Two-point correlation functions on the light cone: testing theoretical predictions against N-body simulations

Abstract

We examine the light-cone effect on the two-point correlation functions using numerical simulations for the first time. Specifically, we generate several sets of dark matter particle distributions on the light-cone up to z=0.4 and z=2 over the field-of-view of πdegree^2 from cosmological N-body simulations. Then we apply the selection function to the dark matter distribution according to the galaxy and QSO luminosity functions. Finally we compute the two-point correlation functions on the light-cone both in real and in redshift spaces using the pair-count estimator and compare with the theoretical predictions. We find that the previous theoretical modeling for nonlinear gravitational evolution, linear and nonlinear redshift-distortion, and the light-cone effect including the selection function is in good agreement with our numerical results, and thus is an accurate and reliable description of the clustering in the universe on the light-cone.