Catalog-level blinding on the bispectrum for DESI-like galaxy surveys

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of the catalog-level blind analysis technique (blinding) presented in Brieden et al. (2020) in the context of a fixed template power spectrum and bispectrum analysis. This blinding scheme, which is tailored for galaxy redshift surveys similar to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), has two components: the so-called “AP blinding” (concerning the dilation parameters α∥, α⊥) and “RSD blinding” (redshift space distortions, affecting the growth rate parameter f). Through extensive testing, including checks for the RSD part in cubic boxes, the impact of AP blinding on mocks with realistic survey sky coverage, and the implementation of a full AP+RSD blinding pipeline, our analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the technique in preserving the integrity of cosmological parameter estimation when the analysis includes the bispectrum statistic. We emphasize the critical role of sophisticated — and difficult to accidentally unblind — blinding methods in precision cosmology.