The simple way to measure evolving dark energy without prior-volume effects

Maria Tsedrik, Pedro Carrilho, Chiara Moretti

Published: 2025/9/11

Abstract

We present a simple yet effective method to resolve prior-volume effects, also known as projection effects, in full-shape analyses of the power spectrum multipoles within the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure (EFTofLSS). By re-defining the EFTofLSS nuisance parameters to incorporate the contribution from the parameters impacting the amplitude of the EFTofLSS modelling components, we substantially mitigate projection effects. With the re-parametrisation the actual posterior maximum values are within the marginalised credible interval, eliminating significant shifts observed in the baseline analysis. We demonstrate the robustness of this method in full-shape $w_0w_a$CDM analyses on synthetic data in BOSS DR12 and DESI DR1 setups. For the evolving dark energy model, we then analyse the BOSS DR12 measurements, in combination with BAO information (from BOSS DR12, 6DF, SDSS DR7 MGS and eBOSS DR16 surveys) and 3$\times$2pt measurements from DES Y3 -- all data combinations are converging into the $w_0-w_a$ parameter region preferred by DESI+CMB+SNIa. From total combination of these large-scale structure probes without additional CMB information we find $w_0=-0.72 \pm 0.21, \, w_a=-0.91^{+0.78}_{-0.64}$. Despite the low significance of deviation from standard cosmology, this result underscores the potential of our re-parametrisation approach in delivering low-redshift cosmological constraints. We argue for the use of this approach in spectroscopic Stage IV surveys, where the potential deviation from standard cosmology can be detected with higher significance.