The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) Data Release 14 sample includes 80,118 luminous red galaxies (LRGs). By combining these galaxies with the high-redshift tail of the BOSS galaxy sample, we form a sample of LRGs at an effective redshift z=0.72, covering an effective volume of 0.9 Gpc 3 . We account for spurious fluctuations caused by targeting and by redshift failures, which were validated on a set of mock catalogs. This analysis is sufficient to provide a 2.5% measurement of spherically averaged baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), D z rr 0.72 2377 61,fid = = -+ ( ) ( )Mpc, at 2.8σ of significance. Together with the recent quasar-based BAO measurement at z=1.5 and forthcoming emission line galaxy-based measurements, this measurement demonstrates that eBOSS is fulfilling its remit of extending the range of redshifts covered by such measurements, laying the groundwork for forthcoming surveys such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey and Euclid.

We analyze the anisotropic clustering of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) Luminous Red Galaxy Data Release 14 (DR14) sample combined with Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS sample of galaxies in the redshift range 0.6< z <1.0, which consists of 80,118 galaxies from eBOSS and 46,439 galaxies from the BOSS-CMASS sample. The eBOSS-CMASS Luminous Red Galaxy sample has a sky coverage of 1,844 deg 2 , with an effective volume of 0.9 Gpc 3 . The analysis was made in configuration space using a Legendre multipole expansion. The Redshift Space Distortion signal is modeled as a combination of the Convolution Lagrangian Perturbation Model and the Gaussian Streaming Model. We constrain the logarithmic growth of structure times the amplitude of dark matter density fluctuations, f (z eff )σ 8 (z eff ) = 0.454 ± 0.139, and the Alcock-Paczynski dilation scales which constraints the angular diameter distance D A (z e f f ) = 1466.5 ± 136.6(r s /r fid s ) and H(z eff ) = 105.8 ± 16(r fid s /r s )km s −1 Mpc −1 , where r s is the sound horizon at the end of the baryon drag epoch and r fid s is its value in the fiducial cosmology at an effective redshift z eff = 0.72. These results are in full agreement with the current Λ-Cold Dark Matter (Λ-CDM) cosmological model inferred from Planck measurements. This study is the first eBOSS LRG full-shape analysis i.e. including Redshift-Space Distortions (RSD) simultaneously with the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect and the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) scale.

We present the first measurement of the homogeneity index, ℋ, a fractal or Hausdorff dimension of the early Universe from the Planck CMB temperature variations δT in the sky. This characterization of the isotropy scale is model-free and purely geometrical, independent of the amplitude of δT. We find evidence of homogeneity (ℋ = 0) for scales larger than θℋ = 65.9 ± 9.2 deg on the CMB sky. This finding is at odds with the ΛCDM prediction, which assumes a scale invariant infinite universe. Such anomaly is consistent with the well known low quadrupule amplitude in the angular δT spectrum, but quantified in a direct and model independent way. We estimate the significance of our finding for ℋ = 0 using a principal component analysis from the sampling variations of the observed sky. This analysis is validated with theoretical prediction of the covariance matrix and simulations, booth base purely on data or in the ΛCDM prediction. Assuming translation invariance (and flat geometry) we can convert the isotropy scale θℋ into a (comoving) homogeneity scale which is very close to the trapped surface generated by the observed cosmological constant Λ.