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This is the second part of a thorough investigation of the redshift-space effects that affect void properties and the impact they have on cosmological tests. Here, we focus on the void-galaxy cross-correlation function, specifically, on the project
Voids are promising cosmological probes. Nevertheless, every cosmological test based on voids must necessarily employ methods to identify them in redshift space. Therefore, redshift-space distortions (RSD) and the Alcock-Paczynski effect (AP) have an impact on the void identification process itself generating distortion patterns in observations. Using a spherical void finder, we developed a statistical and theoretical framework to describe physically the connection between the identification in real and redshift space. We found that redshift-space voids above the shot noise level have a unique real-space counterpart spanning the same region of space, they are systematically bigger and their centres are preferentially shifted along the line of sight. The expansion effect is a by-product of RSD induced by tracer dynamics at scales around the void radius, whereas the off-centring effect constitutes a different class of RSD induced at larger scales by the global dynamics of the whole region containing the void. The volume of voids is also altered by the fiducial cosmology assumed to measure distances, this is the AP change of volume. These three systematics have an impact on cosmological statistics. In this work, we focus on the void size function. We developed a theoretical framework to model these effects and tested it with a numerical simulation, recovering the statistical properties of the abundance of voids in real space. This description depends strongly on cosmology. Hence, we lay the foundations for improvements in current models of the abundance of voids in order to obtain unbiased cosmological constraints from redshift surveys.
Measurements of the baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak in the redshift-space correlation function yield the angular diameter distance D_A(z) and the Hubble parameter H(z) as a function of redshift, constraining the properties of dark energy and space curvature. We discuss the perturbations introduced in the galaxy correlation function by gravitational lensing through the effect of magnification bias and its cross-correlation with the galaxy density. At the BAO scale, gravitational lensing adds a small and slowly varying component to the galaxy correlation function and does not change its shape significantly, through which the BAO peak is measured. The relative shift in the position of the BAO peak caused by gravitational lensing in the angle-averaged correlation function is 10^-4 at z=1, rising to 10^-3 at z=2.5. Lensing effects are stronger near the line-of-sight, however the relative peak shift increases only to 10^-3.3 and 10^-2.4 at z=1 and z=2.5, when the galaxy correlation is averaged within 5 degrees of the line-of-sight (containing only 0.4% of the galaxy pairs in a survey). Furthermore, the lensing contribution can be measured separately and subtracted from the observed correlation at the BAO scale.
We present a measurement of the anisotropic void-galaxy cross-correlation function in the CMASS galaxy sample of the BOSS DR12 data release. We perform a joint fit to the data for redshift space distortions (RSD) due to galaxy peculiar velocities and anisotropies due to the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect, for the first time using a velocity field reconstruction technique to remove the complicating effects of RSD in the void centre positions themselves. Fits to the void-galaxy function give a 1% measurement of the AP parameter combination $D_A(z)H(z)/c = 0.4367pm 0.0045$ at redshift $z=0.57$, where $D_A$ is the angular diameter distance and $H$ the Hubble parameter, exceeding the precision obtainable from baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) by a factor of ~3.5 and free of systematic errors. From voids alone we also obtain a 10% measure of the growth rate, $fsigma_8(z=0.57)=0.501pm0.051$. The parameter degeneracies are orthogonal to those obtained from galaxy clustering. Combining void information with that from BAO and galaxy RSD in the same CMASS sample, we measure $D_A(0.57)/r_s=9.383pm 0.077$ (at 0.8% precision), $H(0.57)r_s=(14.05pm 0.14);10^3$ kms$^{-1}$Mpc$^{-1}$ (1%) and $fsigma_8=0.453pm0.022$ (4.9%), consistent with cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements from Planck. These represent a factor sim2 improvement in precision over previous results through the inclusion of void information. Fitting a flat cosmological constant $Lambda$CDM model to these results in combination with Planck CMB data, we find up to an 11% reduction in uncertainties on $H_0$ and $Omega_m$ compared to use of the corresponding BOSS consensus values. Constraints on extended models with non-flat geometry and a dark energy of state that differs from $w=-1$ show an even greater improvement.
We analyze the clustering of large scale structure in the Universe in a model independent method, accounting for anisotropic effects along and transverse to the line of sight. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopy Survey Data Release 11 provides a large sample of 690,000 galaxies, allowing determination of the Hubble expansion H, angular distance D_A, and growth rate G_T at an effective redshift of z=0.57. After careful bias and convergence studies of the effects from small scale clustering, we find that cutting transverse separations below 40 Mpc/h delivers robust results while smaller scale data leads to a bias due to unmodelled nonlinear and velocity effects. The converged results are in agreement with concordance LCDM cosmology, general relativity, and minimal neutrino mass, all within the 68% confidence level. We also present results separately for the northern and southern hemisphere sky, finding a slight tension in the growth rate -- potentially a signature of anisotropic stress, or just covariance with small scale velocities -- but within 68% CL.
Redshift space distortion (RSD) observed in galaxy redshift surveys is a powerful tool to test gravity theories on cosmological scales, but the systematic uncertainties must carefully be examined for future surveys with large statistics. Here we employ various analytic models of RSD and estimate the systematic errors on measurements of the structure growth-rate parameter, $fsigma_8$, induced by non-linear effects and the halo bias with respect to the dark matter distribution, by using halo catalogues from 40 realisations of $3.4 times 10^8$ comoving $h^{-3}$Mpc$^3$ cosmological N-body simulations. We consider hypothetical redshift surveys at redshifts z=0.5, 1.35 and 2, and different minimum halo mass thresholds in the range of $5.0 times 10^{11}$ -- $2.0 times 10^{13} h^{-1} M_odot$. We find that the systematic error of $fsigma_8$ is greatly reduced to ~5 per cent level, when a recently proposed analytical formula of RSD that takes into account the higher-order coupling between the density and velocity fields is adopted, with a scale-dependent parametric bias model. Dependence of the systematic error on the halo mass, the redshift, and the maximum wavenumber used in the analysis is discussed. We also find that the Wilson-Hilferty transformation is useful to improve the accuracy of likelihood analysis when only a small number of modes are available in power spectrum measurements.