Building a Better Understanding of the High Redshift BOSS Galaxies as Tools for Cosmology

Abstract

We explore the bluer star-forming population of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III/BOSS CMASS DR11 galaxies at $z>0.55$ to quantify their differences, in terms of redshift-space distortions and large-scale bias, with respect to the luminous red galaxy sample. We perform a qualitative analysis to understand the significance of these differences and whether we can model and reproduce them in mock catalogs. Specifically, we measure galaxy clustering in CMASS on small and intermediate scales ($r\lesssim 50h^{-1}$Mpc) by computing the two-point correlation function $-$ both projected and redshift-space $-$ of these galaxies, and a new statistic, $\Sigma (\pi )$, able to provide robust information about redshift-space distortions and large-scale bias. We interpret our clustering measurements by adopting a Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) scheme that maps them onto high-resolution N-body cosmological simulations to produce suitable mock galaxy catalogs. The traditional HOD prescription can be applied to the red and the blue samples, independently, but this approach is unphysical since it allows the same mock galaxies to be either red or blue. To overcome this failure, we modify the standard formulation and infer the red and the blue mock catalogs directly from the full one, so that they are complementary and non-overlapping. This separation is performed by matching the observed CMASS red and blue galaxy fractions and produces reliable and accurate models.

20 pages, 20 figures

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• Small-scale galaxy clustering in the EAGLE simulation
• Galaxy clustering dependence on the $\left[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{II}\right]$ emission line luminosity in the local Universe
• SHAM through the lens of a hydrodynamical simulation
• [OII] emitters in MultiDark-Galaxies and DEEP2
• Does jackknife scale really matter for accurate large-scale structure covariances?
• A semi-analytical perspective on massive galaxies at $z\sim 0.55$
• The mass-size relation of LRGs from BOSS and DECaLS
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the signatures of galaxy interactions as viewed from small scale galaxy clustering
• Measuring the growth of structure by matching dark matter haloes to galaxies with VIPERS and SDSS
• Improvement of cosmological constraints with the cross correlation between line-of-sight optical galaxy and FRB dispersion measure
• ELG$\times$LRG distribution through dark matter halo dynamics
• Cosmological constraints from galaxy multi-tracers in the nearby Universe
• A semi-analytical perspective on massive red galaxies: I. Assembly history, environment & redshift evolution