Qingqing Mao, Andreas A. Berlind, Robert J. Scherrer, Mark C. Neyrinck, Roman Scoccimarro, Jeremy L. Tinker, Cameron K. McBride, Donald P. Schneider, Kaike Pan,… 展开作者
Qingqing Mao, Andreas A. Berlind, Robert J. Scherrer, Mark C. Neyrinck, Roman Scoccimarro, Jeremy L. Tinker, Cameron K. McBride, Donald P. Schneider, Kaike Pan, Dmitry Bizyaev, Elena Malanushenko, Viktor Malanushenko
We present a cosmic void catalog using the large-scale structure galaxy catalog from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This galaxy catalog is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12 and is the final catalog of SDSS-III. We take into account the survey boundaries, masks, and angular and radial selection functions, and apply the ZOBOV void finding algorithm to the galaxy catalog. We identify a total of 10,643 voids. After making quality cuts to ensure that the voids represent real underdense regions, we obtain 1,228 voids with effective radii spanning the range 20-100Mpc/h and with central densities that are, on average, 30% of the mean sample density. We release versions of the catalogs both with and without quality cuts. We discuss the basic statistics of voids, such as their size and redshift distributions, and measure the radial density profile of the voids via a stacking technique. In addition, we construct mock void catalogs from 1000 mock galaxy catalogs, and find that the properties of BOSS voids are in good agreement with those in the mock catalogs. We compare the stellar mass distribution of galaxies living inside and outside of the voids, and find no significant difference. These BOSS and mock void catalogs are useful for a number of cosmological and galaxy environment studies.
We apply the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) test to the stacked voids identified using the large-scale structure galaxy catalog from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This galaxy catalog is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12 and is the final catalog of SDSS-III. We also use 1000 mock galaxy catalogs that match the geometry, density, and clustering properties of the BOSS sample in order to characterize the statistical uncertainties of our measurements and take into account systematic errors such as redshift space distortions. For both BOSS data and mock catalog…
We report a $5.3σ$ detection of the gravitational lensing effect of cosmic voids from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic (BOSS) Data Release 12 seen in the $Planck$ 2018 cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing convergence map. To make this detection, we introduce new optimal techniques for void stacking and filtering of the CMB maps, such as binning voids by a combination of their observed galaxy density and size to separate those with distinctive lensing signatures. We calibrate theoretical expectations for the void-lensing signal using mock catalogs generated in a suite of 108 full-sky l…
We present a public catalogue of voids in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 11 LOWZ and CMASS galaxy surveys. This catalogue contains information on the location, sizes, densities, shapes and bounding surfaces of 8956 independent, disjoint voids, making it the largest public void catalogue to date. Voids are identified using a version of the ZOBOV algorithm, the operation of which has been calibrated through tests on mock galaxy populations in N-body simulations, as well as on a suite of 4096 mock catalogues which fully reproduce the galaxy clustering, survey mask…
As a large-scale overdensity collapses, it affects the orientation and shape of galaxies that form, by exerting tidal shear along their axes. Therefore, the shapes of elliptical galaxies align with the tidal field of cosmic structures. This intrinsic alignment provides insights into galaxy formation and the primordial universe, complements late-time cosmological probes and constitutes a significant systematic effect for weak gravitational lensing observations. In the present study, we provide constraints on the linear alignment model using a fully Bayesian field-level approach, using galaxy sh…
The traditional clustering analyses of galaxy redshift surveys compress the clustering data into a set of late-time physical variables in a model-independent way. This approach has recently been extended by an additional shape variable encoding early-time physics information. We apply this new technique, ShapeFit, to SDSS-III BOSS data and show that it matches the constraining power of alternative, model-dependent approaches, which directly constrain the model's parameters adopting a cosmological model ab-initio. ShapeFit is $\sim30$ times faster, model-independent, naturally splits early- and…
We analyze publicly available void catalogs of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Data Release 10 at redshifts $0.4<z<0.7$. The first goal of this paper is to extend the Cosmic Microwave Background stacking analysis of previous spectroscopic void samples at $z<0.4$. In addition, the DR10 void catalog provides the first chance to spectroscopically probe the volume of the Granett et al. (2008) supervoid catalog that constitutes the only set of voids which has shown a significant detection of a cross-correlation signal between void locations and average CMB chill. We found that the posit…
We present a measurement of the anisotropic void-galaxy cross-correlation function in the CMASS galaxy sample of the BOSS DR12 data release. We perform a joint fit to the data for redshift space distortions (RSD) due to galaxy peculiar velocities and anisotropies due to the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect, for the first time using a velocity field reconstruction technique to remove the complicating effects of RSD in the void centre positions themselves. Fits to the void-galaxy function give a 1% measurement of the AP parameter combination $D_A(z)H(z)/c = 0.4367\pm 0.0045$ at redshift $z=0.57$, wh…
