The clustering of luminous red galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data

By Nikhil Padmanabhan, David Schlegel, Uros Seljak, A. Makarov, N. Bahcall, M. Blanton, J. Brinkmann, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Douglas P. Finkbeiner, James E. Gunn and 10 more. 2006

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We present the 3D real-space clustering power spectrum of a sample of ∼600 000 luminous red galaxies measured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, using photometric redshifts. These galaxies are old, elliptical systems with strong 4000-A breaks, and have accurate photometric redshifts with an average error of Δz= 0.03. This sample of galaxies ranges from redshift z= 0.2 to 0.6 over 3528 deg2 of the sky, probing a volume of 1.5 h−3 Gpc3, making it the largest volume ever used for galaxy clustering measurements. We measure the angular clustering power spectrum in eight redshift slices and use well-calibrated redshift distributions to combine these into a high-precision 3D real-space power spectrum from k= 0.005 to k= 1 h Mpc−1. We detect power on gigaparsec scales, beyond the turnover in the matter power spectrum, at a ∼2σ significance for k < 0.01 h Mpc−1, increasing to 5.5σ for k < 0.02 h Mpc−1. This detection of power is on scales significantly larger than those accessible to current spectroscopic redshift surveys. We also find evidence for baryonic oscillations, both in the power spectrum, as well as in fits to the baryon density, at a 2.5 σ confidence level. The large volume and resulting small statistical errors on the power spectrum allow us to constrain both the amplitude and the scale dependence of the galaxy bias in cosmological fits. The statistical power of these data to constrain cosmology is ∼1.7 times better than previous clustering analyses. Varying the matter density and baryon fraction, we find ΩM= 0.30 ± 0.03, and Ωb/ΩM= 0.18 ± 0.04, for a fixed Hubble constant of 70 km s−1 Mpc−1 and a scale-invariant spectrum of initial perturbations. The detection of baryonic oscillations also allows us to measure the comoving distance to z= 0.5; we find a best-fitting distance of 1.73 ± 0.12 Gpc, corresponding to a 6.5 per cent error on the distance. These results demonstrate the ability to make precise clustering measurements with photometric surveys.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d8854127f0b6130536a448c8dd1af52319b7dedf

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Citations in the corpus

Ameliorating systematic uncertainties in the angular clustering of galaxies: a study using the SDSS-III (2011, background): “…e.g., Blake et al. 2008; McCracken et al. 2008; Ross et al. 2009, 2010a,b; Wake et al. 2011) and quasars (e.g., Myers et al. 2006) and also to measure cosmological parameters (see, e.g., Blake et al. 2007; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Ross et al. 2008; Thomas et al. 2010a, 2011; Crocce et al. 2011).”
Measurements of H(z) and DA(z) from the two-dimensional two-point correlation function of Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red galaxies (2011, methodology): “The SDSS data have been analyzed using both the power spectrum method (see, e.g., Tegmark et al. 2004; Hutsi 2005; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Blake et al. 2007; Percival etal.”
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 Galaxy Sample (2009, methodology): “Two studies have also considered the clustering of the LRGs at high redshift within the SDSS survey, using photometric redshifts to estimate galaxy distances (Blake et al. 2007; Padmanabhan et al. 2007).”
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS‐III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the large‐scale two‐point correlation function (2012, unknown): “…(2dFGRS, Colless et al. 2001, 2003) by Cole et al. (2005) and has been subsequently observed using a variety of datasets and techniques (Hütsi 2006; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Percival et al. 2007, 2010; Cabré & Gaztañaga 2009; Gaztañaga et al. 2009; Kazin et al. 2010; Beutler et al. 2011; Blake…”
Clustering of luminous red galaxies – IV. Baryon acoustic peak in the line-of-sight direction and a direct measurement of H(z) (2008, background): “Photometric LRG catalogs cover a larger volume and larger densities and have also been used to obtain cosmological constraints (Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Blake et al. 2007).”
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III DR9 Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity (2012, methodology): “Using only the SDSS photometric LRG data sample defined by Padmanabhan et al. (2007), Slosar et al. (2008) found −268 < f localNL < 164 while Xia et al. (2011) measured−81 < f localNL < 351 using the LRG sample created in Thomas et al. (2011).”
An Improved Photometric Calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data (2007, methodology): “…these calibrations have already been used for the creation of a number of auxiliary SDSS catalogs (e.g. Finkbeiner et al. 2004; Blanton et al. 2005) as well as a number of SDSS scientific publications (e.g. Tegmark et al. 2004; Eisenstein et al. 2005; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Tegmark et al. 2006).”
Large-Scale Anisotropic Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies (2007, background): “…the power spectrum of the Two-Degree Field (2dF) Galaxy Redshift Survey (Cole et al. 2005) and the SDSS LRG (Hütsi 2006a,b; Tegmark et al. 2006; Percival et al. 2007a,b), and the angular power spectrum of the SDSS LRG sample with photometric redshifts (Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Blake et al. 2006).”
Constraints on intrinsic alignment contamination of weak lensing surveys using the MegaZ-LRG sample (2010, background): “…the correlation functions over the line-of-sight separation out to at least 60h−1Mpc and 90h−1Mpc, respectively, redshift-space distortions should have a negligible influence on the integrated signals (see also the discussions in Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Blake et al. 2007; Mandelbaum et al. 2010).”
THE CLUSTERING OF MASSIVE GALAXIES AT z ∼ 0.5 FROM THE FIRST SEMESTER OF BOSS DATA (2010, result): “This is very similar to the results obtained for photometric LRG samples at comparable redshifts (Blake et al. 2007; Ross et al. 2007; Padmanabhan et al. 2007, 2009; Blake et al. 2008).”
The detectability of baryonic acoustic oscillations in future galaxy surveys. (2007, methodology): “…contains information about basic cosmological parameters, and measurements of the galaxy power spectrum on large scales have been exploited to extract the values of these parameters (e.g. Cole et al. 2005; Sánchez et al. 2006; Tegmark et al. 2006; Padmanabhan et al. 2007; Percival et al. 2007).”
Simultaneous measurement of cosmology and intrinsic alignments using joint cosmic shear and galaxy number density correlations (2009, background): “…themselves, including galaxy clustering from photometric redshift surveys (Blake & Bridle 2005; Dolney et al. 2006; Zhan 2006; Blake et al. 2007; Padmanabhan et al. 2007) galaxygalaxy lensing (e.g. Schneider & Rix 1997; Guzik & Seljak 2001, 2002; Seljak 2002; Seljak et al. 2005; Yoo et al.…”