Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: Measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillation scale in the distribution of galaxies to redshift 1

T. M.C. Abbott, F. B. Abdalla, A. Alarcon, S. Allam, F. Andrade-Oliveira, J. Annis, S. Avila, M. Banerji, N. Banik, K. Bechtol, R. A. Bernstein, G. M. Bernstein, E. Bertin, D. Brooks, E. Buckley-Geer, D. L. Burke, H. Camacho, A. Carnero Rosell, M. Carrasco Kind, J. CarreteroF. J. Castander, R. Cawthon, K. C. Chan, M. Crocce, C. E. Cunha, C. B. D'Andrea, L. N. Da Costa, C. Davis, J. De Vicente, D. L. Depoy, S. Desai, H. T. Diehl, P. Doel, A. Drlica-Wagner, T. F. Eifler, J. Elvin-Poole, J. Estrada, A. E. Evrard, B. Flaugher, P. Fosalba, J. Frieman, J. García-Bellido, E. Gaztanaga, D. W. Gerdes, T. Giannantonio, D. Gruen, R. A. Gruendl, J. Gschwend, G. Gutierrez, W. G. Hartley, D. Hollowood, K. Honscheid, B. Hoyle, B. Jain, D. J. James, T. Jeltema, M. D. Johnson, S. Kent, N. Kokron, E. Krause, K. Kuehn, S. Kuhlmann, N. Kuropatkin, F. Lacasa, O. Lahav, M. Lima, H. Lin, M. A.G. Maia, M. Manera, J. Marriner, J. L. Marshall, P. Martini, P. Melchior, F. Menanteau, C. J. Miller, R. Miquel, J. J. Mohr, E. Neilsen, W. J. Percival, A. A. Plazas, A. Porredon, A. K. Romer, A. Roodman, R. Rosenfeld, A. J. Ross, E. Rozo, E. S. Rykoff, M. Sako, E. Sanchez, B. Santiago, V. Scarpine, R. Schindler, M. Schubnell, S. Serrano, I. Sevilla-Noarbe, E. Sheldon, R. C. Smith, M. Smith, F. Sobreira, E. Suchyta, M. E.C. Swanson, G. Tarle, D. Thomas, M. A. Troxel, D. L. Tucker, V. Vikram, A. R. Walker, R. H. Wechsler, J. Weller, B. Yanny, Y. Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

127 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present angular diameter distance measurements obtained by locating the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) scale in the distribution of galaxies selected from the first year of Dark Energy Survey data. We consider a sample of over 1.3 million galaxies distributed over a footprint of 1336 deg 2 witH0.6 < z photo < 1 and a typical redshift uncertainty of 0.03(1 + z). This sample was selected, as fully described in a companion paper, using a colour/magnitude selection that optimizes trade-offs between number density and redshift uncertainty. We investigate the BAO signal in the projected clustering using three conventions, the angular separation, the comoving transverse separation, and spherical harmonics. Further, we compare results obtained from template-based and machine-learning photometric redshift determinations. We use 1800 simulations that approximate our sample in order to produce covariance matrices and allow us to validate our distance scale measurement methodology. We measure the angular diameter distance, D A, at the effective redshift of our sample divided by the true physical scale of the BAO feature, r d. We obtain close to a 4 per cent distance measurement of D A (z eff = 0.81)/r d = 10.75 ± 0.43. These results are consistent with the flat δ cold dark matter concordance cosmological model supported by numerous other recent experimental results.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4866-4883
Number of pages18
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume483
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 11 2019

Funding

Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundac¸ão Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desen-volvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovac¸ão, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the DES. AJR is grateful for support from the Ohio State University Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics. MC acknowledges support from the Spanish Ramon y Cajal MICINN program. KCC acknowledges the support from the Spanish Ministerio de Econo-mia y Competitividad grant ESP2013-48274-C3-1-P and the Juan de la Cierva fellowship. NB acknowledges the use of University of Florida’s supercomputer HiPerGator 2.0 as well as thanks the University of Florida’s Research Computing staff. HC is supported by The Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifíco e Tecnológico (CNPq). ML and RR are partially supported by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and CNPq. We are thankful for the support of the Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). This work has made use of CosmoHub, see Carretero et al. (2017). CosmoHub has been developed by the Port d’Informació Científica, maintained through a collaboration of the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) and the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), and was partially funded by the ‘Plan Estatal de Investigación Cientfica y Técnica y de Innovación’ program of the Spanish government. The DESDM system is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics, through project number CE110001020. This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under contract no. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

FundersFunder number
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky AstrophysicsCE110001020
Conselho Nacional de Desen-volvimento Científico e Tecnológico
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifíco e Tecnológico
European Union’s Seventh Framework Program
FP7/2007
Fermi Research Alliance, LLCDE-AC02-07CH11359
Institut de Física d’Altes Energies
Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago
Ministry of Science and Education of Spain
Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University
National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Port d’Informació Científica
Sao Paulo Research Foundation
Spanish Ramon y Cajal MICINN
U.S. National Science Foundation
National Science FoundationAST-1138766, AST-1536171
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Science
High Energy Physics
Ohio State University
Seventh Framework Programme1138766, 240672, 306478, 291329
Higher Education Funding Council for England
Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Ohio State University
Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia Midas465376/2014-2
Science and Technology Facilities Council
European Commission
European Research Council
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Generalitat de Catalunya
Ministerio de Economía y CompetitividadSEV-2016-0588, ESP2013-48274-C3-1-P, SEV-2016-0597, ESP2015-66861, MDM-2015-0509, FPA2015-68048, AYA2015-71825
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos
Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia
European Regional Development Fund
Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas

    Keywords

    • cosmology: observations
    • large-scale structure of Universe

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