0000000000188007
AUTHOR
Antoine Labatie
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 9 Spectroscopic Galaxy Sample
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2012 RAS © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncertainty in 2-point correlation function estimators and BAO detection in SDSS DR7
We study the uncertainty in different two-point correlation function (2PCF) estimators in currently available galaxy surveys. This is motivated by the active subject of using the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) feature in the correlation function as a tool to constrain cosmological parameters, which requires a fine analysis of the statistical significance. We discuss how estimators are affected by both the uncertainty in the mean density $\bar{n}$ and the integral constraint $\frac{1}{V^2}\int_{V^2} \hat{\xi} (r) d^3r =0$ which necessarily causes a bias. We quantify both effects for currently available galaxy samples using simulated mock catalogues of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)…