Baryonic acoustic oscillations simulations for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

TL;DR

This paper assesses how photometric redshift uncertainties from LSST observations affect the measurement of baryonic acoustic oscillations, which are crucial for understanding dark energy.

Contribution

It provides an estimate of the impact of photometric redshift errors on BAO scale reconstruction for dark energy parameter estimation using LSST data.

Findings

Photometric redshift uncertainties influence BAO measurements.

Simulated catalog analysis shows potential biases in dark energy parameters.

Results inform future survey strategies for dark energy studies.

Abstract

The baryonic acoustic oscillations are features in the spatial distribution of the galaxies which, if observed at different epochs, probe the nature of the dark energy. In order to be able to measure the parameters of the dark energy equation of state to high precision, a huge sample of galaxies has to be used. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will survey the optical sky with 6 filters from 300nm and 1100nm, such that a catalog of galaxies with photometric redshifts will be available for dark energy studies. In this article, we will give a rough estimate of the impact of the photometric redshift uncertainties on the computation of the dark energy parameter through the reconstruction of the BAO scale from a simulated photometric catalog.