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Title: The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: combining correlated Gaussian posterior distributions

Abstract

The cosmological information contained in anisotropic galaxy clustering measurements can often be compressed into a small number of parameters whose posterior distribution is well described by a Gaussian. Here, we present a general methodology to combine these estimates into a single set of consensus constraints that encode the total information of the individual measurements, taking into account the full covariance between the different methods. We also illustrate this technique by applying it to combine the results obtained from different clustering analyses, including measurements of the signature of baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions, based on a set of mock catalogues of the final SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Our results show that the region of the parameter space allowed by the consensus constraints is smaller than that of the individual methods, highlighting the importance of performing multiple analyses on galaxy surveys even when the measurements are highly correlated. Our paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set from BOSS. The methodology presented here is used in Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS.

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [13];  [14];  [15];  [16];  [17];  [18];  [19]
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching (Germany)
  2. Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching (Germany); Univ. Observatory Munich (Germany)
  3. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States). Dept. of Physics and McWilliams Center for Cosmology
  4. Univ. of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). Inst. of Cosmology and Gravitation; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). Inst. of Cosmology and Gravitation; The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States). Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics
  6. Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  7. Autonomous Univ. of Madrid (Spain). Inst. of Theoretical Physics; Leibniz Inst. for Astrophysics Potsdam (Germany)
  8. Univ. of Barcelona (Spain). Inst. of Cosmic Sciences
  9. Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States)
  10. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Leibniz Inst. for Astrophysics Potsdam (Germany); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  11. Univ. of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). Inst. of Cosmology and Gravitation
  12. Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; Campus of International Excellence UAM, Madrid (Spain); Inst. of Astrophysics of Andalucia, Granada (Spain)
  13. Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; Campus of International Excellence UAM, Madrid (Spain); Autonomous Univ. of Madrid (Spain). Dept. of Theoretical Physics
  14. Ohio Univ., Athens, OH (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  15. New York Univ., NY (United States). Cetner for Cosmology and Particle Physics
  16. Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland (United Kingdom). School of Physics and Astronomy
  17. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States). Dept. of Physics and McWilliams Center for Cosmology; Autonomous National Univ. of Mexico, Mexico DF (Mexico)
  18. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  19. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China). National Astronomy Observatories
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
OSTI Identifier:
1336116
Report Number(s):
BNL-112565-2016-JA
Journal ID: ISSN 0035-8711; KA2301020
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC00112704
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 464; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; cosmological parameters; large-scale structure of Universe

Citation Formats

Sánchez, Ariel G., Grieb, Jan Niklas, Salazar-Albornoz, Salvador, Alam, Shadab, Beutler, Florian, Ross, Ashley J., Brownstein, Joel R., Chuang, Chia-Hsun, Cuesta, Antonio J., Eisenstein, Daniel J., Kitaura, Francisco-Shu, Percival, Will J., Prada, Francisco, Rodríguez-Torres, Sergio, Seo, Hee-Jong, Tinker, Jeremy, Tojeiro, Rita, Vargas-Magaña, Mariana, Vazquez, Jose A., and Zhao, Gong-Bo. The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: combining correlated Gaussian posterior distributions. United States: N. p., 2016. Web. doi:10.1093/mnras/stw2495.
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Sánchez, Ariel G., Grieb, Jan Niklas, Salazar-Albornoz, Salvador, Alam, Shadab, Beutler, Florian, Ross, Ashley J., Brownstein, Joel R., Chuang, Chia-Hsun, Cuesta, Antonio J., Eisenstein, Daniel J., Kitaura, Francisco-Shu, Percival, Will J., Prada, Francisco, Rodríguez-Torres, Sergio, Seo, Hee-Jong, Tinker, Jeremy, Tojeiro, Rita, Vargas-Magaña, Mariana, Vazquez, Jose A., & Zhao, Gong-Bo. The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: combining correlated Gaussian posterior distributions. United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw2495
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Sánchez, Ariel G., Grieb, Jan Niklas, Salazar-Albornoz, Salvador, Alam, Shadab, Beutler, Florian, Ross, Ashley J., Brownstein, Joel R., Chuang, Chia-Hsun, Cuesta, Antonio J., Eisenstein, Daniel J., Kitaura, Francisco-Shu, Percival, Will J., Prada, Francisco, Rodríguez-Torres, Sergio, Seo, Hee-Jong, Tinker, Jeremy, Tojeiro, Rita, Vargas-Magaña, Mariana, Vazquez, Jose A., and Zhao, Gong-Bo. Fri . "The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: combining correlated Gaussian posterior distributions". United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw2495. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1336116.
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@article{osti_1336116,
title = {The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: combining correlated Gaussian posterior distributions},
author = {Sánchez, Ariel G. and Grieb, Jan Niklas and Salazar-Albornoz, Salvador and Alam, Shadab and Beutler, Florian and Ross, Ashley J. and Brownstein, Joel R. and Chuang, Chia-Hsun and Cuesta, Antonio J. and Eisenstein, Daniel J. and Kitaura, Francisco-Shu and Percival, Will J. and Prada, Francisco and Rodríguez-Torres, Sergio and Seo, Hee-Jong and Tinker, Jeremy and Tojeiro, Rita and Vargas-Magaña, Mariana and Vazquez, Jose A. and Zhao, Gong-Bo},
abstractNote = {The cosmological information contained in anisotropic galaxy clustering measurements can often be compressed into a small number of parameters whose posterior distribution is well described by a Gaussian. Here, we present a general methodology to combine these estimates into a single set of consensus constraints that encode the total information of the individual measurements, taking into account the full covariance between the different methods. We also illustrate this technique by applying it to combine the results obtained from different clustering analyses, including measurements of the signature of baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions, based on a set of mock catalogues of the final SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Our results show that the region of the parameter space allowed by the consensus constraints is smaller than that of the individual methods, highlighting the importance of performing multiple analyses on galaxy surveys even when the measurements are highly correlated. Our paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set from BOSS. The methodology presented here is used in Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS.},
doi = {10.1093/mnras/stw2495},
journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
number = 2,
volume = 464,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2016},
month = {Fri Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2016}
}
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https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw2495
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    Works referencing / citing this record:

    The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: tomographic BAO analysis of DR12 combined sample in Fourier space
    journal, December 2016

    • Zhao, Gong-Bo; Wang, Yuting; Saito, Shun
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    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx3232

    The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: a tomographic analysis of structure growth and expansion rate from anisotropic galaxy clustering
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    • Wang, Yuting; Zhao, Gong-Bo; Chuang, Chia-Hsun
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    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2449

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    Model-independent curvature determination with 21 cm intensity mapping experiments
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    • Witzemann, Amadeus; Bull, Philip; Clarkson, Chris
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Vol. 477, Issue 1
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    The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological analysis of the DR12 galaxy sample
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    • Alam, Shadab; Ata, Metin; Bailey, Stephen
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 470, Issue 3
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx721

    The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: tomographic BAO analysis of DR12 combined sample in configuration space
    journal, May 2017

    • Wang, Yuting; Zhao, Gong-Bo; Chuang, Chia-Hsun
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 469, Issue 3
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx1090

    The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: towards a computationally efficient analysis without informative priors
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    • Pellejero-Ibanez, Marcos; Chuang, Chia-Hsun; Rubiño-Martín, J. A.
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 468, Issue 4
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx751

    Nonlinear reconstruction of redshift space distortions
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    The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: theoretical systematics and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the galaxy correlation function
    journal, March 2018

    • Vargas-Magaña, Mariana; Ho, Shirley; Cuesta, Antonio J.
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 477, Issue 1
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty571
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