We measure the void probability function (VPF) of galaxies in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The VPF provides complementary information to standard two-point statistics in that it is sensitive to galaxy bias in the most extreme underdensities in the cosmic web. Thus the VPF is ideal for testing whether halo occupation of galaxies depends on large-scale density, an effect known as galaxy assembly bias. We find that standard HOD model---one parameterized by halo mass only---fit only to the two-point function, accurately predicts the VPF. Additionally, for HOD models where de…
We present cosmological parameter constraints based on a joint modeling of galaxy-lensing cross correlations and galaxy clustering measurements in the SDSS, marginalizing over small-scale modeling uncertainties using mock galaxy catalogs, without explicit modeling of galaxy bias. We show that our modeling method is robust to the impact of different choices for how galaxies occupy dark matter halos and to the impact of baryonic physics (at the $\sim2\%$ level in cosmological parameters) and test for the impact of covariance on the likelihood analysis and of the survey window function on the the…
We present a model for spectrophotometric calibration errors in observations of quasars from the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and describe the correction procedure we have developed and applied to this sample. Calibration errors are primarily due to atmospheric differential refraction and guiding offsets during each exposure. The corrections potentially reduce the systematics for any studies of BOSS quasars, including the measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations using the Lyman-$α$ forest. Our model suggests that,…
We report the first measurement of the diminutive lensing signal arising from matter underdensities associated with cosmic voids. While undetectable individually, by stacking the weak gravitational shear estimates around 901 voids detected in SDSS DR7 by Sutter et al. (2012a), we find substantial evidence for a depression of the lensing signal compared to the cosmic mean. This depression is most pronounced at the void radius, in agreement with analytical models of void matter profiles. Even with the largest void sample and imaging survey available today, we cannot put useful constraints on the…
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs) in the early Universe are predicted to leave an as yet undetected signature on the relative clustering of total mass versus luminous matter. A detection of this effect would provide an important confirmation of the standard cosmological paradigm and constrain alternatives to dark matter as well as non-standard fluctuations such as Compensated Isocurvature Perturbations (CIPs). We conduct the first observational search for this effect, by comparing the number-weighted and luminosity-weighted correlation functions, using the SDSS-III BOSS Data Release 10 CMASS…
Using a void catalog from the SDSS survey, we present the first measurements of void clustering and the corresponding void bias. Over the range 30-200 Mpc/h the void auto-correlation is detected at 5-sigma significance for voids of radius 15-20 Mpc/h. We also measure the void-galaxy cross-correlation at higher signal-to-noise and compare the inferred void bias with the autocorrelation results. Void bias is constant with scale for voids of a given size, but its value falls from 5.6 +/- 1.0 to below zero as the void radius increases from 15 to 30 Mpc/h. The comparison of our measurements with ca…
We report a measurement of the large-scale 3-point correlation function of galaxies using the largest dataset for this purpose to date, 777, 202 Luminous Red Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (SDSS BOSS) DR12 CMASS sample. This work exploits the novel algorithm of Slepian & Eisenstein (2015b) to compute the multipole moments of the 3PCF in $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$ time, with $N$ the number of galaxies. Leading-order perturbation theory models the data well in a compressed basis where one triangle side is integrated out. We also present an accur…
We measure weak lensing mass profiles of voids from a volume-limited sample of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs). We find voids using an algorithm designed to maximize the lensing signal by dividing the survey volume into 2D slices, and then finding holes in this 2D distribution of LRGs. We perform a stacked shear measurement on about 20,000 voids with radii between 15-55 Mpc/h and redshifts between 0.16-0.37. We measure the characteristic radial shear signal of voids with a signal-to-noise of 7. The mass profile corresponds to a fractional underdensity of about -0.4 inside the void radius and…
The Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) feature in the power spectrum of galaxies can be used as a standard ruler to probe the accelerated expansion of the Universe. In this paper, we study several galaxy selection schemes aiming at building an emission-line galaxy (ELG) sample in the redshift range $0.6 < z < 1.7$, that would be suitable for future BAO studies using the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) spectrograph on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescope. We explore two different color selections using both the SDSS and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (…
We discuss the universality and self-similarity of void density profiles, for voids in realistic mock luminous red galaxy (LRG) catalogues from the Jubilee simulation, as well as in void catalogues constructed from the SDSS LRG and Main Galaxy samples. Voids are identified using a modified version of the ZOBOV watershed transform algorithm, with additional selection cuts. We find that voids in simulation are self-similar, meaning that their average rescaled profile does not depend on the void size, or -- within the range of the simulated catalogue -- on the redshift. Comparison of the profiles…
