Baryon acoustic oscillations from the complete SDSS-III Ly$\alpha$-quasar cross-correlation function at $z=2.4$

By Hélion Marie du Mas des Bourboux, J. Goff, M. Blomqvist, N. Busca, J. Guy, J. Rich, C. Yéche, Julián Bautista, 'Etienne Burtin, K. Dawson and 15 more. 2017

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We present a measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the cross-correlation of quasars with the Lyα-forest flux transmission at a mean redshift of z = 2.40. The measurement uses the complete Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) data sample: 168 889 forests and 234 367 quasars from the SDSS data release DR12. In addition to the statistical improvement on our previous study using DR11, we have implemented numerous improvements at the analysis level enabling a more accurate measurement of this cross-correlation. We have also developed the first simulations of the cross-correlation that allow us to test different aspects of our data analysis and to search for potential systematic errors in the determination of the BAO peak position. We measure the two ratios DH(z = 2.40) /rd = 9.01 ± 0.36 and DM(z = 2.40) /rd = 35.7 ± 1.7, where the errors include marginalization over the non-linear velocity of quasars and the cross-correlation of metals and quasars, among other effects. These results are within 1.8σ of the prediction of the flat-ΛCDM model describing the observed cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We combine this study with the Lyα-forest auto-correlation function, yielding DH(z = 2.40) /rd = 8.94 ± 0.22 and DM(z = 2.40) /rd = 36.6 ± 1.2, within 2.3σ of the same flat-ΛCDM model. Key words: cosmological parameters / dark energy / large-scale structure of Universe

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af20cdd1a8a5e11b0d65a4cc045725039893f426

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Citations in the corpus

The completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: BAO and RSD measurements from anisotropic clustering analysis of the quasar sample in configuration space between redshift 0.8 and 2.2 (2020, background): “This quasar sample bridges the gap between lower redshift SDSS galaxy measurements (Kazin et al. 2014; Alam et al. 2017) and those from the Lyα-forest (Bautista et al. 2017; du Mas des Bour- boux et al. 2017).”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Fourteenth data release (2017, background): “…reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. function of the Lyman-α forest (e.g. Bautista et al. 2017) and the cross-correlation of quasars and the Lyman-α forest (e.g. du Mas des Bourboux et al. 2017) have provided unprecedented cosmological constraints at z ∼ 2.5.”
Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Cosmological implications from two decades of spectroscopic surveys at the Apache Point Observatory (2020, methodology): “The auto-correlation of the Lyα forest and its cross-correlation with 217,780 quasars at 1.8 < z < 3.5 led to 2% precision measurements of the BAO distance scale at zeff = 2.33 (Bautista et al. 2017; du Mas des Bourboux et al. 2017).”
The SDSS-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations at Redshift of 0.72 with the DR14 Luminous Red Galaxy Sample (2017, methodology): “Results from the final sample of BOSS galaxies are presented in Alam et al. (2017), while results using the final sample of BOSS Lyα forests are presented in Bautista et al. (2017) and du Mas des Bourboux et al. (2017).”
Baryon acoustic oscillations from the cross-correlation of Lyα absorption and quasars in eBOSS DR14 (2019, background): “…and in the flux-transmission correlation function in Lyman-α (Lyα) forests at z ∼ 2.3 (Busca et al. 2013; Slosar et al. 2013; Kirkby et al. 2013; Delubac et al. 2015; Bautista et al. 2017) and in the forest cross-correlation with quasars (Font-Ribera et al. 2014; du Mas des Bourboux et al. 2017).”
Implications of an extended dark energy cosmology with massive neutrinos for cosmological tensions (2018, background): “4 [10] are not yet public, but are known to be in slightly better agreement with ΛCDM than the DR11 data.”
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: A Precise H0 Estimate from DES Y1, BAO, and D/H Data (2017, result): “…Ly α–BAO data to find h = 0.674 ± 0.013, in a perfect agreement with the earlier result by Aubourg et al. (2015).8 We can directly incorporate Ly α–BAO in our analysis using the Ly α × Ly α measurements of Bautista et al. (2017) and the Ly α × QSO measurements of du Mas des Bourboux et al. (2017).”
Sounds Discordant: Classical Distance Ladder and ΛCDM-based Determinations of the Cosmological Sound Horizon (2018, methodology): “We do not include any other BAO data, such as that from the 6df galaxy survey (Beutler et al. 2011) or a BOSS DR12 Lyα absorption cross-correlation analysis (du Mas des Bourboux et al. 2017).”
Elucidating ΛCDM: Impact of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Measurements on the Hubble Constant Discrepancy (2017, result): “…analysis, released while this work was in review, produced results consistent with DR11, in tension with Planck predictions at the 2.3σ level (du Mas des Bourboux et al. 2017) 9 http://www.sdss.org/surveys/eboss/ 4 G. E. Addison et al. between determination of some parameters from splitting the…”
Neutrino Mass Ordering from Oscillations and Beyond: 2018 Status and Future Prospects (2018, background): “…at a mean redshift z = 2.3 in Busca et al. (2013, see also Slosar et al., 2013; Font-Ribera et al., 2014a; Delubac et al., 2015; Bautista et al., 2017a; Bourboux et al., 2017 and Aubourg et al., 2015), in which joint constraints from the BAO signature from galaxies and quasars have been presented.”
The Completed SDSS-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations with Lyα Forests (2020, background): “This assumption was confirmed in du Mas des Bourboux et al. (2017), where the covariance between the measurements was measured to be very small on synthetic data sets.”