COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS from the REDSHIFT DEPENDENCE of the ALCOCK-PACZYNSKI EFFECT: APPLICATION to the SDSS-III BOSS DR12 GALAXIES

from the redshift dependence of the Alcock Paczynski (AP) effect. The apparent anisotropy in the distribution of observed galaxies arise from two main sources, the redshift-space distortion (RSD) effect due to the galaxy peculiar velocities, and the geometric distortion when incorrect cosmological models are assumed for transforming redshift to comoving distance, known as the AP effect. Anisotropies produced by the RSD effect are, although large, maintaining a nearly uniform magnitude over a large range of redshift, while the degree of anisotropies from the AP effect varies with redshift by a much larger magnitude. We split the DR12 galaxies into six redshift bins, measure the two-point correlation function in each bin, and assess the redshift evolution of anisotropies. We obtain constraints of Wm = 0.290±0.053, w = -1.07±0.15, which are comparable with the current constraints from other cosmological probes such as SNe Ia, cosmic microwave background, and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO). Combining these cosmological probes with our method yield tight constraints of Wm = 0.301±0.006, w = -1.054±0.025. Our method is complementary to the other large-scale structure (LSS) probes like BAO and topology. We expect this technique will play an important role in deriving cosmological constraints from LSS surveys.