Impact of bias and redshift-space modelling for the halo power spectrum: testing the effective field theory of large-scale structure

We study the impact of different bias and redshift-space models on the halo power spectrum, quantifying their effect by comparing the fit to a subset of realizations taken from the WizCOLA suite. These provide simulated power spectrum measurements between k(min) = 0.03 h/Mpc and k(max) = 0.29 h/Mpc, constructed using the comoving Lagrangian acceleration method. For the bias prescription we include (i) simple linear bias; (ii) the McDonald & Roy model and (iii) its coevolution variant introduced by Saito et al.; and (iv) a very general model including all terms up to one-loop and corrections from advection. For the redshift-space modelling we include the Kaiser formula with exponential damping and the power spectrum provided by (i) tree-level perturbation theory and (ii) the Halofit prescription; (iii) one-loop perturbation theory, also with exponential damping; and (iv) an effective field theory description, also at one-loop, with damping represented by the EFT subtractions. We quantify the improvement from each layer of modelling by measuring the typical improvement in chi(2) when fitting to a member of the simulation suite. We attempt to detect overfitting by testing for compatibility between the best-fit power spectrum per realization and the best-fit over the entire WizCOLA suite. For both bias and the redshift-space map we find that increasingly permissive models yield improvements in chi(2) but with diminishing returns. The most permissive models show modest evidence for overfitting. Accounting for model complexity using the Bayesian Information Criterion, we argue that standard perturbation theory up to one-loop, or a related model such as that of Taruya, Nishimichi & Saito, coupled to the Saito et al. coevolution bias model, is likely to provide a good compromise for near-future galaxy surveys operating with comparable k(max).