Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the SDSS DR10 galaxies angular correlation function

Understand

The 2-point angular correlation function $w(\theta)$ (2PACF), where $\theta$ is the angular separation between pairs of galaxies, provides the transversal Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) signal almost model-independently.

• In this paper we use 409,337 luminous red galaxies in the redshift range $z = [0.440,0.555]$ obtained from the tenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR10) to estimate $\theta_{\rm{BAO}}(z)$ from the 2PACF at six redshift {shells}.
• Since noise and systematics can hide the BAO signature in the $w - \theta$ plane, we also discuss some criteria to localize the acoustic bump.
• We identify two sources of model-dependence in the analysis, namely, the value of the acoustic scale from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements and the correction in the $\theta_{\rm{BAO}}(z)$ position due to projection effects.