The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: anisotropic galaxy clustering in Fourier space

Publication information:

Beutler F, Seo H-J, Saito S, Chuang C-H, Cuesta AJ, Eisenstein DJ, Gil-Marín H, Niklas Grieb J, Hand N, Kitaura F-S, et al. The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: anisotropic galaxy clustering in Fourier space. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 2017;466:2242–2260.

Abstract

We investigate the anisotropic clustering of the Baryon OscillationSpectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 12 sample, which consists of1198 006 galaxies in the redshift range 0.2 z 0.75 and a skycoverage of 10 252 deg2. We analyse this data set in Fourierspace, using the power-spectrum multipoles to measure redshift-spacedistortions simultaneously with the Alcock-Paczynski effect and thebaryon acoustic oscillation scale. We include the power-spectrummonopole, quadrupole and hexadecapole in our analysis and compare ourmeasurements with a perturbation-theory-based model, while properlyaccounting for the survey window function. To evaluate the reliabilityof our analysis pipeline, we participate in a mock challenge, whichresults in systematic uncertainties significantly smaller than thestatistical uncertainties. While the high-redshift constraint onfσ8 at zeff = 0.61 indicates a small(˜1.4σ) deviation from the prediction of the PlanckΛCDM (Λ cold dark matter) model, the low-redshiftconstraint is in good agreement with Planck ΛCDM. This paper ispart of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set fromBOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined withothers in Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints fromBOSS.