Quasi-periodical features in the distribution of Luminous Red Galaxies

Abstract

A statistical analysis of radial distributions of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR7) catalogue within an interval $0.16 \leq z \leq 0.47$ is carried out. We found that the radial distribution of $\sim$ 106,000 LRGs incorporates a few quasi-periodical components relatively to a variable $\eta$, dimensionless line-of-sight comoving distance calculated for the $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model. The most significant peaks of the power spectra are obtained for two close periodicities corresponding to the spatial comoving scales $(135 \pm 12) h^{-1}$ Mpc and $(101 \pm 6)h^{-1}$ Mpc. The latter one is dominant and consistent with the characteristic scale of the baryon acoustic oscillations. We analyse also the radial distributions of two other selected LRG samples: $\sim$ 33,400 bright LRGs ($-23.2 < M \leq -21.8$) and $\sim$ 60,300 all LRGs within a rectangle region on the sky, and show differences of the quasi-periodical features characteristic for different samples. Being confirmed the results would allow to give preference of the spatial against temporal models which could explain the quasi-periodicities discussed here. As a caveat we show that estimations of the significance levels of the peaks strongly depend on a smoothed radial function (trend) as well as characteristics of random fluctuations.