Optimal redshift weighting for baryon acoustic oscillations

Abstract

Future baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) surveys will survey very large volumes, covering wide ranges in redshift. We derive a set of redshift weights to compress the information in the redshift direction to a small number of modes. We suggest that such a compression preserves almost all of the signal for most cosmologies, while giving high signal-to-noise measurements for each combination. We present some toy models and simple worked examples. As an intermediate step, we give a precise meaning to the 'effective redshift' of a BAO measurement.