Investigating emission-line galaxy surveys with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey infrastructure

Johan Comparat, Jean Paul Kneib, Stephanie Escoffier, Julien Zoubian, Anne Ealet, Fabrice Lamareille, N. Mostek, Oliver Steele, Eric Aubourg, Stephen Bailey, Adam S. Bolton, Joel Brownstein, Kyle Dawson, Jian Ge, Olivier Ilbert, Alexie Leauthaud, Claudia Maraston, Will Percival, Nicholas P. Ross, Carlo SchimdDavid J. Schlegel, Donald P. Schneider, Daniel Thomas, Jeremy L. Tinker, Benjamin A. Weaver

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

41 Scopus citations

Abstract

The baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature in the power spectrum of galaxies provides a standard ruler to probe the accelerated expansion of the Universe. The current surveys covering a comoving volume sufficient to unveil the BAO scale are limited to redshift z ≤ 0.7. In this paper, we study several galaxy selection schemes aiming at building an emission-line galaxy (ELG) sample in the redshift range 0.6 < z < 1.7 that would be suitable for future BAO studies using the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) spectrograph on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescope. We explore two different colour selections using both the SDSS and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHT-LS) photometry in the u, g, r and i bands and evaluate their performance selecting luminous ELGs. From about 2000 ELGs, we identified a selection scheme that has a 75 per cent redshift measurement efficiency. This result confirms the feasibility of massive ELG surveys using the BOSS spectrograph on the SDSS telescope for a BAO detection at z ~ 1, in particular the proposed eBOSS experiment, which plans to use the SDSS telescope to combine the use of the BAO ruler with redshift space distortions using ELGs and quasars in the redshift range 0.6 < z < 2.2.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1498-1517
Number of pages20
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume428
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2013

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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