The estimation of cosmological constraints from observations of the large-scale structure of the Universe, such as the power spectrum or the correlation function, requires the knowledge of the ...inverse of the associated covariance matrix, namely the precision matrix,
$\boldsymbol {\Psi }$
. In most analyses,
$\boldsymbol {\Psi }$
is estimated from a limited set of mock catalogues. Depending on how many mocks are used, this estimation has an associated error which must be propagated into the final cosmological constraints. For future surveys such as Euclid and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, the control of this additional uncertainty requires a prohibitively large number of mock catalogues. In this work, we test a novel technique for the estimation of the precision matrix, the covariance tapering method, in the context of baryon acoustic oscillation measurements. Even though this technique was originally devised as a way to speed up maximum likelihood estimations, our results show that it also reduces the impact of noisy precision matrix estimates on the derived confidence intervals, without introducing biases on the target parameters. The application of this technique can help future surveys to reach their true constraining power using a significantly smaller number of mock catalogues.
We investigate the anisotropic clustering of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 12 sample, which consists of 1198 006 galaxies in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.75 and a ...sky coverage of 10 252 deg2. We analyse this data set in Fourier space, using the power-spectrum multipoles to measure redshift-space distortions simultaneously with the Alcock-Paczynski effect and the baryon acoustic oscillation scale. We include the power-spectrum monopole, quadrupole and hexadecapole in our analysis and compare our measurements with a perturbation-theory-based model, while properly accounting for the survey window function. To evaluate the reliability of our analysis pipeline, we participate in a mock challenge, which results in systematic uncertainties significantly smaller than the statistical uncertainties. While the high-redshift constraint on fs8 at zeff = 0.61 indicates a small (~1.4s) deviation from the prediction of the Planck ...CDM (... cold dark matter) model, the low-redshift constraint is in good agreement with Planck ...CDM. This paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set from BOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined with others in Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
We explore the cosmological implications of anisotropic clustering measurements in configuration space of the final galaxy samples from Data Release 12 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Baryon ...Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. We implement a new detailed modelling of the effects of non-linearities, bias and redshift-space distortions that can be used to extract unbiased cosmological information from our measurements for scales ... We combined the information from Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) with the latest cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations and Type Ia supernovae samples and found no significant evidence for a deviation from the ... cold dark matter (...CDM) cosmological model. In particular, these data sets can constrain the dark energy equation-of-state parameter to ... when to be assumed time independent, the curvature of the Universe to ... and the sum of the neutrino masses to ... at 95 per cent confidence levels. We explore the constraints on the growth rate of cosmic structures assuming ... and obtain ..., in good agreement with the predictions of general relativity of ... We compress the information of our clustering measurements into constraints on the parameter combinations ... and 0.61 with their respective covariance matrices and find good agreement with the predictions for these parameters obtained from the best-fitting ...CDM model to the CMB data from the Planck satellite. This paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set from BOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined with others by Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
We present baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale measurements determined from the clustering of 1.2 million massive galaxies with redshifts 0.2 < z < 0.75 distributed over 9300 deg super( 2), as ...quantified by their redshift-space correlation function. In order to facilitate these measurements, we define, describe, and motivate the selection function for galaxies in the final data release (DR12) of the SDSS III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This includes the observational footprint, masks for image quality and Galactic extinction, and weights to account for density relationships intrinsic to the imaging and spectroscopic portions of the survey. We simulate the observed systematic trends in mock galaxy samples and demonstrate that they impart no bias on BAO scale measurements and have a minor impact on the recovered statistical uncertainty. We measure transverse and radial BAO distance measurements in 0.2 < z < 0.5, 0.5 < z < 0.75, and (overlapping) 0.4 < z < 0.6 redshift bins. In each redshift bin, we obtain a precision that is 2.7 per cent or better on the radial distance and 1.6 per cent or better on the transverse distance. The combination of the redshift bins represents 1.8 per cent precision on the radial distance and 1.1 per cent precision on the transverse distance. This paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set from BOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined with others in Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS.
