Effects of Sampling on Measuring Galaxy Count Probabilities

We investigate in detail the effects of sampling on our ability to accurately reconstruct the distribution of galaxies from galaxy surveys. We use a simple probability theory approach, Bayesian classifier theory and Bayesian transition probabilities. We find the best Bayesian estimator for the case of low sampling rates, and show that even in the optimal case certain higher order characteristics of the distribution are irretrievably washed out by sparse sampling: we illustrate this by a simple model for cluster selection. We show that even choosing an optimal threshold, there are nonzero numbers for both misidentified clusters and true clusters missed. The introduction of sampling has an effect on the distribution function that is similar to convolution. Deconvolution is possible and given in the paper, although it might become unstable as sampling rates become low. These findings have important consequences on planning and strategies of future galaxy surveys.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. postscript of 16 pages and three figures uuencoded, gzipped, tarre

StePS: A Multi-GPU Cosmological N-body Code for Compactified Simulations

We present the multi-GPU realization of the StePS (Stereographically Projected Cosmological Simulations) algorithm with MPI-OpenMP-CUDA hybrid parallelization and nearly ideal scale-out to multiple compute nodes. Our new zoom-in cosmological direct N-body simulation method simulates the infinite universe with unprecedented dynamic range for a given amount of memory and, in contrast to traditional periodic simulations, its fundamental geometry and topology match observations. By using a spherical geometry instead of periodic boundary conditions, and gradually decreasing the mass resolution with radius, our code is capable of running simulations with a few gigaparsecs in diameter and with a mass resolution of $\sim 10^{9}M_{\odot}$ in the center in four days on three compute nodes with four GTX 1080Ti GPUs in each. The code can also be used to run extremely fast simulations with reasonable resolution for fitting cosmological parameters. These simulations are useful for prediction needs of large surveys. The StePS code is publicly available for the research community

Higher Order Statistics from the Apm Galaxy Survey

We apply a new statistics, the factorial moment correlators, to density maps obtained from the APM survey. The resulting correlators are all proportional to the two point correlation function, substantially amplified, with an amplification nearly exponential with the total rank of the correlators. This confirms the validity of the hierarchical clustering assumption on the dynamic range examined, corresponding to 0.5 \hmpc - 50 \hmpc in three dimensional space. The Kirkwood superposition with loop terms is strongly rejected. The structure coefficients of the hierarchy are also fitted. The high quality of the APM catalog enabled us to disentangle the various contributions from the power spectrum, small scale nonlinear clustering, and combinatorial effects, all of which affect the amplification of the correlators. These effects should appear in correlations of clusters in a similar fashion.Comment: 30 pages text, 3 pages tables, 5 figures, uuencoded tarred postscrip