TY - JOUR
T1 - The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
T2 - including covariance matrix errors
AU - Percival, Will J.
AU - Ross, Ashley J.
AU - Sanchez, Ariel G.
AU - Samushia, Lado
AU - Burden, Angela
AU - Crittenden, Robert
AU - Cuesta, Antonio J.
AU - Magana, Mariana Vargas
AU - Manera, Marc
AU - Beutler, Florian
AU - Chuang, Chia-Hsun
AU - Eisenstein, Daniel J.
AU - Ho, Shirley
AU - McBride, Cameron K.
AU - Montesano, Francesco
AU - Padmanabhan, Nikhil
AU - Reid, Beth
AU - Saito, Shun
AU - Schneider, Donald P.
AU - Seo, Hee-Jong
AU - Tojeiro, Rita
AU - Weaver, Benjamin A.
PY - 2014/4
Y1 - 2014/4
N2 - We present improved methodology for including covariance matrices in the error budget of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) galaxy clustering measurements, revisiting Data Release 9 (DR9) analyses, and describing a method that is used in DR10/11 analyses presented in companion papers. The precise analysis method adopted is becoming increasingly important, due to the precision that BOSS can now reach: even using as many as 600 mock catalogues to estimate covariance of two-point clustering measurements can still lead to an increase in the errors of ∼20 per cent, depending on how the cosmological parameters of interest are measured. In this paper, we extend previous work on this contribution to the error budget, deriving formulae for errors measured by integrating over the likelihood, and to the distribution of recovered best-fitting parameters fitting the simulations also used to estimate the covariance matrix. Both are situations that previous analyses of BOSS have considered. We apply the formulae derived to baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and redshift-space distortion (RSD) measurements from BOSS in our companion papers. To further aid these analyses, we consider the optimum number of bins to use for two-point measurements using the monopole power spectrum or correlation function for BAO, and the monopole and quadrupole moments of the correlation function for anisotropic-BAO and RSD measurements.
AB - We present improved methodology for including covariance matrices in the error budget of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) galaxy clustering measurements, revisiting Data Release 9 (DR9) analyses, and describing a method that is used in DR10/11 analyses presented in companion papers. The precise analysis method adopted is becoming increasingly important, due to the precision that BOSS can now reach: even using as many as 600 mock catalogues to estimate covariance of two-point clustering measurements can still lead to an increase in the errors of ∼20 per cent, depending on how the cosmological parameters of interest are measured. In this paper, we extend previous work on this contribution to the error budget, deriving formulae for errors measured by integrating over the likelihood, and to the distribution of recovered best-fitting parameters fitting the simulations also used to estimate the covariance matrix. Both are situations that previous analyses of BOSS have considered. We apply the formulae derived to baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and redshift-space distortion (RSD) measurements from BOSS in our companion papers. To further aid these analyses, we consider the optimum number of bins to use for two-point measurements using the monopole power spectrum or correlation function for BAO, and the monopole and quadrupole moments of the correlation function for anisotropic-BAO and RSD measurements.
KW - cosmology: observations
KW - distance scale
KW - large-scale structure of Universe
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stu112
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stu112
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 439
SP - 2531
EP - 2541
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 3
ER -