No Arabic abstract
We analyze the anisotropic clustering of massive galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 9 (DR9) sample, which consists of 264,283 galaxies in the redshift range 0.43 < z < 0.7 spanning 3,275 square degrees. Both peculiar velocities and errors in the assumed redshift-distance relation (Alcock-Paczynski effect) generate correlations between clustering amplitude and orientation with respect to the line-of-sight. Together with the sharp baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) standard ruler, our measurements of the broadband shape of the monopole and quadrupole correlation functions simultaneously constrain the comoving angular diameter distance (2190 +/- 61 Mpc) to z=0.57, the Hubble expansion rate at z=0.57 (92.4 +/- 4.5 km/s/Mpc), and the growth rate of structure at that same redshift (d sigma8/d ln a = 0.43 +/- 0.069). Our analysis provides the best current direct determination of both DA and H in galaxy clustering data using this technique. If we further assume a LCDM expansion history, our growth constraint tightens to d sigma8/d ln a = 0.415 +/- 0.034. In combination with the cosmic microwave background, our measurements of DA, H, and growth all separately require dark energy at z > 0.57, and when combined imply Omega_{Lambda} = 0.74 +/- 0.016, independent of the Universes evolution at z<0.57. In our companion paper (Samushia et al. prep), we explore further cosmological implications of these observations.
We perform a tomographic analysis of structure growth and expansion rate from the anisotropic galaxy clustering of the combined sample of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 12, which covers the redshift range of $0.2<z<0.75$. In order to extract the redshift information of anisotropic galaxy clustering, we analyse this data set in nine overlapping redshift slices in configuration space and perform the joint constraints on the parameters $(D_V, F_{mathrm{AP}}, fsigma_8)$ using the correlation function multipoles. The analysis pipeline is validated using the MultiDark-Patchy mock catalogues. We obtain a measurement precision of $1.5%-2.9%$ for $D_V$, $5.2%-9%$ for $F_{mathrm{AP}}$ and $13.3%-24%$ for $f sigma_8$, depending on the effective redshift of the slices. We report a joint measurement of $(D_V, F_{mathrm{AP}}, fsigma_8)$ with the full covariance matrix in nine redshift slices. We use our joint BAO and RSD measurement combined with external datasets to constrain the gravitational growth index $gamma$, and find $gamma=0.656 pm 0.057$, which is consistent with the $Lambda$CDM prediction within 95% CL.
With the largest spectroscopic galaxy survey volume drawn from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), we can extract cosmological constraints from the measurements of redshift and geometric distortions at quasi-linear scales (e.g. above 50 $h^{-1}$Mpc). We analyze the broad-range shape of the monopole and quadrupole correlation functions of the BOSS Data Release 12 (DR12) CMASS galaxy sample, at the effective redshift $z=0.59$, to obtain constraints on the Hubble expansion rate $H(z)$, the angular-diameter distance $D_A(z)$, the normalized growth rate $f(z)sigma_8(z)$, and the physical matter density $Omega_mh^2$. We obtain robust measurements by including a polynomial as the model for the systematic errors, and find it works very well against the systematic effects, e.g., ones induced by stars and seeing. We provide accurate measurements ${D_A(0.59)r_{s,fid}/r_s$ $rm Mpc$, $H(0.59)r_s/r_{s,fid}$ $km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}$, $f(0.59)sigma_8(0.59)$, $Omega_m h^2}$ = ${1427pm26$, $97.3pm3.3$, $0.488 pm 0.060$, $0.135pm0.016}$, where $r_s$ is the comoving sound horizon at the drag epoch and $r_{s,fid}=147.66$ Mpc is the sound scale of the fiducial cosmology used in this study. The parameters which are not well constrained by our galaxy clustering analysis are marginalized over with wide flat priors. Since no priors from other data sets, e.g., cosmic microwave background (CMB), are adopted and no dark energy models are assumed, our results from BOSS CMASS galaxy clustering alone may be combined with other data sets, i.e., CMB, SNe, lensing or other galaxy clustering data to constrain the parameters of a given cosmological model. The uncertainty on the dark energy equation of state parameter, $w$, from CMB+CMASS is about 8 per cent. The uncertainty on the curvature fraction, $Omega_k$, is 0.3 per cent. We do not find deviation from flat $Lambda$CDM.
We explore the benefits of using a passively evolving population of galaxies to measure the evolution of the rate of structure growth between z=0.25 and z=0.65 by combining data from the SDSS-I/II and SDSS-III surveys. The large-scale linear bias of a population of dynamically passive galaxies, which we select from both surveys, is easily modeled. Knowing the bias evolution breaks degeneracies inherent to other methodologies, and decreases the uncertainty in measurements of the rate of structure growth and the normalization of the galaxy power-spectrum by up to a factor of two. If we translate our measurements into a constraint on sigma_8(z=0) assuming a concordance cosmological model and General Relativity (GR), we find that using a bias model improves our uncertainty by a factor of nearly 1.5. Our results are consistent with a flat Lambda Cold Dark Matter model and with GR.
We investigate the anisotropic clustering of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 12 (DR12) sample, which consists of $1,198,006$ galaxies in the redshift range $0.2 < z < 0.75$ and a sky coverage of $10,252,$deg$^2$. We analyse this dataset in Fourier space, using the power spectrum multipoles to measure Redshift-Space Distortions (RSD) simultaneously with the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect and the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) scale. We include the power spectrum monopole, quadrupole and hexadecapole in our analysis and compare our measurements with a perturbation theory based model, while properly accounting for the survey window function. To evaluate the reliability of our analysis pipeline we participate in a mock challenge, which resulted in systematic uncertainties significantly smaller than the statistical uncertainties. While the high-redshift constraint on $fsigma_8$ at $z_{rm eff}=0.61$ indicates a small ($sim 1.4sigma$) deviation from the prediction of the Planck $Lambda$CDM model, the low-redshift constraint is in good agreement with Planck $Lambda$CDM. This paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering dataset from BOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined with others in~citet{Alam2016} to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS.
We study the clustering of galaxies, as a function of their colour, from Data Release Ten (DR10) of the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. We select 122,967 galaxies with 0.43 < z < 0.7 into a Blue sample and 131,969 into a Red sample based on k+e corrected (to z=0.55) r-i colours and i band magnitudes. The samples are chosen to each contain more than 100,000 galaxies, have similar redshift distributions, and maximize the difference in clustering amplitude. The Red sample has a 40% larger bias than the Blue (b_Red/b_Blue = 1.39+-0.04), implying the Red galaxies occupy dark matter halos with an average mass that is 0.5 log Mo greater. Spherically averaged measurements of the correlation function, xi 0, and the power spectrum are used to locate the position of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature of both samples. Using xi 0, we obtain distance scales, relative to our reference LCDM cosmology, of 1.010+-0.027 for the Red sample and 1.005+-0.031 for the Blue. After applying reconstruction, these measurements improve to 1.013+/-0.020 for the Red sample and 1.008+-0.026 for the Blue. For each sample, measurements of xi 0 and the second multipole moment, xi 2, of the anisotropic correlation function are used to determine the rate of structure growth, parameterized by fsigma 8. We find fsigma 8,Red = 0.511+-0.083, fsigma 8,Blue = 0.509+/-0.085, and fsigma 8,Cross = 0.423+-0.061 (from the cross-correlation between the Red and Blue samples). We use the covariance between the bias and growth measurements obtained from each sample and their cross-correlation to produce an optimally-combined measurement of fsigma 8,comb = 0.443+-0.055. In no instance do we detect significant differences in distance scale or structure growth measurements obtained from the Blue and Red samples.