Disentangling the effects of Doppler velocity and primordial non-Gaussianity in galaxy power spectra

We study the detectability of large-scale velocity effects on galaxy clustering, by simulating galaxy surveys and combining the clustering of different types of tracers of large-scale structure. We employ a set of lognormal mocks that simulate a 20.000 deg2 near-complete survey up to z=0.8, in which each galaxy mock traces the spatial distribution of dark matter of that mock with a realistic bias prescription. We find that the ratios of the monopoles of the power spectra of different types of tracers carry most of the information that can be extracted from a multi-tracer analysis. In particular, we show that with a multi-tracer technique it will be possible to detect velocity effects with ≳3σ. Finally, we investigate the degeneracy of these effects with the (local) non-Gaussianity parameter fNL, and how large-scale velocity contributions could be mistaken for the signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity.