We report a detection of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature in the three-dimensional correlation function of the transmitted flux fraction in the Lyα forest of high-redshift quasars. The ...study uses 48 640 quasars in the redshift range 2.1 ≤ z ≤ 3.5 from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III). At a mean redshift z = 2.3, we measure the monopole and quadrupole components of the correlation function for separations in the range 20 h-1 Mpc < r < 200 h-1 Mpc. A peak in the correlation function is seen at a separation equal to (1.01 ± 0.03) times the distance expected for the BAO peak within a concordance ΛCDM cosmology. This first detection of the BAO peak at high redshift, when the universe was strongly matter dominated, results in constraints on the angular diameter distance DA and the expansion rate H at z = 2.3 that, combined with priors on H0 and the baryon density, require the existence of dark energy. Combined with constraints derived from cosmic microwave background observations, this result implies H(z = 2.3) = (224 ± 8) km s-1 Mpc-1, indicating that the time derivative of the cosmological scale parameter ȧ = H(z = 2.3)/(1 + z) is significantly greater than that measured with BAO at z ~ 0.5. This demonstrates that the expansion was decelerating in the range 0.7 < z < 2.3, as expected from the matter domination during this epoch. Combined with measurements of H0, one sees the pattern of deceleration followed by acceleration characteristic of a dark-energy dominated universe.
This paper presents a survey of X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with optical spectroscopic follow-up in a ∼ 18 deg2 area of the equatorial XMM-XXL north field. A sample of 8445 ...point-like X-ray sources detected by XMM–Newton above a limiting flux of
$F_{\rm 0.5{\rm -}10\, keV} > 10^{-15} \rm \,erg\, cm^{-2}\, s^{-1}$
was matched to optical (Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS) and infrared (IR; WISE) counterparts. We followed up 3042 sources brighter than r = 22.5 mag with the SDSS Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) spectrograph. The spectra yielded a reliable redshift measurement for 2578 AGNs in the redshift range z = 0.02–5.0, with 0.5-2 keV luminosities ranging from 1039-1046 erg s− 1. This is currently the largest published spectroscopic sample of X-ray-selected AGNs in a contiguous area. The BOSS spectra of AGN candidates show a distribution of optical line widths which is clearly bimodal, allowing an efficient separation between broad- and narrow-emission line AGNs. The former dominate our sample (70 per cent) due to the relatively bright X-ray flux limit and the optical BOSS magnitude limit. We classify the narrow-emission line objects (22 per cent of the full sample) using standard optical emission line diagnostics: the majority have line ratios indicating the dominant source of ionization is the AGN. A small number (8 per cent of the full sample) exhibit the typical narrow line ratios of star-forming galaxies, or only have absorption lines in their spectra. We term the latter two classes ‘elusive’ AGN, which would not be easy to identify correctly without their X-ray emission. We also compare X-ray (XMM–Newton), optical colour (SDSS) and and IR (WISE) AGN selections in this field. X-ray observations reveal, by far, the largest number of AGN. The overlap between the selections, which is a strong function of the imaging depth in a given band, is also remarkably small. We show using spectral stacking that a large fraction of the X-ray AGNs would not be selectable via optical or IR colours due to host galaxy contamination. A substantial fraction of AGN may therefore be missed by these longer wavelength selection methods.
We present the first results from an ongoing survey for damped Lyman-α systems (DLAs) in the spectra of z > 2 quasars observed in the course of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), ...which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III. Our full (non-statistical) sample, based on Data Release 9, comprises 12 081 systems with log N(H i) ≥ 20, out of which 6839 have log N(H i) ≥ 20.3. This is the largest DLA sample ever compiled, superseding that from SDSS-II by a factor of seven. Using a statistical sub-sample and estimating systematics from realistic mock data, we probe the N(H i) distribution at ⟨z⟩ = 2.5. Contrary to what is generally believed, the distribution extends beyond 1022 cm-2 with a moderate slope of index ≈−3.5. This result matches the opacity-corrected distribution observed at z = 0 surprisingly well. The cosmological mass density of neutral gas in DLAs is found to be \hbox{$\omegagdla \approx 10^{-3}$}ΩgDLA≈10-3, evolving only mildly over the past 12 billion years.
Measuring the two-point correlation function of the galaxies in the Universe gives access to the underlying dark matter distribution, which is related to cosmological parameters and to the physics of ...the primordial Universe. The estimation of the correlation function for current galaxy surveys makes use of the Landy-Szalay estimator, which is supposed to reach minimal variance. This is only true, however, for a vanishing correlation function. We study the Landy-Szalay estimator when these conditions are not fulfilled and propose a new estimator that provides the smallest variance for a given survey geometry. Our estimator is a linear combination of ratios between pair counts of data and/or random catalogues (DD, RR, and DR). The optimal combination for a given geometry is determined by using lognormal mock catalogues. The resulting estimator is biased in a model-dependent way, but we propose a simple iterative procedure for obtaining an unbiased model-independent estimator. Our method can be easily applied to any dataset and requires few extra mock catalogues compared to the standard Landy-Szalay analysis. Using various sets of simulated data (lognormal, second-order LPT, and N-body), we obtain a 20–25% gain on the error bars on the two-point correlation function for the SDSS geometry and ΛCDM correlation function. When applied to SDSS data (DR7 and DR9), we achieve a similar gain on the correlation functions, which translates into a 10–15% improvement over the estimation of the densities of matter Ωm and dark energy ΩΛ in an open ΛCDM model. The constraints derived from DR7 data with our estimator are similar to those obtained with the DR9 data and the Landy-Szalay estimator, which covers a volume twice as large and has a density that is three times higher.