We report the weak lensing measurement of filaments between Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III/Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS galaxy pairs at $z\sim0.55$, using the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) first-year galaxy shape catalogue. Despite of the small overlap of $140$ deg$^2$ between these surveys we detect the filament lensing signal at 3.9$σ$ significance, which is the highest signal-to-noise lensing measurement of filaments between galaxy-scale halos at this redshift range. We derive a theoretical prediction and covariance using mock catalogues based on full-sky ray-t…
Using the redshift-space distortions of void-galaxy cross-correlation function we analyse the dynamics of voids embedded in different environments. We compute the void-galaxy cross-correlation function in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in terms of distances taken along the line of sight and projected into the sky. We analyse the distortions on the cross-correlation isodensity levels and we find anisotropic isocontours consistent with expansion for large voids with smoothly rising density profiles and collapse for small voids with overdense shells surrounding them. Based on the linear appr…
We perform a spectroscopic analysis of 492,450 galaxy spectra from the first two years of observations of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III/Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) collaboration. This data set has been released in the ninth SDSS data release, the first public data release of BOSS spectra. We show that the typical signal-to-noise ratio of BOSS spectra is sufficient to measure stellar velocity dispersion and emission line fluxes for individual objects. The typical velocity dispersion of a BOSS galaxy is 240 km/s, with an accuracy of better than 30 per cent for 93 per cent…
We present the first high significance detection ($4.1σ$) of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) feature in the galaxy bispectrum of the twelfth data release (DR12) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS sample ($0.43 \leq z \leq 0.7$). We measured the scale dilation parameter, $α$, using the power spectrum, bispectrum, and both simultaneously for DR12, plus 2048 MultiDark-PATCHY mocks in the North and South Galactic Caps (NGC and SGC, respectively), and the volume weighted averages of those two samples (N+SGC). The fitting to the mocks validated our analysis pipeline, …
We search for a galaxy clustering bias due to a modulation of galaxy number with the baryon-dark matter relative velocity resulting from recombination-era physics. We find no detected signal and place the constraint $b_v < 0.01$ on the relative velocity bias for the CMASS galaxies. This bias is an important potential systematic of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) method measurements of the cosmic distance scale using the 2-point clustering. Our limit on the relative velocity bias indicates a systematic shift of no more than $0.3\%$ rms in the distance scale inferred from the BAO feature in th…
We present catalogues of voids for the SDSS DR7 redshift survey and for Millennium I simulation mock data. We aim to compare the observations with simulations based on a $Λ$CDM model and a semi-analytic galaxy formation model. We use the void statistics as a test for these models. We assembled a mock catalogue that closely resembles the SDSS DR7 catalogue and carried out a parallel statistical analysis of the observed and simulated catalogue. We find that in the observation and the simulation, voids tend to be equally spherical. The total volume occupied by the voids and their total number are…
We investigate the impact of different redshift distributions of random samples on the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) measurements of $D_V(z)r_\mathrm{d}^\mathrm{fid}/r_\mathrm{d}$ from the two-point correlation functions (2PCF) of galaxies in the Data Release 12 (DR12) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Big surveys, such as BOSS, usually assign redshifts to the random samples by randomly drawing values from the measured redshift distributions of the data, which would necessarily introduce fiducial signals of fluctuations into the random samples, weakening the signals o…
What do we know about voids in the dark matter distribution given the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and assuming the $Λ\mathrm{CDM}$ model? Recent application of the Bayesian inference algorithm BORG to the SDSS Data Release 7 main galaxy sample has generated detailed Eulerian and Lagrangian representations of the large-scale structure as well as the possibility to accurately quantify corresponding uncertainties. Building upon these results, we present constrained catalogs of voids in the Sloan volume, aiming at a physical representation of dark matter underdensities and at the alleviation o…
We report novel cosmological constraints obtained from cosmic voids in the final BOSS DR12 dataset. They arise from the joint analysis of geometric and dynamic distortions of average void shapes (i.e., the stacked void-galaxy cross-correlation function) in redshift space. Our model uses tomographic deprojection to infer real-space void profiles and self-consistently accounts for the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) effect and redshift-space distortions (RSD) without any prior assumptions on cosmology or structure formation. It is derived from first physical principles and provides an extremely good descr…
Sutter et al. have responded to the criticisms we made of their cosmic void catalogue in our recent paper presenting an alternative catalogue (Nadathur & Hotchkiss 2013). Unfortunately, their response contains several statements which are incorrect, as we point out in this note.
