  Reconstruction of the linear power spectrum from observational data provides
a way to compare cosmological models to a large amount of data, as Peacock &
Dodds (1994, 1996) have shown. By applying the appropriate corrections to the
observational power spectrum it is possible to recover the underlying linear
power spectrum for any cosmological model. Using extensive N-body simulations
we demonstrate that the method is applicable to a wide range of cosmological
models. However, we find that the recovery of the linear power spectrum from
observations following PD94 is misleading because the corrections are model-
dependent. When we apply the proper corrections for a given model to the
observational power spectrum, we find that no model in our test group recovers
the linear power spectrum well for the bias suggested by PD94 between Abell,
Radio, Optical, and IRAS catalogs 4.5:1.9:1.3:1, with b_IRAS=1. When we allow
b_IRAS to vary we find that: (i)CHDM models give very good fits to observations
if optically-selected galaxies are slightly biased b_Opt=1.1 (ii) Most LCDM
models give worse but acceptable fits if blue galaxies are considerably
antibiased: 0.6<b_Opt<0.9 and fail if optical galaxies are biased. (iii)There
is a universal shape of the recovered linear power spectrum of all LCDM models
over their entire range of explored wavenumbers,0.01<k<0.6h\Mpc. Recovered
spectra of CDM and CHDM models are nearly the same as that of LCDM in the
region 0.01<k<0.2h/Mpc but diverge from this spectrum at higher k.

Astrophysics