The impact of galaxy bias on cross-correlation tomography

ABSTRACT The cross-correlation of galaxies at different redshifts with other tracers of the large-scale structure can be used to reconstruct the cosmic mean of key physical quantities, and their evolution over billions of years, at high precision. However, a correct interpretation of these measurements must ensure that they are independent of the clustering properties of the galaxy sample used. In this paper, we explore different prescriptions to extract tomographic reconstruction measurements and use the flamingo hydrodynamic simulations to show that a robust estimator, independent of the small-scale galaxy bias, can be constructed. We focus on the tomographic reconstruction of the halo bias-weighted electron pressure $\langle bP_\mathrm{ e}\rangle$ and star formation density $\langle b\rho _{\rm SFR}\rangle$, which can be reconstructed from tomographic analysis of Sunyaev–Zel’dovich and cosmic infrared background maps, respectively. We show that these quantities can be reconstructed with an accuracy of 1–3 per cent over a wide range of redshifts, using different galaxy samples. We also show that these measurements can be accurately interpreted using the halo model, assuming that a sufficiently reliable model can be constructed for the halo mass function, large-scale halo bias, and for the dependence of the physical quantities being reconstructed on halo mass.