Testing General Relativity with Growth rate measurement from Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Baryon Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey galaxies

TL;DR

This paper measures the growth rate of cosmic structures using SDSS III BOSS galaxy data, testing General Relativity and constraining cosmological parameters with novel modeling techniques.

Contribution

It presents the first simultaneous measurement of $f\sigma_8$ and background cosmology using CLPT and GSRSD, improving parameter constraints and confirming consistency with GR predictions.

Findings

Measured $f\sigma_8=0.462\pm0.041$ at $z=0.57$

Improved constraint on $\Omega_c h^2$ by a factor of 3

Results consistent with Planck $\Lambda$CDM-GR predictions

Abstract

The measured redshift ($z$) of an astronomical object is a combination of Hubble recession, gravitational redshift and peculiar velocity. The line of sight distance to a galaxy inferred from redshift is affected by the peculiar velocity component of galaxy redshift, which is observed as an anisotropy in the correlation function. This anisotropy allows us to measure the linear growth rate of matter ($f\sigma_8$). We measure the $f\sigma_8$ at $z=0.57$ using the CMASS sample from Data Release 11 of Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS III) Baryon Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The galaxy sample consists of 690,826 massive galaxies in the redshift range 0.43-0.7 covering 8498 deg$^2$. Here we report the first simultaneous measurement of $f\sigma_8$ and background cosmological parameters using Convolution Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (CLPT) with Gaussian streaming model (GSRSD). We arrive at a constraint of $f\sigma_8=0.462\pm0.041$ (9\% accuracy) at effective redshift ($\bar{z}=0.57$) when we include Planck CMB likelihood while marginalizing over all other cosmological parameters. We also measure $b\sigma_8=1.19\pm0.03$, $H(z=0.57)=89.2\pm3.6$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ and $D_A(z=0.57)=1401\pm23$ Mpc. Our analysis also improves the constraint on $\Omega_c h^2=0.1196\pm0.0009$ by a factor of 3 when compared to the Planck only measurement($\Omega_c h^2=0.1196 \pm 0.0031$). Our results are consistent with Planck $\Lambda$CDM-GR prediction and all other CMASS measurements, even though our theoretical models are fairly different. This consistency suggests that measurement of $f\sigma_8$ from Redshift space distortions at multiple redshifts will be a sensitive probe of the theory of gravity that is largely model independent, allowing us to place model-independent constraints on alternative models of gravity.