The SDSS-III BOSS Quasar survey will attempt to observe z > 2.15 quasars at a density of at least 15 per square degree to yield the first measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the Ly-α ...forest. To help reaching this goal, we have developed a method to identify quasars based on their variability in the ugriz optical bands. The method has been applied to the selection of quasar targets in the SDSS region known as Stripe 82 (the southern equatorial stripe), where numerous photometric observations are available over a 10-year baseline. This area was observed by BOSS during September and October 2010. Only 8% of the objects selected via variability are not quasars, while 90% of the previously identified high-redshift quasar population is recovered. The method allows for a significant increase in the z > 2.15 quasar density over previous strategies based on optical (ugriz) colors, achieving a density of 24.0 deg-2 on average down to g ~ 22 over the 220 deg2 area of Stripe 82. We applied this method to simulated data from the Palomar Transient Factory and from Pan-STARRS, and showed that even with data that have sparser time sampling than what is available in Stripe 82, including variability in future quasar selection strategies would lead to increased target selection efficiency in the z > 2.15 redshift range. We also found that broad absorption line quasars are preferentially present in a variability than in a color selection.
Context. Baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) and their effects on the matter power spectrum can be studied using the Lyman-α absorption signature of the matter density field along quasar (QSO) lines ...of sight. A measurement sufficiently accurate to provide useful cosmological constraints requires the observation of ~ 105 quasars in the redshift range 2.2 < z < 3.5 over ~ 8000deg2. Such a survey is planned by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) project of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III). Aims. We assess one of the challenges for this project, that of building from five-band imaging data a list of targets that contains the largest number of quasars in the required redshift range. In practice, we perform a stellar rejection of more than two orders of magnitude with a selection efficiency for quasars better than 50% to magnitudes as bright as g ~ 22. Methods. To obtain an appropriate target list and estimate quasar redshifts, we develop artificial neural networks (ANNs) with a multilayer perceptron architecture. The input variables are photometric measurements, i.e., the object magnitudes and their errors in the five bands (ugriz) of the SDSS photometry. The ANN developed for target selection provides a continuous output variable between 0 for non-quasar point-like objects to 1 for quasars. A second ANN estimates the QSO redshift z using the photometric information. Results. For target selection, we achieve a non-quasar point-like object rejection of 99.6% and 98.5% for a quasar efficiency of, respectively, 50% and 85%, comparable to the performances of traditional methods. The photometric redshift precision is on the order of 0.1 over the region relevant to BAO studies. These statistical methods, developed in the context of the BOSS project, can easily be extended to any quasar selection and/or determination of their photometric redshift.
Aims. The EROS-2 project was designed to test the hypothesis that massive compact halo objects (the so-called "machos") could be a major component of the dark matter halo of the Milky Way galaxy. To ...this end, EROS- 2 monitored over 6.7 years 33\times10 similar to stars in the Magellanic clouds for microlensing events caused by such objects. Methods. In this work, we use only a subsample of 7\times10 similar to bright stars spread over 84\,\rm deg arrow up of the LMC and 9\,\rm deg arrow up of the SMC. The strategy of using only bright stars helps to discriminate against background events due to variable stars and allows a simple determination of the effects of source confusion (blending). The use of a large solid angle makes the survey relatively insensitive to effects that could make the optical depth strongly direction dependent. Results. Using this sample of bright stars, only one candidate event was found, whereas similar to 39 events would have been expected if the Halo were entirely populated by objects of mass M\sim0.4 similar to M_{\odot}. Combined with the results of EROS-1, this implies that the optical depth toward the Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC) due to such lenses is \tau<0.36\times10 (95% CL), corresponding to a fraction of the halo mass of less than 8%. This optical depth is considerably less than that measured by the MACHO collaboration in the central region of the LMC. More generally, machos in the mass range 0.6\times10 contains as a subset _\odot<M<15 similar to M_{\odot} are ruled out as the primary occupants of the Milky Way Halo.
Abstract
We obtain constraints on cosmological parameters from the spherically averaged redshift-space correlation function of the CMASS Data Release 9 (DR9) sample of the Baryonic Oscillation ...Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). We combine this information with additional data from recent cosmic microwave background (CMB), supernova and baryon acoustic oscillation measurements. Our results show no significant evidence of deviations from the standard flat Λ cold dark matter model, whose basic parameters can be specified by Ωm = 0.285 ± 0.009, 100 Ωb = 4.59 ± 0.09, n
s = 0.961 ± 0.009, H
0 = 69.4 ± 0.8 km s−1 Mpc−1 and σ8 = 0.80 ± 0.02. The CMB+CMASS combination sets tight constraints on the curvature of the Universe, with Ω
k
= −0.0043 ± 0.0049, and the tensor-to-scalar amplitude ratio, for which we find r < 0.16 at the 95 per cent confidence level (CL). These data show a clear signature of a deviation from scale invariance also in the presence of tensor modes, with n
s < 1 at the 99.7 per cent CL. We derive constraints on the fraction of massive neutrinos of f
ν < 0.049 (95 per cent CL), implying a limit of ∑m
ν < 0.51 eV. We find no signature of a deviation from a cosmological constant from the combination of all data sets, with a constraint of w
DE = −1.033 ± 0.073 when this parameter is assumed time-independent, and no evidence of a departure from this value when it is allowed to evolve as w
DE(a) = w
0 + w
a
(1 − a). The achieved accuracy on our cosmological constraints is a clear demonstration of the constraining power of current cosmological observations.
PDF
