The clustering of the SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR14 quasar sample: first measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations between redshift 0.8 and 2.2

Author(s): Ata, M; Baumgarten, F; Bautista, J; Beutler, F; Bizyaev, D; Blanton, MR; Blazek, JA; Bolton, AS; Brinkmann, J; Brownstein, JR; Burtin, E; Chuang, CH; Comparat, J; Dawson, KS; de la Macorra, A; Du, W; des Bourboux, HDM; Eisenstein, DJ; Gil-Marin, H; Grabowski, K; Guy, J; Hand, N; Ho, S; Hutchinson, TA; Ivanov, MM; Kitaura, FS; Kneib, JP; Laurent, P; Le Goff, JM; McEwen, JE; Mueller, EM; Myers, AD; Newman, JA; Palanque-Delabrouille, N; Pan, K; Pâris, I; Pellejero-Ibanez, M; Percival, WJ; Petitjean, P; Prada, F; Prakash, A; Rodriguez-Torres, SA; Ross, AJ; Rossi, G; Ruggeri, R; Sanchez, AG; Satpathy, S; Schlegel, DJ; Schneider, DP; Seo, HJ; Slosar, A; Streblyanska, A; Tinker, JL; Tojeiro, R; Magana, MV; Vivek, M; Wang, Y; Yeche, C; Yu, L; Zarrouk, P; Zhao, C; Zhao, GB; Zhu, F | Abstract: © 2015 The Authors. We present measurements of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) scale in redshift-space using the clustering of quasars. We consider a sample of 147 000 quasars from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) distributed over 2044 square degrees with redshifts 0.8 l z l 2.2 and measure their spherically averaged clustering in both configuration and Fourier space. Our observational data set and the 1400 simulated realizations of the data set allow us to detect a preference for BAO that is greater than 2.8σ. We determine the spherically averaged BAO distance to z = 1.52 to 3.8 per cent precision: DV (z = 1.52) = 3843 ± 147 (rd/rd,fid) Mpc. This is the first time the location of the BAO feature has been measured between redshifts 1 and 2. Our result is fully consistent with the prediction obtained by extrapolating the Planck flatΛCDMbest-fitting cosmology. All of our results are consistent with basic large-scale structure (LSS) theory, confirming quasars to be a reliable tracer of LSS, and provide a starting point for numerous cosmological tests to be performed with eBOSS quasar samples. We combine our result with previous, independent, BAO distance measurements to construct an updated BAO distance-ladder. Using these BAO data alone and marginalizing over the length of the standard ruler, we find ΩΛ g 0 at 6.6s significance when testing a ΛCDM model with free curvature.