Measurement of Redshift Space Power Spectrum for BOSS galaxies and the Growth Rate at redshift 0.57

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to accurately measure the 2D redshift-space power spectrum of BOSS galaxies, enabling precise determination of the growth rate of cosmic structure at redshift 0.57, with improved correction for observational effects.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel approach to measure the 2D power spectrum from correlation functions, correcting for window functions and shot noise, and applies it to derive the growth rate of structure at z=0.57.

Findings

Measured f(zeff)sigma_8(zeff)=0.438±0.037 at z=0.57

Demonstrated the method's accuracy with mock galaxy catalogs

Provided a measurement that facilitates direct comparison with theoretical models

Abstract

We present a measurement of two-dimensional (2D) redshift-space power spectrum for the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 11 CMASS galaxies in the North Galactic Cap (NGC) based on the method developed by Jing & Borner (2001). In this method, we first measure the 2D redshift-space correlation function for the CMASS galaxies, and obtain the 2D power spectrum based on Fourier Transform of the correlation function. The method is tested with an N-body mock galaxy catalog, which demonstrates that the method can yield an accurate and unbiased measurement of the redshift-space power spectrum given the input 2D correlation function is correct. Compared with previous measurements in literature that are usually based on direct Fourier Transform in redshift space, our method has the advantages that the window function and shot-noise are fully corrected. In fact, our 2D power spectrum, by its construction, can accurately reproduce the 2D correlation function, and in the meanwhile can reproduce, for example, the 2D power spectrum of Beutler et al. (2014) accurately if ours is convolved with the window function they provided. Thus, our measurement can facilitate a direct comparison with the theoretical predictions. With this accurate measurement of the 2D power spectrum, we then develop a method to measure the structure growth rate, by separating the anisotropic redshift-space power spectrum from the isotropic real-space power spectrum. We have also carefully corrected for the nonlinearities in the mapping from real space to redshift space, according to the theoretical model of Zhang et al. (2013). Finally, we obtain f(zeff)sigma_8(zeff)=0.438\pm0.037 at the effective redshift zeff=0.57, where f(zeff) is the linear growth rate at redshift zeff. The result is useful for constraining cosmological parameters. The measurements of 2D power spectrum will be released soon.