The cosmological light-cone effect on the power spectrum of galaxies and quasars in wide-field redshift surveys

Abstract

We examine observational consequences of the cosmological light-cone effect on the power spectrum of the distribution of galaxies and quasars from upcoming redshift surveys. First we derive an expression for the power spectrum of cosmological objects in real space on a light cone, $P^{\rm LC}_{\rm R,lin}(k)$, which is exact in linear theory of density perturbations. Next we incorporate corrections for the nonlinear density evolution and redshift-space distortion in the formula in a phenomenological manner which is consistent with recent numerical simulations. On the basis of this formula, we predict the power spectrum of galaxies and quasars on the light cone for future redshift surveys taking account of the selection function properly. We demonstrate that this formula provides a reliable and useful method to compute the power spectrum on the light cone given an evolution model of bias.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, to be published in the Astrophysical Journa