Bias Minimisation in POTENT

Abstract

Much current interest in cosmology has revolved around the peculiar velocity field of galaxies. Many methods have been proposed to derive this, probably the most prominent being POTENT (Dekel et al. 1990). However, this is prone to many forms of systematic error or bias. Here, we examine some of the methods currently used to minimise these biases, particularly Malmquist corrections, and highlight some of their pitfalls. As an alternative we propose an iterative scheme based on Monte Carlo simulations of POTENT that shows noticeable improvement over the other methods considered.