Search for a possible quasi-periodic structure based on data of the SDSS DR12 LOWZ

TL;DR

This study analyzes SDSS DR12 LOWZ galaxy data to identify large-scale quasi-periodic structures, finding significant peaks in power spectra suggesting a possible anisotropic cosmological pattern at about 116 Mpc scale.

Contribution

It introduces a method to detect quasi-periodic structures in galaxy distributions and provides evidence for such structures at large cosmological scales.

Findings

Significant peaks in power spectra at wave numbers 0.05-0.07

Dominant peaks exceed 4-5 sigma significance

Evidence for a quasi-periodic structure at ~116 Mpc scale

Abstract

We carry out a statistical analysis of the spatial distribution of galaxies at cosmological redshifts $0.16 \leq z \leq 0.47$ based on the SDSS\ DR12\ LOWZ catalogue. Our aim is to search and study possible large-scale quasi-regular structures embedded in the {\it cosmic web}. We calculate projections of the Cartesian galaxy coordinates on different axes (directions) densely covering certain regions in the sky to look for special directions along which one-dimensional distributions of the projections contain significant quasi-periodic components. These components appear as peaks in the power spectra and lie in a narrow range of wave numbers $0.05 < k < 0.07$. Particular attention is paid to the evaluation of the significance of the peaks. It is found that the significance of the dominant peaks for some selected directions exceeds $(4 - 5)\sigma$. In order to reduce possible selection effects, we create a mock homogeneous catalogue of spatial distribution of galaxies by adding a random set of artificial objects (points) to the real galaxies under study. The power spectrum of this cumulative model data also demonstrates significant peak corresponding to approximately the same scale. As a result we assume the existence of an anisotropic cosmological quasi-periodic structure with characteristic scale $(116 \pm 10)~h^{-1}$~Mpc.