The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III baryon oscillation spectroscopic survey: Measuring H(z) and DA (z) at z = 0.57 with clustering wedges

Abstract

We analyse the 2D correlation function of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS sample of massive galaxies of the ninth data release to measure cosmic expansion H and the angular diameter distance DA at a mean redshift of (z) = 0.57. We apply, for the first time, a new correlation function technique called clustering wedges σδμ(s). Using a physically motivated model, the anisotropic baryonic acoustic feature in the galaxy sample is detected at a significance level of 4.7σ compared to a featureless model. The baryonic acoustic feature is used to obtain model-independent constraints cz/H/rs = 12.28 ± 0.82 (6.7 percent accuracy) and DA/rs = 9.05 ± 0.27 (3.0 per cent) with a correlation coefficient of -0.5, where rs is the sound horizon scale at the end of the baryonic drag era. We conduct thorough tests on the data and 600 simulated realizations, finding robustness of the results regardless of the details of the analysis method. Combining this with rs constraints from the cosmic microwave background, we obtain H(0.57) = 90.8 ± 6.2 kms-1 Mpc-1 and DA(0.57) = 1386 ± 45 Mpc.We use simulations to forecast results of the final BOSS CMASS data set. We apply the reconstruction technique on the simulations demonstrating that the sharpening of the anisotropic baryonic acoustic feature should improve the detection as well as tighten constraints of H and DA by ~30 per cent on average. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.