Post-inflationary Contamination of Local Primordial Non-Gaussianity in Galaxy Power Spectra

Abstract

The scale-dependent bias of galaxy density contrasts is an important signal to be extracted in constraining local primordial non-Gaussianity ($f_{\rm NL}^{\text{local}}$) from observations of large-scale structure. Constraints so obtained rely on the assumption that horizon-scale features in the galaxy power spectrum are exclusively due to primordial physical mechanisms. Yet, post-inflationary effects can induce modulations to the galaxy number density that appear as horizon-scale, scale-dependent bias. We investigate the effect of two such sources of scale-dependent bias - the free-streaming of light relics and fluctuations in the background of ionising radiation - on precision measurements of local primordial non-Gaussianity $f_{\rm NL}^{\text{local}}$ from galaxy power spectrum measurements. Using the SPHEREx survey as a test case survey reaching $\sigma(f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local}) \lesssim 1$, we show that ignoring the scale-dependent bias induced by free-streaming particles can negatively bias the inferred value of $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local}$ by $\sim 0.1-0.3\sigma$. Ignoring the effect of ionising radiation fluctuations can negatively bias the inferred value of $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local}$ by $ \sim 1\sigma$. The range of biases depends on the source populations and the ranges of scales used in the analysis, as well as the value of the neutrino mass and the modelling of the impact of ionising radiation. If these sources of scale-dependent bias are included in the analysis, forecasts for $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local}$ are unbiased but degraded.