The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: tomographic BAO analysis of DR12 combined sample in configuration space

11 Jul 2016  ·  Yuting Wang, Gong-Bo Zhao, Chia-Hsun Chuang, Ashley J. Ross, Will J. Percival, Héctor Gil-Marín, Antonio J. Cuesta, Francisco-Shu Kitaura, Sergio Rodriguez-Torres, Joel R. Brownstein, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Shirley Ho, Jean-Paul Kneib, Matt Olmstead, Francisco Prada, Graziano Rossi, Ariel G. Sánchez, Salvador Salazar-Albornoz, Daniel Thomas, Jeremy Tinker, Rita Tojeiro, Mariana Vargas-Magaña, Fangzhou Zhu ·

We perform a tomographic baryon acoustic oscillations analysis using the two-point galaxy correlation function measured from the combined sample of BOSS DR12, which covers the redshift range of $0.2<z<0.75$. Splitting the sample into multiple overlapping redshift slices to extract the redshift information of galaxy clustering, we obtain a measurement of $D_A(z)/r_d$ and $H(z)r_d$ at nine effective redshifts with the full covariance matrix calibrated using MultiDark-Patchy mock catalogues. Using the reconstructed galaxy catalogues, we obtain the precision of $1.3\%-2.2\%$ for $D_A(z)/r_d$ and $2.1\%-6.0\%$ for $H(z)r_d$. To quantify the gain from the tomographic information, we compare the constraints on the cosmological parameters using our 9-bin BAO measurements, the consensus 3-bin BAO and RSD measurements at three effective redshifts in \citet{Alam2016}, and the non-tomographic (1-bin) BAO measurement at a single effective redshift. Comparing the 9-bin with 1-bin constraint result, it can improve the dark energy Figure of Merit by a factor of 1.24 for the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder parametrisation for equation of state parameter $w_{\rm DE}$. The errors of $w_0$ and $w_a$ from 9-bin constraints are slightly improved when compared to the 3-bin constraint result.

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