Redshift-space enhancement of line-of-sight baryon acoustic oscillations in the sloan digital sky survey main-galaxy sample

Abstract

We show that redshift-space distortions of galaxy correlations have a strong effect on correlation functions with distinct, localized features, like the signature of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). Near the line of sight, the features become sharper as a result of redshift-space distortions. We demonstrate this effect by measuring the correlation function in Gaussian simulations and the Millennium simulation. We also analyze the SDSS DR7 main-galaxy sample, splitting the sample into slices 2°.5 on the sky in various rotations. Measuring two-dimensional correlation functions in each slice, we do see a sharp bump along the line of sight. Using Mexican-hat wavelets, we localize it to (110 ± 10) h-1 Mpc. Averaging only along the line of sight, we estimate its significance at a particular wavelet scale and location at 2.2σ. In a flat angular weighting in the (π, rp) coordinate system, the noise level is suppressed, pushing the bump's significance to 4σ. We estimate that there is about a 0.2% chance of getting such a signal anywhere in the vicinity of the BAO scale from a power spectrum lacking a BAO feature. However, these estimates of the significances make some use of idealized Gaussian simulations, and thus are likely a bit optimistic. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society.