Measurements of the redshift-space galaxy clustering have been a prolific source of cosmological information in recent years. Accurate covariance estimates are an essential step for the validation of ...galaxy clustering models of the redshift-space two-point statistics. Usually, only a limited set of accurate N-body simulations is available. Thus, assessing the data covariance is not possible or only leads to a noisy estimate. Further, relying on simulated realizations of the survey data means that tests of the cosmology dependence of the covariance are expensive. With these points in mind, this work presents a simple theoretical model for the linear covariance of anisotropic galaxy clustering observations with synthetic catalogues. Considering the Legendre moments ('multipoles') of the two-point statistics and projections into wide bins of the line-of-sight parameter ('clustering wedges'), we describe the modelling of the covariance for these anisotropic clustering measurements for galaxy samples with a trivial geometry in the case of a Gaussian approximation of the clustering likelihood. As main result of this paper, we give the explicit formulae for Fourier and configuration space covariance matrices. To validate our model, we create synthetic halo occupation distribution galaxy catalogues by populating the haloes of an ensemble of large-volume N-body simulations. Using linear and non-linear input power spectra, we find very good agreement between the model predictions and the measurements on the synthetic catalogues in the quasi-linear regime.
We present a joint cosmological analysis of weak gravitational lensing observations from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-1000), with redshift-space galaxy clustering observations from the Baryon ...Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and galaxy-galaxy lensing observations from the overlap between KiDS-1000, BOSS, and the spectroscopic 2-degree Field Lensing Survey. This combination of large-scale structure probes breaks the degeneracies between cosmological parameters for individual observables, resulting in a constraint on the structure growth parameter
S
8
= σ
8
√(Ω
m
/0.3) = 0.766
−0.014
+0.020
, which has the same overall precision as that reported by the full-sky cosmic microwave background observations from
Planck
. The recovered
S
8
amplitude is low, however, by 8.3 ± 2.6% relative to
Planck
. This result builds from a series of KiDS-1000 analyses where we validate our methodology with variable depth mock galaxy surveys, our lensing calibration with image simulations and null-tests, and our optical-to-near-infrared redshift calibration with multi-band mock catalogues and a spectroscopic-photometric clustering analysis. The systematic uncertainties identified by these analyses are folded through as nuisance parameters in our cosmological analysis. Inspecting the offset between the marginalised posterior distributions, we find that the
S
8
-difference with
Planck
is driven by a tension in the matter fluctuation amplitude parameter,
σ
8
. We quantify the level of agreement between the cosmic microwave background and our large-scale structure constraints using a series of different metrics, finding differences with a significance ranging between ∼3
σ
, when considering the offset in
S
8
, and ∼2
σ
, when considering the full multi-dimensional parameter space.
We reproduce the galaxy clustering catalogue from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Final Data Release (BOSS DR11&DR12) with high fidelity on all relevant scales in order to allow ...a robust analysis of baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift space distortions. We have generated (6000) 12 288 MultiDark patchy BOSS (DR11) DR12 light cones corresponding to an effective volume of ~192 000 h super( -1) Gpc super( 3) (the largest ever simulated volume), including cosmic evolution in the redshift range from 0.15 to 0.75. The mocks have been calibrated using a reference galaxy catalogue based on the halo abundance matching modelling of the BOSS DR11&DR12 galaxy clustering data and on the data themselves. The production follows three steps. First, we apply the patchy code to generate a dark matter field and an object distribution including non-linear stochastic galaxy bias. Secondly, we run the halo/stellar distribution reconstruction hadron code to assign masses to the various objects. This step uses the mass distribution as a function of local density and non-local indicators (i.e. tidal field tensor eigenvalues and relative halo exclusion separation for massive objects) from the reference simulation applied to the corresponding patchy dark matter and galaxy distribution. Finally, we apply the sugar code to build the light cones. The resulting MultiDarkpatchy mock light cones reproduce the number density, selection function, survey geometry, and in general within 1..., for arbitrary stellar mass bins, the power spectrum up to k = 0.3 h Mpc super( -1), the two-point correlation functions down to a few Mpc scales, and the three-point statistics of the BOSS DR11&DR12 galaxy samples. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III project, has provided the largest survey of galaxy redshifts available to date, in terms of both ...the number of galaxy redshifts measured by a single survey, and the effective cosmological volume covered. Key to analysing the clustering of these data to provide cosmological measurements is understanding the detailed properties of this sample. Potential issues include variations in the target catalogue caused by changes either in the targeting algorithm or properties of the data used, the pattern of spectroscopic observations, the spatial distribution of targets for which redshifts were not obtained, and variations in the target sky density due to observational systematics. We document here the target selection algorithms used to create the galaxy samples that comprise BOSS. We also present the algorithms used to create large-scale structure catalogues for the final Data Release (DR12) samples and the associated random catalogues that quantify the survey mask. The algorithms are an evolution of those used by the BOSS team to construct catalogues from earlier data, and have been designed to accurately quantify the galaxy sample. The code used, designated mksample, is released with this paper.
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