The Clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Measuring H(z) and D_A(z) at z = 0.57 with Clustering Wedges

Abstract

We analyze the 2D correlation function of the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS sample of massive galaxies of the ninth data release to measure cosmic expansion H and the angular diameter distance D_A at a mean redshift of <z> = 0.57. We apply, for the first time, a new correlation function technique called clustering wedges. Using a physically motivated model, the anisotropic baryonic acoustic feature in the galaxy sample is detected at a significance level of 4.7 sigma compared to a featureless model. The baryonic acoustic feature is used to obtain model independent constraints cz/H/r_s = 12.28 +- 0.82 (6.7 per-cent accuracy) and D_A/r_s = 9.05 +- 0.27 (3.0 per-cent) with a correlation coefficient of -0.5, where r_s is the sound horizon scale at the end of the baryonic drag era. We conduct thorough tests on the data and 600 simulated realizations, finding robustness of the results regardless of the details of the analysis method. Combining with r_s constraints from the Cosmic Microwave Background we obtain H(0.57) = 90.8 +- 6.2 kms-1Mpc-1 and D_A(0.57) = 1386 +- 45 Mpc. We use simulations to forecast results of the final BOSS CMASS data set. We apply the reconstruction technique on the simulations demonstrating that the sharpening of the anisotropic baryonic acoustic feature should improve the detection as well as tighten constraints of H and D_A by 30 per-cent on average.

24 pages (19 main, 5 appendix), including 14 figures. Submitted to MNRAS for review

References in corpus (15)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 10 and 11 galaxy samples
• Why your model parameter confidences might be too optimistic -- unbiased estimation of the inverse covariance matrix
• Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Ly-α forest of BOSS quasars
• Improving Cosmological Distance Measurements by Reconstruction of the Baryon Acoustic Peak
• Nonlinear Evolution of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
• On the Robustness of the Acoustic Scale in the Low-Redshift Clustering of Matter
• Large-Scale Anisotropic Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
• Reconstructing Baryon Oscillations: A Lagrangian Theory Perspective
• Constraining Anisotropic Baryon Oscillations
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological constraints from the full shape of the clustering wedges
• Galaxy Bias and its Effects on the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations Measurements
• Forecasting the Cosmological Constraints with Anisotropic Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from Multipole Expansion
• Constraining dark energy via baryon acoustic oscillations in the (an)isotropic light-cone power spectrum

Cited by in corpus (47)

• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 10 and 11 galaxy samples
• Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Lyα forest of BOSS DR11 quasars
• The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Improved Distance Measurements to z = 1 with Reconstruction of the Baryonic Acoustic Feature
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Observational systematics and baryon acoustic oscillations in the correlation function
• The Clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Including covariance matrix errors
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: tomographic BAO analysis of DR12 combined sample in configuration space
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the full shape of the clustering wedges in the data release 10 and 11 galaxy samples
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: single-probe measurements from CMASS anisotropic galaxy clustering
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Cosmological implications of the Fourier space wedges of the final sample
• Probing cosmology and gravity with redshift-space distortions around voids
• Reconciling Planck results with low redshift astronomical measurements
• Modelling the number density of Halpha emitters for future spectroscopic near-IR space missions
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: theoretical systematics and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the galaxy correlation function
• A clear and measurable signature of modified gravity in the galaxy velocity field
• The clustering of the SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR14 quasar sample: anisotropic clustering analysis in configuration-space
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: tomographic BAO analysis of DR12 combined sample in Fourier space
• The Clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III DR10 Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: No Detectable Colour Dependence of Distance Scale or Growth Rate Measurements
• The Clustering of Galaxies in the Completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: single-probe measurements from DR12 galaxy clustering -- towards an accurate model
• The foreground wedge and 21 cm BAO surveys
• Streaming velocities and the baryon-acoustic oscillation scale
• Distribution function approach to redshift space distortions. Part V: perturbation theory applied to dark matter halos
• Model-independent determination of curvature parameter by using $H(z)$ and $D_A(z)$ data pair from BAO measurement
• Reannihilation of self-interacting dark matter
• Reionization on Large Scales IV: Predictions for the 21 cm signal incorporating the light cone effect
• Testing cosmic geometry without dynamic distortions using voids
• Measuring the 2D Baryon Acoustic Oscillation signal of galaxies in WiggleZ: Cosmological constraints
• Exploring scalar field dynamics with Gaussian processes
• Power-law cosmology, SN Ia, and BAO
• Optimized Clustering Estimators for BAO Measurements Accounting for Significant Redshift Uncertainty
• The BOSS-WiggleZ overlap region II: dependence of cosmic growth on galaxy type
• SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Analysis of Potential Systematics in Fitting of Baryon Acoustic Feature
• Redshift-space distortions from the cross-correlation of photometric populations
• The redshift-space galaxy two-point correlation function and baryon acoustic oscillations
• Cosmological Tests using Redshift Space Clustering in BOSS DR11
• Cosmological Constraints from the Anisotropic Clustering Analysis using BOSS DR9
• Simulating the Anisotropic Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies with Subhalos: A Direct Confrontation with Observation and Cosmological Implications
• Geometric and dynamic distortions in anisotropic galaxy clustering
• A joint 2- and 3-point clustering analysis of the VIPERS PDR2 catalogue at z~1: breaking the degeneracy of cosmological parameters
• Pairwise velocities in the "Running FLRW" cosmological model
• Cosmological constraints on dark energy
• The clustering of LRGs in the DECaLS DR8 footprint: distance constraints from baryon acoustic oscillations using photometric redshifts
• Smoothing the redshift distributions of random samples for the baryon acoustic oscillations : applications to the SDSS-III BOSS DR12 and QPM mock samples
• Measuring the reionization 21 cm fluctuations using clustering wedges
• 2D BAO vs 3D BAO: Hints for new physics?
• Extended Fast Action Minimisation method: application to SDSS-DR12 Combined Sample
• Cosmic distance determination from photometric redshift samples using BAO peaks only
• Projected two- and three-point statistics: Forecasts and mitigation of non-linear RSDs