The effect of fibre collisions on the galaxy power spectrum multipoles

Fibre-fed multi-object spectroscopic surveys, with their ability to collect an unprecedented number of redshifts, currently dominate large-scale structure studies. However, physical constraints limit these surveys from successfully collecting redshifts from galaxies too close to each other on the focal plane. This ultimately leads to significant systematic effects on galaxy clustering measurements. Using simulated mock catalogues, we demonstrate that fibre collisions have a significant impact on the power spectrum, P(k), monopole and quadrupole that exceeds sample variance at scales smaller than k ~ 0.1 h Mpc^-1. We present two methods to account for fibre collisions in the power spectrum. The first, statistically reconstructs the clustering of fibre-collided galaxy pairs by modelling the distribution of the line-of-sight displacements between them. It also properly accounts for fibre collisions in the shot-noise correction term of the P(k) estimator. Using this method, we recover the true P(k) monopole of the mock catalogues with residuals of < 0.5 per cent at k = 0.3 h Mpc^-1 and < 4 per cent at k = 0.83 h Mpc^-1 - a significant improvement over existing correction methods. The quadrupole, however, does not improve significantly. The second method models the effect of fibre collisions on the power spectrum as a convolution with a configuration space top-hat function that depends on the physical scale of fibre collisions. It directly computes theoretical predictions of the fibre-collided P(k) multipoles and reduces the influence of smaller scales to a set of nuisance parameters. Using this method, we reliably model the effect of fibre collisions on the monopole and quadrupole down to the scale limits of theoretical predictions. The methods we present in this paper will allow us to robustly analyse galaxy power spectrum multipole measurements to much smaller scales than previously possible.