Toward the one- and two-loop EFTofLSS for Simons Observatory CMB lensing

Abstract

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing observations are becoming sensitive to non-linear structure formation and baryonic feedback scenarios. The effective field theory of large-scale structure (EFTofLSS) provides a systematic description of matter clustering in the mildly non-linear regime, accounting for baryonic effects through counterterms and offering a consistent framework for cross-correlations with other observables. We perform a Fisher forecast for the joint Simons Observatory temperature, polarization, and CMB lensing likelihood using noiseless data vectors with different baryonic feedback scenarios, modelling non-linear structure formation using the one- and two-loop EFTofLSS. We find that, with a single additional parameter, obtained through a principal-component analysis of the EFTofLSS counterterms, both the one- and two-loop EFTofLSS provide a good fit across the baryonic feedback scenarios considered. This parameter is closely aligned with the effective AGN heating temperature $T_{\rm AGN}$. Both loop orders reduce cosmological parameter biases, with only a small loss in marginalized precision at fixed scale cuts. We find that the one-loop EFTofLSS yields unbiased estimates over a range of scales similar to the dark-matter-only model, while the two-loop EFTofLSS extends this range to smaller scales and accommodates different feedback scenarios more robustly. When each model is evaluated at the smallest scales for which its cosmological parameter estimates remain unbiased, the two-loop EFTofLSS yields stronger constraints than the dark-matter-only model.