We present a comprehensive study of 250,000 galaxies targeted by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) up to z ~ 0.7 with the specific goal of identifying and characterising a population of galaxies that has evolved without significant merging. We compute a likelihood that each BOSS galaxy is a progenitor of the Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) sample, targeted by SDSS-I/II up z ~ 0.5, by using the fossil record of LRGs and their inferred star-formation histories, metallicity histories and dust content. We determine merger rates, luminosity growth rates and the evolution of the large-…
We present measurements of the Minkowski functionals extracted from the SDSS-III BOSS catalogs. After defining the Minkowski functionals, we describe how an unbiased reconstruction of these statistics can be obtained from a field with masked regions and survey boundaries, validating our methodology with Gaussian random fields and mock galaxy snapshot data. From the BOSS galaxy data we generate a set of four density fields in three dimensions corresponding to the northern and southern skies of LOWZ and CMASS catalogs, smoothing over large scales such that the field is perturbatively non-Gaussia…
Using the LOWZ and CMASS samples of the ninth data release (DR9) from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), I investigate properties of star forming galaxies and AGNs. The CMASS sample seriously suffers from the radial selection effect, even within the redshift 0.44<z<0.6, which will lead to statistical conclusions in the CMASS sample being less likely robust. In the LOWZ sample, the fraction of star-forming galaxies is nearly constant from the lowest density regime to the densest regime; the AGN fraction is also insensitive to the local environment. In addition, I note …
We present a new analysis of the inferred growth rate of cosmic structure measured around voids, using the LOWZ and the CMASS samples in the twelfth data release (DR12) of SDSS. Using a simple multipole analysis we recover a value consistent with $Λ$CDM for the inferred linear growth rate normalized by the linear bias: the $β$ parameter. This is true in both the mock catalogues and the data, where we find $β=0.33\pm0.06$ for the LOWZ sample and $β=0.36\pm0.05$ for the CMASS sample. This work demonstrates that we can expect redshift-space distortions around voids to provide unbiased and accurat…
We report the discovery of 13 confirmed two-image quasar lenses from a systematic search for gravitationally lensed quasars in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). We adopted a methodology similar to that used in the SDSS Quasar Lens Search (SQLS). In addition to the confirmed lenses, we report 11 quasar pairs with small angular separations ($\lesssim$2") confirmed from our spectroscopy, which are either projected pairs, physical binaries, or possibly quasar lens systems whose lens galaxies have not yet been detected. The newly discovered quasar lens system, SDSS J1452+…
The Ly$α$ forest transmission probability distribution function (PDF) is an established probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM) astrophysics, especially the temperature-density relationship of the IGM. We measure the transmission PDF from 3393 Baryon Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) quasars from SDSS Data Release 9, and compare with mock spectra that include careful modeling of the noise, continuum, and astrophysical uncertainties. The BOSS transmission PDFs, measured at $\langle z \rangle = [2.3,2.6,3.0]$, are compared with PDFs created from mock spectra drawn from a suite of hydrodyn…
Recently, Nadathur & Hotchkiss (2013) submitted a paper discussing a new cosmic void catalog. This paper includes claims about the void catalog described in Sutter et al. (2012). In this note, we respond to those claims, clarify some discrepancies between the text of Sutter et al. (2012) and the most recent version of the catalog, and provide some comments on the differences between our catalog and that of Nadathur & Hotchkiss (2013). All updates and documentation for our catalog are available at http://www.cosmicvoids.net.
