The 6dF Galaxy Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and the Local Hubble Constant

Abstract

We analyse the large-scale correlation function of the 6dF Galaxy Survey (6dFGS) and detect a Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) signal. The 6dFGS BAO detection allows us to constrain the distance-redshift relation at z_{\rm eff} = 0.106. We achieve a distance measure of D_V(z_{\rm eff}) = 456\pm27 Mpc and a measurement of the distance ratio, r_s(z_d)/D_V(z_{\rm eff}) = 0.336\pm0.015 (4.5% precision), where r_s(z_d) is the sound horizon at the drag epoch z_d. The low effective redshift of 6dFGS makes it a competitive and independent alternative to Cepheids and low-z supernovae in constraining the Hubble constant. We find a Hubble constant of H_0 = 67\pm3.2 km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1} (4.8% precision) that depends only on the WMAP-7 calibration of the sound horizon and on the galaxy clustering in 6dFGS. Compared to earlier BAO studies at higher redshift, our analysis is less dependent on other cosmological parameters. The sensitivity to H_0 can be used to break the degeneracy between the dark energy equation of state parameter w and H_0 in the CMB data. We determine that w = -0.97\pm0.13, using only WMAP-7 and BAO data from both 6dFGS and \citet{Percival:2009xn}. We also discuss predictions for the large scale correlation function of two future wide-angle surveys: the WALLABY blind H{\sc I} survey (with the Australian SKA Pathfinder, ASKAP), and the proposed TAIPAN all-southern-sky optical galaxy survey with the UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST). We find that both surveys are very likely to yield detections of the BAO peak, making WALLABY the first radio galaxy survey to do so. We also predict that TAIPAN has the potential to constrain the Hubble constant with 3% precision.