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Lagrangian or Eulerian; Real or Fourier? Not All Approaches to Large-Scale Structure Are Created Equal

We present a pedagogical systematic investigation of the accuracy of Eulerian and Lagrangian perturbation theories of large-scale structure. We show that significant differences exist between them especially when trying to model the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). We find that the best available model of the BAO in real space is the Zel'dovich Approximation (ZA), giving an accuracy of <~3% at redshift of z=0 in modelling the matter 2-pt function around the acoustic peak. All corrections to the ZA around the BAO scale are perfectly perturbative in real space. Any attempt to achieve better precision requires calibrating the theory to simulations because of the need to renormalize those corrections. In contrast, theories which do not fully preserve the ZA as their solution, receive O(1) corrections around the acoustic peak in real space at z=0, and are thus of suspicious convergence at low redshift around the BAO. As an example, we find that a similar accuracy of 3% for the acoustic peak is achieved by Eulerian Standard Perturbation Theory (SPT) at linear order only at z~4. Thus even when SPT is perturbative, one needs to include loop corrections for z<~4 in real space. In Fourier space, all models perform similarly, and are controlled by the overdensity amplitude, thus recovering standard results. However, that comes at a price. Real space cleanly separates the BAO signal from non-linear dynamics. In contrast, Fourier space mixes signal from short mildly non-linear scales with the linear signal from the BAO to the level that non-linear contributions from short scales dominate. Therefore, one has little hope in constructing a systematic theory for the BAO in Fourier space.