Presentation Archive

The Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structures

Simon Foreman (Stanford)

October 19, 2015

Abstract: The Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structures (EFTofLSS) is a perturbative framework that describes the clustering of matter on weakly nonlinear cosmological scales. By augmenting the standard fluid description of dark matter with an effective stress tensor that parametrizes the effects of small-scale physics on large-scale clustering, the EFTofLSS provides a systematic way to compute nonlinear corrections to observables (such as power spectra) relevant for current and future surveys, without the convergence issues that have plagued previous perturbative approaches. In this talk, I will review the motivation for, and essential features of, the EFTofLSS, and present a collection of results that demonstrate the theory’s ability to match the output of N-body simulations with high precision. These results indicate that perturbative techniques might be able to access much more of the information in large-scale structure than previously believed.