We report the detection, with a high level of confidence, of coherent outflows around voids found in the seventh data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR7). In particular, we developed a robust <|cos theta|> statistical test to quantify the strength of redshift-space distortions (RSD) associated with extended coherent velocity fields. We consistently find that the vector that joins void centers with galaxies that lie in shells around them is more likely to be perpendicular to the line-of-sight than parallel to it. This effect is clear evidence for the existence of outflows in the …
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 (6,000) 12,288 MultiDark PATCHY BOSS (DR11) DR12 light-cones corresponding to an effective volume of $\sim192,000\,[h^{-1}\,{\rm Gpc}]^3$ (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 ca…
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs) in the early Universe are predicted to leave an as yet undetected signature on the relative clustering of total mass versus luminous matter. This signature, a modulation of the relative large-scale clustering of baryons and dark matter, offers a new angle to compare the large scale distribution of light versus mass. A detection of this effect would provide an important confirmation of the standard cosmological paradigm and constrain alternatives to dark matter as well as non-standard fluctuations such as Compensated Isocurvature Perturbations (CIPs). The fir…
We present the large-scale 3-point correlation function (3PCF) of the SDSS DR12 CMASS sample of $777,202$ Luminous Red Galaxies, the largest-ever sample used for a 3PCF or bispectrum measurement. We make the first high-significance ($4.5σ$) detection of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in the 3PCF. Using these acoustic features in the 3PCF as a standard ruler, we measure the distance to $z=0.57$ to $1.7\%$ precision (statistical plus systematic). We find $D_{\rm V}= 2024\pm29\;{\rm Mpc\;(stat)}\pm20\;{\rm Mpc\;(sys)}$ for our fiducial cosmology (consistent with Planck 2015) and bias model. T…
We present the results obtained from the full-shape cosmology analysis of the redshift-space power spectra for 4 galaxy samples of the SDSS-III BOSS DR12 galaxy catalog over $0.2 < z < 0.75$. For the theoretical template, we use an emulator that was built from an ensemble set of $N$-body simulations, which enables fast and accurate computation of the redshift-space power spectrum of halos. Combining with the halo occupation distribution to model the halo-galaxy connection, we can compute the redshift-space power spectrum of BOSS-like galaxies in the flat $Λ$CDM cosmology. In our cosmology infe…
We perform an analysis of the three-dimensional cosmic matter density field traced by galaxies of the SDSS-III/BOSS galaxy sample. The systematic-free nature of this analysis is confirmed by two elements: the successful cross-correlation with the gravitational lensing observations derived from Planck 2018 data and the absence of bias at scales $k \simeq 10^{-3}-10^{-2}h$ Mpc$^{-1}$ in the a posteriori power spectrum of recovered initial conditions. Our analysis builds upon our algorithm for Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies (BORG) and uses a physical model of cosmic structure format…
We perform an Alcock-Paczynski test using stacked cosmic voids identified in the SDSS Data Release 7 main sample and Data Release 10 LOWZ and CMASS samples. We find ~1,500 voids out to redshift $0.6$ using a heavily modified and extended version of the watershed algorithm ZOBOV, which we call VIDE (Void IDentification and Examination). To assess the impact of peculiar velocities we use the mock void catalogs presented in Sutter et al. (2013). We find a constant uniform flattening of 14% along the line of sight when peculiar velocities are included. This flattening appears universal for all voi…
The ellipticity function of cosmic voids exhibits strong dependence on the amplitude of the linear matter power spectrum. Analyzing the most recent void catalogs constructed by Foster and Nelson from the fifth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we measure observationally the ellipticity function of giant galaxy voids. Then, we incorporate the redshift distortion and galaxy bias effect into the analytic model of the void ellipticity function and fit it to the observational result by adjusting the value of the power-spectrum normalization with the help of the generalized chi^{2}-minim…
We calculate stellar masses for massive luminous galaxies at redshift 0.2-0.7 using the first two years of data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Stellar masses are obtained by fitting model spectral energy distributions to u,g,r,i,z magnitudes, and simulations with mock galaxies are used to understand how well the templates recover the stellar mass. Accurate BOSS spectroscopic redshifts are used to constrain the fits. We find that the distribution of stellar masses in BOSS is narrow (Delta log M~0.5 dex) and peaks at about logM ~ 11.3 (for a Kroupa initial stellar mass …
