.
Item Type Article
Identification Number 10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/141
Additional information © 2025 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of Sissa Medialab. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywords baryon acoustic oscillations, cosmological simulations, lyman alpha forest, redshift surveys, astronomy and astrophysics
Date Deposited 09 Mar 2026 13:03
Last Modified 09 Mar 2026 13:03

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