Measurement of marked correlation functions in SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey using LOWZ galaxies in Data Release 12

Satpathy, Siddharth; Croft, Rupert A.C.; Ho, Shirley; Li, Baojiu

Abstract

Marked correlation functions, which are sensitive to the clustering of galaxies in different environments, have been proposed as constraints on modified gravity models. We present measurements of the marked correlation functions of galaxies in redshift space using 361,761 LOWZ (zeff = 0.32) galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 12 (DR12) and compare them to ΛCDM+General Relativity simulations. We apply mass cuts to find the best match between the redshift space autocorrelation function of subhaloes in the simulation and in the observations. We then compare the marked correlation functions, finding no significant evidence for deviations of the marked correlation functions of LOWZ galaxies from ΛCDM on scales 6 h−1Mpc ≤s ≤ 69 h−1Mpc. The constraining power of marked correlation functions in our analysis is limited by our ability to model the autocorrelation function of galaxies on small scales including the effect of redshift distortions. The statistical errors are well below the differences seen between marked correlation functions of f(R) gravity models and ΛCDM in recent publications (Armijo et al., Hernández-Aguayo et al.) indicating that improved future theoretical analyses should be able to rule out some models definitively.

Citation

Satpathy, S., Croft, R. A., Ho, S., & Li, B. (2019). Measurement of marked correlation functions in SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey using LOWZ galaxies in Data Release 12. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 484(2), 2148-2165. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz009

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 26, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Jan 9, 2019
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 4, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 11, 2019
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 484
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 2148-2165
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz009
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1311209
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01447