The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 9 Spectroscopic Galaxy Sample
Creators: name: Anderson, Lauren
name: Aubourg, Eric
name: Bailey, Stephen
name: Bizyaev, Dmitry
name: Blanton, Michael
name: Bolton, Adam S.
name: Brinkmann, J.
name: Brownstein, Joel R.
name: Burden, Angela
name: Cuesta, Antonio J.
name: da Costa, Luiz N. A.
name: Dawson, Kyle S.
name: de Putter, Roland
name: Eisenstein, Daniel J.
name: Gunn, James E.
name: Guo, Hong
name: Hamilton, Jean-Christophe
name: Harding, Paul
name: Ho, Shirley
name: Honscheid, Klaus
name: Kazin, Eyal
name: Kirkby, D.
name: Kneib, Jean-Paul
name: Labatie, Antione
name: Loomis, Craig
name: Lupton, Robert H.
name: Malanushenko, Elena
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Mandelbaum, Rachel
name: Manera, Marc
name: Maraston, Claudia
name: McBride, Cameron K.
name: Mehta, Kushal T.
name: Mena, Olga
name: Montesano, Francesco
name: Muna, Demetri
name: Nichol, Robert C.
name: Nuza, Sebastian E.
name: Olmstead, Matthew D.
name: Oravetz, Daniel
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Parejko, John
name: Paris, Isabelle
name: Percival, Will J.
name: Petitjean, Patrick
name: Prada, Francisco
name: Reid, Beth
name: Roe, Natalie A.
name: Ross, Ashley J.
name: Ross, Nicholas P.
name: Samushia, Lado
name: Sanchez, Ariel G.
name: Schneider, David J. Schlegel Donald P.
name: Scoccola, Claudia G.
name: Seo, Hee-Jong
name: Sheldon, Erin S.
name: Simmons, Audrey
name: Skibba, Ramin A.
name: Strauss, Michael A.
name: Swanson, Molly E. C.
name: Thomas, Daniel
name: Tinker, Jeremy L.
name: Tojeiro, Rita
name: Magana, Mariana Vargas
name: Verde, Licia
name: Wagner, Christian
name: Wake, David A.
name: Weaver, Benjamin A.
name: Weinberg, David H.
name: White, Martin
name: Xu, Xiaoying
name: Yeche, Christophe
name: Zehavi, Idit
name: Zhao, Gong-Bo
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present measurements of galaxy clustering from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). These use the Data Release 9 (DR9) CMASS sample, which contains 264,283 massive galaxies covering 3275 square degrees with an effective redshift z=0.57 and redshift range 0.43 &lt; z &lt; 0.7. Assuming a concordance Lambda-CDM cosmological model, this sample covers an effective volume of 2.2 Gpc^3, and represents the largest sample of the Universe ever surveyed at this density, n = 3 x 10^-4 h^-3 Mpc^3. We measure the angle-averaged galaxy correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of 5σin both the correlation function and power spectrum. Combining with the SDSS-II Luminous Red Galaxy Sample, the detection significance increases to 6.7σ. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance to z=0.57 relative to the sound horizon DV /rs = 13.67 +/- 0.22 at z=0.57. Assuming a fiducial sound horizon of 153.19 Mpc, which matches cosmic microwave background constraints, this corresponds to a distance DV(z=0.57) = 2094 +/- 34 Mpc. At 1.7 per cent, this is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. We place this result alongside previous BAO measurements in a cosmological distance ladder and find excellent agreement with the current supernova measurements. We use these distance measurements to constrain various cosmological models, finding continuing support for a flat Universe with a cosmological constant.
description: 33 pages