English

Power Spectrum, Bispectrum, 2- and 3-Point Correlation Function, and Beyond

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-08-12 v1

Abstract

N-Point Correlation Functions, usually with N = 2, 3, and their Fourier-space analogs power spectrum and bispectrum, are major tools used in cosmology to capture the clustering of large-scale structure. We outline how the clustering these functions capture emerges, explain that inflation produces a 2PCF or power spectrum but that subsequent evolution eventually produces a 3PCF or bispectrum, and beyond (and that inflation may do so as well at some level). Furthermore, in principle the Universe also has a 4PCF or trispectrum, and even clustering beyond. For each of these tools, we discuss the motivation, the practical details of how they are estimated, the current algorithms used to compute them, the theory behind them, and recent applications to data. Throughout, we focus on positioning the reader to find and apply these algorithms with some understanding, linking to public code for each algorithm to the fullest extent possible.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.06762,
  title  = {Power Spectrum, Bispectrum, 2- and 3-Point Correlation Function, and Beyond},
  author = {Zachary Slepian and Farshad Kamalinejad and Alessandro Greco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.06762},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

This is a pre-print of a chapter for the Encyclopedia of Astrophysics (edited by I. Mandel, section editor C. Howlett) to be published by Elsevier as a Reference Module

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:42:05.126Z