No Arabic abstract
We measure the acoustic scale from the angular power spectra of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) Data Release 8 imaging catalog that includes 872,921 galaxies over ~ 10,000 deg^2 between 0.45<z<0.65. The extensive spectroscopic training set of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) luminous galaxies allows precise estimates of the true redshift distributions of galaxies in our imaging catalog. Utilizing the redshift distribution information, we build templates and fit to the power spectra of the data, which are measured in our companion paper, Ho et al. 2011, to derive the location of Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) while marginalizing over many free parameters to exclude nearly all of the non-BAO signal. We derive the ratio of the angular diameter distance to the sound horizon scale D_A/r_s= 9.212 + 0.416 -0.404 at z=0.54, and therefore, D_A= 1411+- 65 Mpc at z=0.54; the result is fairly independent of assumptions on the underlying cosmology. Our measurement of angular diameter distance D_A is 1.4 sigma higher than what is expected for the concordance LCDM (Komatsu et al. 2011), in accordance to the trend of other spectroscopic BAO measurements for z >~ 0.35. We report constraints on cosmological parameters from our measurement in combination with the WMAP7 data and the previous spectroscopic BAO measurements of SDSS (Percival et al. 2010) and WiggleZ (Blake et al. 2011). We refer to our companion papers (Ho et al. 2011; de Putter et al. 2011) for investigations on information of the full power spectrum.
We analyse the large-scale angular correlation function (ACF) of the CMASS luminous galaxies (LGs), a photometric-redshift catalogue based on the Data Release 8 (DR8) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III. This catalogue contains over $600 , , 000$ LGs in the range $0.45 leq z leq 0.65$, which was split into four redshift shells of constant width. First, we estimate the constraints on the redshift-space distortion (RSD) parameters $bsigma_8$ and $fsigma_8$, where $b$ is the galaxy bias, $f$ the growth rate and $sigma_8$ is the normalization of the perturbations, finding that they vary appreciably among different redshift shells, in agreement with previous results using DR7 data. When assuming constant RSD parameters over the survey redshift range, we obtain $fsigma_8 = 0.69 pm 0.21$, which agrees at the $1.5sigma$ level with Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR9 spectroscopic results. Next, we performed two cosmological analyses, where relevant parameters not fitted were kept fixed at their fiducial values. In the first analysis, we extracted the baryon acoustic oscillation peak position for the four redshift shells, and combined with the sound horizon scale from 7-year textit{Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe} $(WMAP7)$ to produce the constraints $Omega_{m}=0.249 pm 0.031$ and $w=-0.885 pm 0.145$. In the second analysis, we used the ACF full shape information to constrain cosmology using real data for the first time, finding $Omega_{m} = 0.280 pm 0.022$ and $f_b = Omega_b/Omega_m = 0.211 pm 0.026$. These results are in good agreement with $WMAP7$ findings, showing that the ACF can be efficiently applied to constrain cosmology in future photometric galaxy surveys.
We present redshift probability distributions for galaxies in the SDSS DR8 imaging data. We used the nearest-neighbor weighting algorithm presented in Lima et al. 2008 and Cunha et al. 2009 to derive the ensemble redshift distribution N(z), and individual redshift probability distributions P(z) for galaxies with r < 21.8. As part of this technique, we calculated weights for a set of training galaxies with known redshifts such that their density distribution in five dimensional color-magnitude space was proportional to that of the photometry-only sample, producing a nearly fair sample in that space. We then estimated the ensemble N(z) of the photometric sample by constructing a weighted histogram of the training set redshifts. We derived P(z) s for individual objects using the same technique, but limiting to training set objects from the local color-magnitude space around each photometric object. Using the P(z) for each galaxy, rather than an ensemble N(z), can reduce the statistical error in measurements that depend on the redshifts of individual galaxies. The spectroscopic training sample is substantially larger than that used for the DR7 release, and the newly added PRIMUS catalog is now the most important training set used in this analysis by a wide margin. We expect the primary source of error in the N(z) reconstruction is sample variance: the training sets are drawn from relatively small volumes of space. Using simulations we estimated the uncertainty in N(z) at a given redshift is 10-15%. The uncertainty on calculations incorporating N(z) or P(z) depends on how they are used; we discuss the case of weak lensing measurements. The P(z) catalog is publicly available from the SDSS website.
A new determination of the sound horizon scale in angular coordinates is presented. It makes use of ~ 0.6 x 10^6 Luminous Red Galaxies, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data, with photometric redshifts. The analysis covers a redshift interval that goes from z=0.5 to z=0.6. We find evidence of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) signal at the ~ 2.3 sigma confidence level, with a value of theta_{BAO} (z=0.55) = (3.90 pm 0.38) degrees, including systematic errors. To our understanding, this is the first direct measurement of the angular BAO scale in the galaxy distribution, and it is in agreement with previous BAO measurements. We also show how radial determinations of the BAO scale can break the degeneracy in the measurement of cosmological parameters when they are combined with BAO angular measurements. The result is also in good agreement with the WMAP7 best-fit cosmology. We obtain a value of w_0 = -1.03 pm 0.16 for the equation of state parameter of the dark energy, Omega_M = 0.26 pm 0.04 for the matter density, when the other parameters are fixed. We have also tested the sensitivity of current BAO measurements to a time varying dark energy equation of state, finding w_a = 0.06 pm 0.22 if we fix all the other parameters to the WMAP7 best-fit cosmology.
The 2-point angular correlation function $w(theta)$ (2PACF), where $theta$ is the angular separation between pairs of galaxies, provides the transversal Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) signal almost model-independently. In this paper we use 409,337 luminous red galaxies in the redshift range $z = [0.440,0.555]$ obtained from the tenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR10) to estimate $theta_{rm{BAO}}(z)$ from the 2PACF at six redshift {shells}. Since noise and systematics can hide the BAO signature in the $w - theta$ plane, we also discuss some criteria to localize the acoustic bump. We identify two sources of model-dependence in the analysis, namely, the value of the acoustic scale from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements and the correction in the $theta_{rm{BAO}}(z)$ position due to projection effects. Constraints on the dark energy equation-of-state parameter w$(z)$ from the $theta_{rm{BAO}}(z)$ diagram are derived, as well as from a joint analysis with current CMB measurements. We find that the standard $Lambda$CDM model as well as some of its extensions are in good agreement with these $theta_{rm{BAO}}(z)$ measurements.
We report five measurements of the transverse baryonic acoustic scale, $theta_{BAO}$, obtained from the angular two-point correlation function calculation for Luminous Red Galaxies of the eleventh data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Each measurement has been obtained by considering a thin redshift shell ($delta z = 0.01$ and $0.02$) in the interval $ z in [0.565, 0.660] $, which contains a large density of galaxies ($sim 20,000$ galaxies/redshift shell). Differently from the three-dimensional Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) measurements, these data points are obtained almost model-independently and provide a Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)-independent way to estimate the sound horizon $ r_s $. Assuming a time-dependent equation-of-state parameter for the dark energy, we also discuss constraints on the main cosmological parameters from $theta_{BAO}$ and CMB data.