Cosmological Constraints from a Combination of Galaxy Clustering & Lensing -- II. Fisher Matrix Analysis. (arXiv:1207.0004v1 [astro-ph.CO])

Cosmological Constraints from a Combination of Galaxy Clustering & Lensing -- II. Fisher Matrix Analysis. (arXiv:1207.0004v1 [astro-ph.CO]):
We quantify the accuracy with which the cosmological parameters
characterizing the energy density of matter (\Omega_m), the amplitude of the
power spectrum of matter fluctuations (\sigma_8), the energy density of
neutrinos (\Omega_{\nu}) and the dark energy equation of state (w_0) can be
constrained using data from large galaxy redshift surveys. We advocate a joint
analysis of the abundance of galaxies, galaxy clustering, and the galaxy-galaxy
weak lensing signal in order to simultaneously constrain the halo occupation
statistics (i.e., galaxy bias) and the cosmological parameters of interest. We
parameterize the halo occupation distribution of galaxies in terms of the
conditional luminosity function and use the analytical framework of the halo
model described in our companion paper (van den Bosch et al. 2012), to predict
the relevant observables. By performing a Fisher matrix analysis, we show that
a joint analysis of these observables, even with the precision with which they
are currently measured from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, can be used to obtain
tight constraints on the cosmological parameters, fully marginalized over
uncertainties in galaxy bias. We demonstrate that the cosmological constraints
from such an analysis are nearly uncorrelated with the halo occupation
distribution constraints, thus, minimizing the systematic impact of any
imperfections in modeling the halo occupation statistics on the cosmological
constraints. In fact, we demonstrate that the constraints from such an analysis
are both complementary to and competitive with existing constraints on these
parameters from a number of other techniques, such as cluster abundances,
cosmic shear and/or baryon acoustic oscillations, thus paving the way to test
the concordance cosmological model.