Related papers: On the assumption of Gaussianity for cosmological …
Cosmological large-scale structure analyses based on two-point correlation functions often assume a Gaussian likelihood function with a fixed covariance matrix. We study the impact on cosmological parameter estimation of ignoring the…
The primary science driver for 3D galaxy surveys is their potential to constrain cosmological parameters. Forecasts of these surveys' effectiveness typically assume Gaussian statistics for the underlying matter density, despite the fact…
It is well known that the power spectrum is not able to fully characterize the statistical properties of non-Gaussian density fields. Recently, many different statistics have been proposed to extract information from non-Gaussian…
Cosmological parameter estimation requires that the likelihood function of the data is accurately known. Assuming that cosmological large-scale structure power spectra data are multivariate Gaussian-distributed, we show the accuracy of…
When inferring parameters from a Gaussian-distributed data set by computing a likelihood, a covariance matrix is needed that describes the data errors and their correlations. If the covariance matrix is not known a priori, it may be…
The covariance matrix of the matter power spectrum is a key element of the statistical analysis of galaxy clustering data. Independent realisations of observational measurements can be used to sample the covariance, nevertheless statistical…
Famously, the quantum Fisher information -- the maximum Fisher information over all physical measurements -- is additive for independent copies of a system and the optimal measurement acts locally. We are left to wonder: does the same hold…
We quantify the Fisher information content of the cosmic shear survey two-point function as a function of noise and resolution. The two point information of dark matter saturates at the trans-linear scale. We investigate the impact of…
Likelihood fitting to two-point clustering statistics made from galaxy surveys usually assumes a multivariate normal distribution for the measurements, with justification based on the central limit theorem given the large number of…
The Fisher-matrix formalism is used routinely in the literature on gravitational-wave detection to characterize the parameter-estimation performance of gravitational-wave measurements, given parametrized models of the waveforms, and…
Focusing on the well motivated aperture mass statistics $\Map$, we study the possibility of constraining cosmological parameters using future space based SNAP class weak lensing missions. Using completely analytical results we construct the…
The Fisher information matrix (FIM) plays an important role in the analysis of parameter inference and system design problems. In a number of cases, however, the statistical data distribution and its associated information matrix are either…
We investigate the bias and error in estimates of the cosmological parameter covariance matrix, due to sampling or modelling the data covariance matrix, for likelihood width and peak scatter estimators. We show that these estimators do not…
Parameter inference with an estimated covariance matrix systematically loses information due to the remaining uncertainty of the covariance matrix. Here, we quantify this loss of precision and develop a framework to hypothetically restore…
The Fisher Information Matrix formalism is extended to cases where the data is divided into two parts (X,Y), where the expectation value of Y depends on X according to some theoretical model, and X and Y both have errors with arbitrary…
This lecture note addresses the common misconception that the Gaussian distribution always yields the largest Cram\'er-Rao Bound (CRB). We show that this property only holds under restrictive conditions: specifically, when the mean and…
We study how well the Gaussian approximation is valid for computing the covariance matrices of the convergence power and bispectrum in weak gravitational lensing analyses. We focus on its impact on the cosmological parameter estimations by…
We re-examine a genuine power of weak lensing bispectrum tomography for constraining cosmological parameters, when combined with the power spectrum tomography, based on the Fisher information matrix formalism. To account for the full…
Fisher Information Matrix methods are commonly used in cosmology to estimate the accuracy that cosmological parameters can be measured with a given experiment, and to optimise the design of experiments. However, the standard approach…
The Fisher matrix formalism has in recent times become the standard method for predicting the precision with which various cosmological parameters can be extracted from future data. This approach is fast, and generally returns accurate…