Analysing baryon acoustic oscillations in sparse spectroscopic samples via cross-correlation with dense photometry

Abstract

We develop a formalism for measuring the cosmological distance scale from baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) using the cross-correlation of a sparse redshift survey with a denser photometric sample. This reduces the shot noise that would otherwise affect the autocorrelation of the sparse spectroscopic map. As a proof of principle, we make the first on-sky application of this method to a sparse sample defined as the z > 0.6 tail of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's (SDSS) BOSS/CMASS sample of galaxies and a dense photometric sample from SDSS DR9. We find a 2.8 sigma preference for the BAO peak in the cross-correlation at an effective z = 0.64, from which we measure the angular diameter distance D-M(z = 0.64) = (2418 +/- 73 Mpc)(r(s)/r(s, fid)). Accordingly, we expect that using this method to combine sparse spectroscopy with the deep, high-quality imaging that is just now becoming available will enable higher precision BAO measurements than possible with the spectroscopy alone.