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Title

The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: the growth rate of cosmic structure since redshift z=0.9

Author(s)

Blake, Chris;  Brough, Sarah;  Colless, Matthew;  Contreras, Carlos;  Couch, Warrick;  Croom, Scott;  Davis, Tamara;  Drinkwater, Michael J.;  Forster, Karl;  Gilbank, David;  Gladders, Mike;  Glazebrook, Karl;  Jelliffe, Ben;  Jurek, Russell J.;  Li, I-hui;  Madore, Barry;  Martin, Chris;  Pimbblet, Kevin;  Poole, Gregory B.;  Pracy, Michael;  Sharp, Rob;  Wisnioski, Emily;  Woods, David;  Wyder, Ted K.;  Yee, H. K. C.

Abstract

We present precise measurements of the growth rate of cosmic structure for the redshift range 0.1 < z < 0.9, using redshift-space distortions in the galaxy power spectrum of the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. Our results, which have a precision of around 10% in four independent redshift bins, are well-fit by a flat LCDM cosmological model with matter density parameter Omega_m = 0.27. Our analysis hence indicates that this model provides a self-consistent description of the growth of cosmic structure through large-scale perturbations and the homogeneous cosmic expansion mapped by supernovae and baryon acoustic oscillations. We achieve robust results by systematically comparing our data with several different models of the quasi-linear growth of structure including empirical models, fitting formulae calibrated to N-body simulations, and perturbation theory techniques. We extract the first measurements of the power spectrum of the velocity divergence field, P_vv(k), as a function of redshift (under the assumption that P_gv(k) = -sqrt[P_gg(k) P_vv(k)] where g is the galaxy overdensity field), and demonstrate that the WiggleZ galaxy-mass cross-correlation is consistent with a deterministic (rather than stochastic) scale-independent bias model for WiggleZ galaxies for scales k < 0.3 h/Mpc. Measurements of the cosmic growth rate from the WiggleZ Survey and other current and future observations offer a powerful test of the physical nature of dark energy that is complementary to distance-redshift measures such as supernovae and baryon acoustic oscillations.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

Source

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 415, no. 3 (Aug 2011), pp. 2876-2891

Publication year

2011

FOR Code(s)

0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences

Keyword(s)

Cosmic structures;  Cosmology;  Extragalactic astrophysics;  Growth rate;  Large-scale structure of Universe;  Redshifts

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

ISSN

0035-8711

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18903.x

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 The Authors. Journal compilation copyright © 2011 Royal Astronomical Society. The accepted manuscript is reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. The definitive publication is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.

Full text

Peer reviewed