A Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Features in the SDSS BOSS DR12 Galaxy Bispectrum

TL;DR

This paper reports the first high-significance detection of baryon acoustic oscillations in the galaxy bispectrum from SDSS BOSS DR12, providing precise measurements of cosmic distances and validating analysis methods with mock data.

Contribution

First detection of BAO features in galaxy bispectrum with high significance, demonstrating robustness and consistency across different data subsets and analysis techniques.

Findings

Detected BAO in galaxy bispectrum at 4.1 sigma significance.

Measured the volume-averaged distance, D_V, with high precision.

Validated analysis pipeline using mock catalogs.

Abstract

We present the first high significance detection ($4.1\sigma$) 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, $\alpha$, 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, yielding values consistent with the mock cosmology. By fitting to the power spectrum and bispectrum separately, we tested the robustness of our results, finding consistent values from the NGC, SGC and N+SGC in all cases. We found $D_{\mathrm{V}} = 2032 \pm 24 (\mathrm{stat.}) \pm 15 (\mathrm{sys.})$ Mpc, $D_{\mathrm{V}} = 2038 \pm 55 (\mathrm{stat.}) \pm 15 (\mathrm{sys.})$ Mpc, and $D_{\mathrm{V}} = 2031 \pm 22 (\mathrm{stat.}) \pm 10 (\mathrm{sys.})$ Mpc from the N+SGC power spectrum, bispectrum and simultaneous fitting, respectively.