Baryon acoustic oscillations in thin redshift shells from BOSS DR12 and eBOSS DR16 galaxies

TL;DR

This paper presents 14 precise baryon acoustic oscillation measurements in thin redshift shells from BOSS and eBOSS galaxy data, enabling model-independent cosmological analysis and comparison with Planck 2018 results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method analyzing BAO in thin redshift shells using only redshifts and angles, reducing model dependence and improving measurement precision.

Findings

Achieved 3% precision in BAO measurements in 14 redshift shells.

Demonstrated compatibility of BAO data with Planck 2018 constraints.

Provided a publicly available Monte Python likelihood module.

Abstract

In an age of large astronomical dateset and severe cosmological tensions, the case for model independent analyses is compelling. We present a set of 14 baryon acoustic oscillations measurements in thin redshift shells with 3% precision that were obtained by analyzing BOSS DR12 and eBOSS DR16 galaxies in the redshift range $0.32<z<0.66$. Thanks to the use of thin shells, the analysis is carried out using just redshifts and angles so that the fiducial model is only introduced when considering the mock catalogs, necessary for the covariance matrix estimation and the pipeline validation. We compare our measurements, with and without supernova data, to the corresponding constraints from Planck 2018, finding good compatibility. A Monte Python module for this likelihood is available at https://github.com/ranier137/angularBAO .