The observed galaxy power spectrum acquires relativistic corrections from lightcone effects, and these corrections grow on very large scales. Future galaxy surveys in optical, infrared and radio bands will probe increasingly large wavelength modes and reach higher redshifts. In order to exploit the new data on large scales, an accurate analysis requires inclusion of the relativistic effects. This is especially the case for primordial non-Gaussianity and for extending tests of dark energy models to horizon scales. Here we investigate the latter, focusing on models where the dark energy interacts non-gravitationally with dark matter. Interaction in the dark sector can also lead to large-scale deviations in the power spectrum. If the relativistic effects are ignored, the imprint of interacting dark energy will be incorrectly identified and thus lead to a bias in constraints on interacting dark energy on very large scales.

Quintessence can cluster only on horizon scales. What is the effect on the observed matter distribution? To answer this, we need a relativistic approach that goes beyond the standard Newtonian calculation and deals properly with large scales. Such an approach has recently been developed for the case when dark energy is vacuum energy, which does not cluster at all. We extend this relativistic analysis to deal with dynamical dark energy. Using three quintessence potentials as examples, we compute the angular power spectrum for the case of an HI intensity map survey. Compared to the concordance model with the same small-scale power at z = 0, quintessence boosts the angular power by up to ∼15% at high redshifts, while power in the two models converges at low redshifts. The difference is mainly due to the background evolution, driven mostly by the normalization of the power spectrum today. The dark energy perturbations make only a small contribution on the largest scales, and a negligible contribution on smaller scales. Ironically, the dark energy perturbations remove the false boost of large-scale power that arises if we impose the (unphysical) assumption that the dark energy is smooth.PACS numbers: 95.36.+x, 98.62.Py, 95.35.+d