Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/224996

Title

The baryonic acoustic feature and large-scale clustering in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red galaxy sample

Author(s)

Kazin, Eyal A.;  Blanton, Michael R.;  Scoccimarro, Roman;  McBride, Cameron K.;  Berlind, Andreas A.;  Bahcall, Neta A.;  Brinkmann, Jon;  Czarapata, Paul;  Frieman, Joshua A.;  Kent, Stephen M.;  Schneider, Donald P.;  Szalay, Alexander S.

Abstract

We examine the correlation function ξ of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Luminous Red Galaxy sample at large scales (60 h -1 Mpc < s < 400h -1Mpc) using the final data release (DR7). Focusing on a quasi-volume-limited (0.16 < z < 0.36) subsample and utilizing mock galaxy catalogs, we demonstrate that the observed baryonic acoustic peak and larger scale signal are consistent with lambda-CDM at 70%-95% confidence. Fitting data to a non-linear, redshift-space, template-based model, we constrain the peak position at s p = 101.7 3.0h -1Mpc when fitting the range 60 h -1 Mpc < s < 150h -1Mpc (1σ uncertainties). This redshift-space distance s p is related to the comoving sound horizon scale r s after taking into account matter-clustering non-linearities, redshift distortions, and galaxy-clustering bias. Mock catalogs show that the probability that a DR7-sized sample would not have an identifiable peak is at least 10%. As a consistency check of a fiducial cosmology, we use the observed s p to obtain the distance relative to the acoustic scale. We find r s /D V (z = 0.278) = 0.1389 0.0043. This result is in excellent agreement with Percival et al., who examine roughly the same data set, but use the power spectrum. Comparison with other determinations in the literature are also in very good agreement. The signal of the full sample at 125 h -1 Mpc < s < 200h -1Mpc tends to be high relative to theoretical expectations; this slight deviation can probably be attributed to sample variance. We have tested our results against a battery of possible systematic effects, finding all effects are smaller than our estimated sample variance.

Publication type

Journal article

Source

Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 710, no. 2 (Feb 2010), pp. 1444-1461

Publication year

2010

FOR Code(s)

0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences;  0305 Organic Chemistry;  0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural)

Keyword(s)

cD galaxies;  Cosmology observations;  Distance scale;  Elliptical and lenticular galaxies;  Large-scale structure of universe;  Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Publisher

Institute of Physics Publishing

ISSN

2041-8205

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/710/2/1444

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The American Astronomical Society does not allow Swinburne Research Bank to archive either the accepted manuscript or the published version of the article. However you can find an earlier version of the full text here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.2598

Peer reviewed