Observed galaxy number counts on the light cone up to third order
Phys. Rev. D 112, 083541 – Published 24 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/spyk-1ffl
Abstract
In this work we provide a detailed derivation of the observed galaxy number overdensity obtained by computing cosmological perturbations up to third order in redshift space and on very large scales. We compute all the relativistic and projection effects, arising from the observation of galaxies on the past light cone, including all redshift effects, i.e., peculiar velocities, Sachs-Wolfe (SW) effects, integrated SW effects, gravitational lensing, and time delay terms. Moreover, we have considered all post- and post-post-Born contributions from the photon geodesic equations in order to take into account all possible effects due to the lensing distortions. The derivation is performed in the Poisson gauge. This work largely follows the formalism used in Bertacca et al. pushing it for the first time up to the third perturbative order. This result will be important for a variety of applications, such as a complete estimation of projection effects and the investigation of possible parity violation signatures in the 3- and 4-point galaxy correlation functions.
