Power Spectrum Correlations Induced by Nonlinear Clustering

Gravitational clustering is an intrinsically non-linear process that generates significant non-Gaussian signatures in the density field. We consider how these affect power spectrum determinations from galaxy and weak-lensing surveys. Non-Gaussian effects not only increase the individual error bars compared to the Gaussian case but, most importantly, lead to non-trivial cross-correlations between different band-powers. We calculate the power-spectrum covariance matrix in non-linear perturbation theory (weakly non-linear regime), in the hierarchical model (strongly non-linear regime), and from numerical simulations in real and redshift space. We discuss the impact of these results on parameter estimation from power spectrum measurements and their dependence on the size of the survey and the choice of band-powers. We show that the non-Gaussian terms in the covariance matrix become dominant for scales smaller than the non-linear scale, depending somewhat on power normalization. Furthermore, we find that cross-correlations mostly deteriorate the determination of the amplitude of a rescaled power spectrum, whereas its shape is less affected. In weak lensing surveys the projection tends to reduce the importance of non-Gaussian effects. Even so, for background galaxies at redshift z=1, the non-Gaussian contribution rises significantly around l=1000, and could become comparable to the Gaussian terms depending upon the power spectrum normalization and cosmology. The projection has another interesting effect: the ratio between non-Gaussian and Gaussian contributions saturates and can even decrease at small enough angular scales if the power spectrum of the 3D field falls faster than 1/k².