THE BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY OF SDSS-III

TLDR

BOSS is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than all previous spectroscopic surveys of large‑scale structure. The study provides an overview of spectroscopic target selection, observation planning, and data analysis for BOSS. BOSS observes 1.5 million luminous galaxies to z < 0.7 and over 150,000 quasar Lyα forest spectra to 2.15 < z < 3.5, with detailed target selection, observation scheduling, and data quality assessment. Early BOSS results include the first 3‑D clustering detection of the Lyα forest and a strong BAO detection in massive galaxies at z = 0.57, with projected 1.0 % precision on dA at z = 0.3 and 0.57 and 1.8 %/1.7 % on H(z.

Abstract

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large-scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i = 19.9 over 10,000 deg2 to measure BAO to redshifts z < 0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Lyα forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g < 22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15 < z < 3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Lyα forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance dA to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z = 0.3 and z = 0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Lyα forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate DA(z) and H−1(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z ∼ 2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.