Measuring the Matter Density Using Baryon Oscillations in the SDSS

By Will J. Percival, Robert Nichol, Daniel J. Eisenstein, D. Weinberg, M. Fukugita, Adrian Pope, D. Schneider, A. Szalay, Michael S. E. Vogeley, Idit Zehavi and 5 more. 2006

149 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We measure the cosmological matter density by observing the positions of baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We jointly analyze the main galaxies and LRGs in the SDSS DR5 sample, using over half a million galaxies in total. The oscillations are detected with 99.74% confidence (3.0 σ assuming Gaussianity) compared to a smooth power spectrum. When combined with the observed scale of the peaks within the CMB, we find a best-fit value of ΩM = 0.256 (68% confidence interval) for a flat Λ cosmology when marginalizing over the Hubble parameter and the baryon density. This value of the matter density is derived from the locations of the baryon oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum and in the CMB, and does not include any information from the overall shape of the power spectra. This is an extremely clean cosmological measurement, as the physics of the baryon acoustic oscillation production is well understood, and the positions of the oscillations are expected to be independent of systematics such as galaxy bias.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f3ff786417094564f4b63c6252f6e6a374ba3da

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

DESI 2024: reconstructing dark energy using crossing statistics with DESI DR1 BAO data (2024, unknown): “2) [98, 99].”
A Closure Theory for Nonlinear Evolution of Cosmological Power Spectra (2007, background): “…(SDSS) and Two-degree-Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dF GRS) showed that the characteristic scale of BAOs can be used as the cosmic standard ruler to determine the distanceredshift relation of high-redshift galaxies (Cole et al. 2005; Eisenstein et al. 2005; Hütsi 2006; Percival et al. 2007).”
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 Galaxy Sample (2009, methodology): “We have further developed the analysis method used by Percival et al. (2007c) to analyse the DR5 sample, including a faster method for the calculation of the window function (see Appendix A), linking the cosmological model to be tested with the power spectrum band powers measured.”
Improved constraints on dark energy from Chandra X-ray observations of the largest relaxed galaxy clusters (2007, background): “…findings from CMB studies (e.g. Spergel et al. 2003, 2007), Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) data (e.g. Riess et al. 2004; Astier et al. 2006), galaxy redshift surveys (e.g. Cole et al. 2005; Eisenstein et al. 2005; Percival et al. 2007) and X-ray cluster number counts (e.g. Mantz et al. 2007).”
The detectability of baryonic acoustic oscillations in future galaxy surveys. (2007, methodology): “More recently, the BAO have been extracted from the power spectrum measured from a much larger sample of SDSS LRGs to constrain ΩM and Ωb/Ωm ( Tegmark et al. 2006; Blake et al. 2007; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Percival et al. 2007).”
Large-Scale Anisotropic Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies (2007, methodology): “In addition, the best-fit value of Ωm is in quite good agreement with an independent analysis of the LRGs by Percival et al. (2007b) using a power spectrum that yields Ωm = 0.22 ± 0.04 with a dynamical range of 0.01 < k < 0.06hMpc−1.”
New constraints on dark energy from the observed growth of the most X-ray luminous galaxy clusters (2007, background): “(Eisenstein et al. 2005; Tegmark et al. 2006; Percival et al. 2007), as well as the combination of CMB data with a variety of external constraints (Spergel et al. 2007).”
Cosmological constraints from a combination of galaxy clustering and lensing – I. Theoretical framework (2012, background): “…acoustic oscillations in) the galaxy power spectrum (Percival et al. 2001; Cole et al. 2005; Eisenstein et al. 2005; Tegmark et al. 2006; Hütsi 2006; Percival et al. 2007a,b,c; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Gaztanaga, Cabré & Hui 2009; Percival et al. 2010; Blake et al. 2011; Anderson et al. 2012).”
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: testing the cosmological model with baryon acoustic oscillations at z= 0.6 (2011, background): “This mild tension between LSS and CMB+SN results was already evident in the Percival et al. (2007) measurement of BAOs in the SDSS: the LSS measurements prefer a slightly higher rate of acceleration, or a more negative equation of state of dark energy.”
Improved Forecasts for the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmological Distance Scale (2007, background): “These were recently detected in galaxy redshift surveys (Eisenstein et al. 2005; Cole et al. 2005; Hütsi 2006; Percival et al. 2007; Tegmark et al. 2006).”
Cosmology and astrophysics from relaxed galaxy clusters - II. Cosmological constraints (2014, result): “…2008; Ettori et al. 2003, 2009; Rapetti, Allen, & Weller 2005), and which has been corroborated by a variety of independent cosmological data (e.g. Percival et al. 2007, 2010; Spergel et al. 2007; Kowalski et al. 2008; Mantz et al. 2008, 2010b; Dunkley et al. 2009; Vikhlinin et al. 2009; Rozo…”
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: mapping the distance-redshift relation with baryon acoustic oscillations (2011, background): “Modelling potential non-Gaussian tails in the likelihood is beyond the scope of this paper, although we note that they may not be negligible (Percival et al. 2007, Percival et al. 2010, Bassett & Afshordi 2010).”
The Observed Growth of Massive Galaxy Clusters II: X-ray Scaling Relations (2009, methodology): “…the full 42 cluster data set), 5-yr CMB data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP5; Dunkley et al. 2009), the Type Ia supernova analysis of Kowalski et al. (2008, including their treatment of systematic errors) and the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation analysis of Percival et al. (2007).”
The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO Survey: the LRG 2-point correlation function and redshift-space distortions (2006, result): “If we assume the value found in recent studies of m(z = 0) = 0.25 (Cole et al. 2005; Eisenstein et al. 2005; Percival et al. 2007a,b; Tegmark et al. 2006), then our estimate of b becomes b = 1.56 ± 0.33.”