We study the relations between the multimodality of galaxy clusters drawn from the SDSS DR8 and the environment where they reside. We find that multimodal clusters reside in higher density environment than unimodal clusters. We determine morphological types of superclusters and show that clusters in superclusters of spider morphology have higher probabilities to have substructure and larger peculiar velocities of their main galaxies than clusters in superclusters of filament morphology. Our study shows the importance of the role of superclusters as high density environment which affects the pr…
We produce the most comprehensive public void catalog to date using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 main sample out to redshift z=0.2 and the luminous red galaxy sample out to z=0.44. Using a modified version of the parameter-free void finder ZOBOV, we fully take into account the presence of the survey boundary and masks. Our strategy for finding voids is thus appropriate for any survey configuration. We produce two distinct catalogs: a complete catalog including voids near any masks, which would be appropriate for void galaxy surveys, and a bias-free catalog of voids away from any…
We present constraints on the parameters of the $Λ$CDM cosmological model in the presence of massive neutrinos, using the one-dimensional Ly$α$ forest power spectrum obtained with the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by Palanque-Delabrouille et al. (2013), complemented by additional cosmological probes. The interpretation of the measured Ly$α$ spectrum is done using a second-order Taylor expansion of the simulated power spectrum. BOSS Ly$α$ data alone provide better bounds than previous Ly$α$ results, but are still poorly constraining, espec…
We construct cosmic void catalogues with the DIVE void finder upon SDSS BOSS DR12 and eBOSS DR16 galaxy samples with BAO reconstruction applied, and perform a joint BAO analysis using different types of galaxies and the corresponding voids. The BAO peak is evident for the galaxy-galaxy, galaxy-void, and void-void correlation functions of all datasets, including the ones cross correlating luminous red galaxy and emission line galaxy samples. Two multi-tracer BAO fitting schemes are then tested, one combining the galaxy and void correlation functions with a weight applied to voids, and the other…
The stacked density profile of cosmic voids in the galaxy distribution provides an important tool for the use of voids for precision cosmology. We study the density profiles of voids identified using the ZOBOV watershed transform algorithm in realistic mock luminous red galaxy (LRG) catalogues from the Jubilee simulation, as well as in void catalogues constructed from the SDSS LRG and Main Galaxy samples. We compare different methods for reconstructing density profiles scaled by the void radius and show that the most commonly used method based on counts in shells and simple averaging is statis…
A clean measurement of the evolution of the galaxy cluster mass function can significantly improve our understanding of cosmology from the rapid growth of cluster masses below z < 0.5. Here we examine the consistency of cluster catalogues selected from the SDSS by applying two independent gravity-based methods using all available spectroscopic redshifts from the DR10 release. First, we detect a gravitational redshift related signal for 20,119 and 13,128 clusters with spectroscopic redshifts contained in the GMBCG and redMaPPer catalogues, respectively, at a level of $\sim - 10$ km s$^{-1}$. Th…
We measure the two-point clustering of spectroscopically confirmed quasars from the final sample of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) on comoving scales of 4 < s < 22 Mpc/h. The sample covers 6950 deg^2 (~ 19 (Gpc/h)^3) and, over the redshift range 2.2 < z < 2.8, contains 55,826 homogeneously selected quasars, which is twice as many as in any similar work. We deduce b_Q = 3.54 +/- 0.10 ; the most precise measurement of quasar bias to date at these redshifts. This corresponds to a host halo mass of ~ 2 x 10^12 ~ M_sun/h with an implied quasar duty cycle of ~1 percent. The real-…
The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), a five-year spectroscopic survey of 10,000 deg^2, achieved first light in late 2009. One of the key goals of BOSS is to measure the signature of baryon acoustic oscillations in the distribution of Ly-alpha absorption from the spectra of a sample of ~150,000 z>2.2 quasars. Along with measuring the angular diameter distance at z\approx2.5, BOSS will provide the first direct measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe at z > 2. One of the biggest challenges in achieving this goal is an efficient target selection algorithm for quas…
SDSS J0015+0104 is the lowest metallicity low surface brightness dwarf (LSBD) galaxy known. The oxygen abundance in its HII region SDSS J001520.70+010436.9 (at ~1.5 kpc from the galaxy centre) is 12+log(O/H)=7.07 (Guseva et al.). This galaxy, at the distance of 28.4 Mpc, appears to reside deeply in the volume devoid of luminous massive galaxies, known as the Eridanus void. SDSS J235437.29-000501.6 is another Eridanus void LSBD galaxy, with parameter 12+log(O/H)=7.36 (also Guseva et al.). We present the results of their HI observations with the Nancay Radio Telescope revealing their high ratios…
