General Relativistic Description of the Observed Galaxy Power Spectrum:
  Do We Understand What We Measure?
  We extend the general relativistic description of galaxy clustering developed
in Yoo, Fitzpatrick, and Zaldarriaga (2009). For the first time we provide a
fully general relativistic description of the observed matter power spectrum
and the observed galaxy power spectrum with the linear bias ansatz. It is
significantly different from the standard Newtonian description on large scales
and especially its measurements on large scales can be misinterpreted as the
detection of the primordial non-Gaussianity even in the absence thereof. The
key difference in the observed galaxy power spectrum arises from the real-space
matter fluctuation defined as the matter fluctuation at the hypersurface of the
observed redshift. As opposed to the standard description, the shape of the
observed galaxy power spectrum evolves in redshift, providing additional
cosmological information. While the systematic errors in the standard Newtonian
description are negligible in the current galaxy surveys at low redshift,
correct general relativistic description is essential for understanding the
galaxy power spectrum measurements on large scales in future surveys with
redshift depth z>3. We discuss ways to improve the detection significance in
the current galaxy surveys and comment on applications of our general
relativistic formalism in future surveys.
