Broadband Alcock-Paczynski test exploiting redshift distortions

Abstract

Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), known as one of the largest cosmological objects, is now recognized as standard cosmological tool to measure geometric distances via the Alcock-Paczynski effect, by which the observed BAO exhibits characteristic anisotropies in addition to the redshift distortions. This implies that once we know the correct distances to the observed BAO, the tip points of baryon acoustic peaks in the anisotropic correlation function of galaxies, $\xi(\sigma,\pi)$, can form a great circle (hereafter 2D BAO circle) in the $\sigma$ and $\pi$ plane, where $\sigma$ and $\pi$ are the separation of galaxy pair parallel and perpendicular to the line-of-sight, respectively. This 2D BAO circle remains unchanged under the variations of the unknown galaxy bias and/or coherent motion, while it varies transversely and radially with respect to the variations of $D_A$ and $H^{-1}$, respectively. Hereby the ratio between transverse distance $D_A$ and the radial distance $H^{-1}$ reproduces the intrinsic shape of 2D BAO circle, which is {\it a priori} given by the known broadband shape of spectra. All BAO peaks of $\xi(\sigma,\pi)$ are precisely calculated with the improved theoretical model of redshift distortion. We test this broadband Alcock--Paczynski method using BOSS--like mock catalogues. The transverse and radial distances are probed in precision of several percentage fractional errors, and the coherent motion is observed to match with the fiducial values accurately.