Optimising Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Surveys - I: Testing the concordance LCDM cosmology

Abstract

We optimize the design of future spectroscopic redshift surveys for constraining the dark energy via precision measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), with particular emphasis on the design of the Wide-Field Multi-Object Spectrograph (WFMOS). We develop a model that predicts the number density of possible target galaxies as a function of exposure time and redshift. We use this number counts model together with fitting formulae for the accuracy of the BAO measurements to determine the effectiveness of different surveys and instrument designs. We search through the available survey parameter space to find the optimal survey with respect to the dark energy equation-of-state parameters according to the Dark Energy Task Force Figure-of-Merit, including predictions of future measurements from the Planck satellite. We optimize the survey to test the LambdaCDM model, assuming that galaxies are pre-selected using photometric redshifts to have a constant number density with redshift, and using a non-linear cut-off for the matter power spectrum that evolves with redshift. We find that line-emission galaxies are strongly preferred as targets over continuum emission galaxies. The optimal survey covers a redshift range 0.8 < z < 1.4, over the widest possible area (6000 sq. degs from 1500 hours observing time). The most efficient number of fibres for the spectrograph is 2,000, and the survey performance continues to improve with the addition of extra fibres until a plateau is reached at 10,000 fibres. The optimal point in the survey parameter space is not highly peaked and is not significantly affected by including constraints from upcoming supernovae surveys and other BAO experiments.

15 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Cosmology and the Fate of Dilatation Symmetry
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: The Relationship Between Galaxy Properties and Environment at z ~ 1
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO (2SLAQ) Luminous Red Galaxy Survey
• Present and future evidence for evolving dark energy
• Cosmology with the Square Kilometre Array
• Monster Redshift Surveys through Dispersive Slitless Imaging: The Baryon Oscillation Probe

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Clustering of dark matter tracers: generalizing bias for the coming era of precision LSS
• The detectability of baryonic acoustic oscillations in future galaxy surveys
• Dark energy and curvature from a future baryonic acoustic oscillation survey using the Lyman-alpha forest
• Observational constraints on the linear fluctuation growth rate
• Is the Dynamics of Tracking Dark Energy Detectable?
• Luminous Red Galaxy Clustering at z~0.7 - First Results using AAOmega
• The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: small-scale clustering of Lyman Break Galaxies at z < 1