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A galaxy survey measures positions and other properties of a selected galaxy sample. A spectroscopic survey uses cosmological redshift to estimate radial distance, with corrections for peculiar velocity. Its volume, selection, galaxy bias, and sampling determine which matter power spectrum modes can be inferred.

A survey depth $R\sim 400\mathrm{Mpc}$ makes wavelengths substantially larger than its volume poorly measurable. A characteristic inverse depth is $1/R\simeq 2.5\times 10^{-3}\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$; a Fourier wavelength that fits across a dimension $L$ instead requires $k\gtrsim 2\pi /L$. For $L$ between $R$ and $2R$, this is roughly $0.008$--$0.016\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$. A limited sky patch can have smaller transverse dimensions, so its survey window function raises the practical minimum in those directions. An indicative useful band for a broad survey is around $10^{-2}\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$ and above, including scales near equality if its volume is large enough.

There is no upper wavenumber determined by depth alone. Mean separation of observed galaxies, galaxy power spectrum shot noise, angular/redshift resolution, and nonlinear clustering set it. Straightforward linear inference is typically restricted to roughly $k\lesssim 0.1\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$ at low redshift, with smaller scales requiring modelling. The magnitude limit does not specify the galaxy comoving number density, so a more precise sampling cutoff cannot be deduced from these data.

The two measurements are complementary. The cosmic microwave background samples a large volume at an early epoch when relevant perturbations are mostly linear, and is free of galaxy bias; its matter-spectrum inference is indirect and depends on projection, cosmological parameters, foregrounds, and cosmic variance. A galaxy survey gives three-dimensional late-time information and can reach smaller scales, but observes biased, discrete tracers: galaxy bias, nonlinear gravitational growth, redshift-space distortions, selection effects, and galaxy power spectrum shot noise must be controlled. Combining both constrains the initial spectrum and its subsequent growth more strongly than either alone, while their overlapping modes test the inferred evolution.

A survey window function describes the finite spatial coverage and weights of a galaxy survey. Multiplication by this window in position space mixes Fourier modes by convolution in Fourier space. A dimension of extent $L$ cannot robustly measure wavelengths much larger than $L$; the fundamental wavenumber of a periodic box of that size is $2\pi /L$.