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

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 z = 0.57 and redshift range 0.43 < z < 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¯≈3×10−4h−3 Mpc 3. 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 z = 0.57 relative to the sound horizon DV/rs = 13.67 ± 0.22 at z = 0.57. Assuming a fiducial sound horizon of 153.19 Mpc, which matches cosmic microwave background constraints, this corresponds to a distance DV (z = 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.

Constraining the cosmic deceleration-acceleration transition with type Ia supernova, BAO/CMB and H(z) data

“…The difference in the BAO dataset used in this work from that used in [4] (see Table 1 in this reference) is that here we dropped the measurements from [43] at z = 0.2 (which has one of the largest errors) and at z = 0.35. We considered instead the more precise estimates at z = 0.35 from [13] and at z = 0.57 from [14]. In Fig.…”

“…We use the following datasets: a) observations of type Ia supernovae from the Joint Lightcurve Analysis (JLA) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) and the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) samples [12]; b) observations of baryon acoustic oscillations in the SDSS DR7 [13] and SDSS DR9 [14], in the WiggleZ Survey [15] and in the 6dF Galaxy Survey (6dFGRS) [16]; c) measurements of cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy from 2015 Planck [17] and WMAP9-year [18]; d) observations of the Hubble rate H(z) from [19][20][21][22][23][24]. In the following subsections, the statistical analysis used to deal with those observables is briefly described.…”

Scalar and tensor perturbations in loop quantum cosmology: high-order corrections

“…Utilizing the most accurate CMB, BAO and SN data currently available publicly [41][42][43], we also carry out the CMB likelihood analysis, and find the tightest constraints on (δ(k 0 ), V ), obtained so far in the literature. Even with such tight constraints, the quantum gravitational effects due to the inverse-volume corrections of LQC can be within the range of the detection of the current and forthcoming cosmological experiments [39], provided that σ 1.…”

“…It is interesting to note that the quantum gravitational effects are enhanced by a factor of −1 V , which is absent in [23]. In the following, we run the Cosmological Monte Carlo (CosmoMC) code [40] with the Planck [41], BAO [42], and Supernova Legacy Survey [43] data for the powerlaw potential (5.9) for n = 1, 3 5 , 2 3 , 1 3 , respectively. It is worthwhile to mention that all these potentials can be naturally realized in the axion monodromy inflation motivated by string/M theory [44].…”

Cosmological tests using redshift space clustering in BOSS DR11

“…These weights are described in more detail in [25] and [36]. The total weight for each galaxy is calculated as the product of these weights, i.e., w total = w f ail w FKP w sys .…”