Qso Pairs And The Lyman Alpha Forest Observations Simulations And Cosmological Implications

Using a suite of hydrodynamic simulations, anisotropies in the Lyalpha flux correlation function due to redshift-space distortions and spectral smoothing are investigated for 1:8 ≤ z ≤ 3, further enabling future applications of the Alcock-Paczynski test with Lyalpha correlation measurements. Sources of systematic error including limitations in mass-resolution and simulation volume, prescriptions for galactic outflow, and the observationally uncertain mean flux decrement are considered. The latter is found to be dominant. An approximate solution for obtaining the zero-lag cross-correlation for arbitrary spectral resolution is presented, as is a method for implementing the resulting anisotropy corrections while mitigating systematic uncertainty.