Probing gravitational lensing of the CMB with SDSS-IV quasars
[1];
- Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA, Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, 162 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA, McWilliams Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA, Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA, Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, 162 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
We study the cross-correlation between the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing convergence map and the extended-Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (e-BOSS) quasar overdensity obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) IV, in the redshift range 0.9 < |$$z$$| < 2.2. We detect the CMB lensing convergence–quasar cross-power spectrum at 5.4σ significance. The cross-power spectrum provides a quasar clustering bias measurement that is expected to be particularly robust against systematic effects. The redshift distribution of the quasar sample has a median redshift |$$z$$| ≈ 1.55, and an effective redshift about 1.51. The best-fitting bias of the quasar sample is bq = 2.43 ± 0.45, corresponding to a host halo mass of |$$\log _{10}\left(\frac{M}{h^{-1} \, \mathrm{M}_\odot } \right) = 12.54^{+0.25}_{-0.36}$$|. This is broadly consistent with the previous literature on quasars with a similar redshift range and selection. Since our constraint on the bias comes from the cross-correlation between quasars and CMB lensing, we expect it to be robust to a wide range of possible systematic effects that may contaminate the autocorrelation of quasars. We checked for a number of systematic effects from both CMB lensing and quasar overdensity, and found that all systematics are consistent with null within 2σ. The data are not sensitive to a possible scale dependence of the bias at present, but we expect that as the number of quasars increases [in future surveys such as Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)], it is likely that strong constraints on the scale dependence of the bias can be obtained.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 1497753
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1650046
- Journal Information:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Journal Name: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Vol. 485 Journal Issue: 2; ISSN 0035-8711
- Publisher:
- Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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