Don't miss the forest for the trees: the Lyman alpha forest power spectrum in effective field theory

Abstract: We derive an effective field theory (EFT) for cosmological Lyman alpha forest fluctuations valid for the power spectrum at the one-loop order. The bottom-up'' EFT expansion at the level of the transmitted flux is identical to the line-of-sight dependent bias model first derived by Desjacques et al. We confirm this result by atop-down'' derivation based on the exponential map of the optical depth field. Specifically, we show that the combination of the exponential map and conditions of renormalizability generates the same EFT expansion as the ``bottom-up'' approach. In passing, we point out inconsistencies of the tree-level perturbative expansion of the exponential map without counterterms. To facilitate practical applications, we generalize the FFTLog method for efficient calculations of one-loop integrals from new line-of-sight dependent operators. Finally, we compare the one-loop EFT model against data from the Sherwood hydrodynamic simulation. The theory fits the data with sub percent accuracy up to $k= $ 3 $h$Mpc$^{-1}$ at $z= 2.8$ for both 3D and 1D correlations. Our model can be readily used for cosmological full-shape analyses of Lyman alpha forest data.