The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: baryon acoustic oscillations in the Data Release 9 spectroscopic galaxy sample

Anderson, Lauren; Aubourg, Eric; Bailey, Stephen; Bizyaev, Dmitry; Blanton, Michael; Bolton, Adam S.; Brinkmann, J.; Brownstein, Joel R.; Burden, Angela; Cuesta, Antonio J.; da Costa, Luiz A. N.; Dawson, Kyle S.; de Putter, Roland; Eisenstein, Daniel J.; Gunn, James E.; Guo, Hong; Hamilton, Jean-Christophe; Harding, Paul; Ho, Shirley; Honscheid, Klaus; Kazin, Eyal; Kirkby, David; Kneib, Jean-Paul; Labatie, Antoine; Loomis, Craig; Lupton, Robert H.; Malanushenko, Elena; Malanushenko, Viktor; Mandelbaum, Rachel; Manera, Marc; Maraston, Claudia; McBride, Cameron K.; Mehta, Kushal T.; Mena, Olga; Montesano, Francesco; Muna, Demetri; Nichol, Robert C.; Nuza, Sebastian E.; Olmstead, Matthew D.; Oravetz, Daniel; Padmanabhan, Nikhil; Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie; Pan, Kaike; Parejko, John; Paris, Isabelle; Percival, Will J.; Petitjean, Patrick; Prada, Francisco; Reid, Beth; Roe, Natalie A.; Ross, Ashley J.; Ross, Nicholas P.; Samushia, Lado; Sanchez, Ariel G.; Schlegel, David J.; Schneider, Donald P.; Scoccola, Claudia G.; Seo, Hee-Jong; Sheldon, Erin S.; Simmons, Audrey; Skibba, Ramin A.; Strauss, Michael A.; Swanson, Molly E. C.; Thomas, Daniel; Tinker, Jeremy L.; Tojeiro, Rita; Magana, Mariana Vargas; Verde, Licia; Wagner, Christian; Wake, David A.; Weaver, Benjamin A.; Weinberg, David H.; White, Martin; Xu, Xiaoying; Yeche, Christophe; Zehavi, Idit and Zhao, Gong-Bo (2012). The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: baryon acoustic oscillations in the Data Release 9 spectroscopic galaxy sample. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 427(4) pp. 3435–3467.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.22066.x

Abstract

We present measurements of galaxy clustering from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). These use the Data Release 9 (DR9) CMASS sample, which contains 264 283 massive galaxies covering 3275 square degrees with an effective redshift ɀ = 0.57 and redshift range 0.43 < ɀ < 0.7. Assuming a concordance ΛCDM cosmological model, this sample covers an effective volume of 2.2 Gpc³, and represents the largest sample of the Universe ever surveyed at this density, ¯n ≈ 3 × 10⁻⁴ h ⁻³ Mpc³. We measure the angle-averaged galaxy correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of 5σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Combining with the SDSS-II luminous red galaxy sample, the detection significance increases to 6.7σ. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance to ɀ = 0.57 relative to the sound horizon D_V/r_s = 13.67 ± 0.22 at ɀ = 0.57. Assuming a fiducial sound horizon of 153.19 Mpc, which matches cosmic microwave background constraints, this corresponds to a distance D_V (ɀ = 0.57) = 2094 ± 34 Mpc. At 1.7 per cent, this is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. We place this result alongside previous BAO measurements in a cosmological distance ladder and find excellent agreement with the current supernova measurements. We use these distance measurements to constrain various cosmological models, finding continuing support for a flat Universe with a cosmological constant.

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