Building a Better Understanding of the High Redshift BOSS Galaxies as Tools for Cosmology

Understand

We explore the bluer star-forming population of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III/BOSS CMASS DR11 galaxies at $z>0.55$ to quantify their differences, in terms of redshift-space distortions and large-scale bias, with respect to the luminous red galaxy sample.

• We perform a qualitative analysis to understand the significance of these differences and whether we can model and reproduce them in mock catalogs.
• Specifically, we measure galaxy clustering in CMASS on small and intermediate scales ($r\lesssim 50\,h^{-1}$Mpc) by computing the two-point correlation function $-$ both projected and redshift-space $-$ of these galaxies, and a new statistic, $\Sigma(\pi)$, able to provide robust information about redshift-space distortions and large-scale bias.
• We interpret our clustering measurements by adopting a Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) scheme that maps them onto high-resolution N-body cosmological simulations to produce suitable mock galaxy catalogs.