Probing the limits of cosmological information from the Lyman-α forest 2-point correlation functions

The standard cosmological analysis with the Lyα forest relies on a continuum fitting procedure that suppresses information on large scales and distorts the three-dimensional correlation function on all scales. In this work, we present the first cosmological forecasts without continuum fitting distortion in the Lyα forest, focusing on the recovery of large-scale information. Using idealized synthetic data, we compare the constraining power of the full shape of the Lyα forest auto-correlation and its cross-correlation with quasars using the baseline continuum fitting analysis versus the true continuum. We find that knowledge of the true continuum enables a ∼ 10% reduction in uncertainties on the Alcock-Paczyński (AP) parameter and the matter density, Ωm. We also explore the impact of large-scale information by extending the analysis up to separations of 240 h -1Mpc along and across the line of sight. The combination of these analysis choices can recover significant large-scale information, yielding up to a ∼ 15% improvement in AP constraints. This improvement is analogous to extending the Lyα forest survey area by ∼ 40%.