Clustering of Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Photometric Luminous Galaxies: The Measurement, Systematics and Cosmological Implications
Creators: name: Ho, Shirley
name: Cuesta, Antonio
name: Seo, Hee-Jong
name: de Putter, Roland
name: Ross, Ashley J.
name: White, Martin
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Saito, Shun
name: Schlegel, David J.
name: Schlafly, Eddie
name: Seljak, Uros
name: Hernandez-Monteagudo, Carlos
name: Sanchez, Ariel G.
name: Percival, Will J.
name: Blanton, Michael
name: Skibba, Ramin
name: Schneider, Don
name: Reid, Beth
name: Mena, Olga
name: Viel, Matteo
name: Eisenstein, Daniel J.
name: Prada, Francisco
name: Weaver, Benjamin
name: Bahcall, Neta
name: Bizyaev, Dimitry
name: Brewinton, Howard
name: Brinkman, Jon
name: da Costa, Luiz Nicolaci
name: Gott, John R.
name: Malanushenko, Elena
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Nichol, Bob
name: Oravetz, Daniel
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
name: Ross, Nicholas P
name: Simmons, Audrey
name: de Simoni, Fernando
name: Snedden, Stephanie
name: Yeche, Christophe
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) surveyed 14,555 square degrees, and delivered over a trillion pixels of imaging data. We present a study of galaxy clustering using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts, spanning between $z=0.45$ and $z=0.65$, constructed from the SDSS using methods described in Ross et al. (2011). This data-set spans 11,000 square degrees and probes a volume of $3h^{-3} \rm{Gpc}^3$, making it the largest volume ever used for galaxy clustering measurements. We present a novel treatment of the observational systematics and its applications to the clustering signals from the data set. In this paper, we measure the angular clustering using an optimal quadratic estimator at 4 redshift slices with an accuracy of ~15% with bin size of delta_l = 10 on scales of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) (at l~40-400). We derive cosmological constraints using the full-shape of the power-spectra. For a flat Lambda CDM model, when combined with Cosmic Microwave Background Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 (WMAP7) and H_0 constraints from 600 Cepheids observed by HST, we find Ω_Λ= 0.73 +/- 0.019 and H_0 to be 70.5 +/- 1.6 km/s/Mpc. For an open Lambda CDM model, when combined with WMAP7 + HST, we find $Ω_K = 0.0035 +/- 0.0054, improved over WMAP7+HST alone by 40%. For a wCDM model, when combined with WMAP7+HST+SN, we find w = -1.071 +/- 0.078, and H_0 to be 71.3 +/- 1.7 km/s/Mpc, which is competitive with the latest large scale structure constraints from large spectroscopic surveys such as SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7) (Reid et al. 2010, Percival et al. 2010, Montesano et al. 2011) and WiggleZ (Blake et al. 2011). The SDSS-III Data Release 8 (SDSS-III DR8) Angular Clustering Data allows a wide range of investigations into the cosmological model, cosmic expansion (via BAO), Gaussianity of initial conditions and neutrino masses. (abridged)
description: Two other companion papers on arxiv today: Seo et al. (2012) and de Putter et al. (2012)