First Detection of the BAO Signal from Early DESI Data
Creators: name: Moon, Jeongin
name: Valcin, David
name: Rashkovetskyi, Michael
name: Saulder, Christoph
name: Aguilar, Jessica Nicole
name: Ahlen, Steven
name: Alam, Shadab
name: Bailey, Stephen
name: Baltay, Charles
name: Blum, Robert
name: Brooks, David
name: Burtin, Etienne
name: Chaussidon, Edmond
name: Dawson, Kyle
name: de la Macorra, Axel
name: de Mattia, Arnaud
name: Dhungana, Govinda
name: Eisenstein, Daniel
name: Flaugher, Brenna
name: Font-Ribera, Andreu
name: Forero-Romero, Jaime E.
name: Garcia-Quintero, Cristhian
name: Gontcho, Satya Gontcho A
name: Guy, Julien
name: Hanif, Malik Muhammad Sikandar
name: Honscheid, Klaus
name: Ishak, Mustapha
name: Kehoe, Robert
name: Kim, Sumi
name: Kisner, Theodore
name: Kremin, Anthony
name: Landriau, Martin
name: Guillou, Laurent Le
name: Levi, Michael
name: Manera, Marc
name: Martini, Paul
name: McDonald, Patrick
name: Meisner, Aaron
name: Miquel, Ramon
name: Moustakas, John
name: Myers, Adam
name: Nadathur, Seshadri
name: Neveux, Richard
name: Newman, Jeffrey A.
name: Nie, Jundan
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
name: Percival, Will
name: Fernández, Alejandro Pérez
name: Poppett, Claire
name: Prada, Francisco
name: Raichoor, Anand
name: Ross, Ashley J.
name: Rossi, Graziano
name: Samushia, Lado
name: Schlegel, David
name: Seo, Hee-Jong
name: Tarlé, Gregory
name: Magana, Mariana Vargas
name: Variu, Andrei
name: Weaver, Benjamin Alan
name: White, Martin J.
name: Yèche, Christophe
name: Yuan, Sihan
name: Zhao, Cheng
name: Zhou, Rongpu
name: Zhou, Zhimin
name: Zou, Hu
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present the first detection of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) signal obtained using unblinded data collected during the initial two months of operations of the Stage-IV ground-based Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). From a selected sample of 261,291 Luminous Red Galaxies spanning the redshift interval 0.4 &lt; z &lt; 1.1 and covering 1651 square degrees with a 57.9% completeness level, we report a ~5 sigma level BAO detection and the measurement of the BAO location at a precision of 1.7%. Using a Bright Galaxy Sample of 109,523 galaxies in the redshift range 0.1 &lt; z &lt; 0.5, over 3677 square degrees with a 50.0% completeness, we also detect the BAO feature at ~3 sigma significance with a 2.6% precision. These first BAO measurements represent an important milestone, acting as a quality control on the optimal performance of the complex robotically-actuated, fiber-fed DESI spectrograph, as well as an early validation of the DESI spectroscopic pipeline and data management system. Based on these first promising results, we forecast that DESI is on target to achieve a high-significance BAO detection at sub-percent precision with the completed 5-year survey data, meeting the top-level science requirements on BAO measurements. This exquisite level of precision will set new standards in cosmology and confirm DESI as the most competitive BAO experiment for the remainder of this decade.
description: 17 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables. MNRAS, 525, 5406. Author accepted manuscript matching the published version