https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/grad/690/Padmanabhan-2003.pdf

Cosmological constant—the weight of the vacuum

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) is designed to measure redshifts for approximately 250 000 galaxies. This paper describes the survey design, the spectroscopic observations, the redshift measurements and the survey data base. The 2dFGRS uses the 2dF multifibre spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, which is capable of observing 400 objects simultaneously over a 2° diameter field. The source catalogue for the survey is a revised and extended version of the APM galaxy catalogue, and the targets are galaxies with extinction-corrected magnitudes brighter than b J = 19.45. The main survey regions are two declination strips, one in the southern Galactic hemisphere spanning 80° × 15° around the SGP, and the other in the northern Galactic hemisphere spanning 75° × 10° along the celestial equator; in addition, there are 99 fields spread over the southern Galactic cap. The survey covers 2000 deg 2 and has a median depth of z = 0.11. Adaptive tiling is used to give a highly uniform sampling rate of 93 per cent over the whole survey region. Redshifts are measured from spectra covering 3600-8000 A at a two-pixel resolution of 9.0 A and a median S/N of 13 pixel - 1 . All redshift identifications are visually checked and assigned a quality parameter Q in the range 1-5; Q ≥ 3 redshifts are 98.4 per cent reliable and have an rms uncertainty of 85 km s - 1 . The overall redshift completeness for Q ≥ 3 redshifts is 91.8 per cent, but this varies with magnitude from 99 per cent for the brightest galaxies to 90 per cent for objects at the survey limit. The 2dFGRS data base is available on the World Wide Web at http://www. mso.anu.edu.au/2dFGRS.

/pdf/the-2df-galaxy-redshift-survey-spectra-and-redshifts-52vzhdphck.pdf

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: spectra and redshifts

http://staff.ustc.edu.cn/~wzhao7/c_index_files/main.files/lss.pdf

Large scale structure of the universe and cosmological perturbation theory

We measure the large-scale real-space power spectrum P(k) by using a sample of 205,443 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, covering 2417 effective square degrees with mean redshift z ≈ 0.1. We employ a matrix-based method using pseudo-Karhunen-Loeve eigenmodes, producing uncorrelated minimum-variance measurements in 22 k-bands of both the clustering power and its anisotropy due to redshift-space distortions, with narrow and well-behaved window functions in the range 0.02 h Mpc-1 < k < 0.3 h Mpc-1. We pay particular attention to modeling, quantifying, and correcting for potential systematic errors, nonlinear redshift distortions, and the artificial red-tilt caused by luminosity-dependent bias. Our results are robust to omitting angular and radial density fluctuations and are consistent between different parts of the sky. Our final result is a measurement of the real-space matter power spectrum P(k) up to an unknown overall multiplicative bias factor. Our calculations suggest that this bias factor is independent of scale to better than a few percent for k < 0.1 h Mpc-1, thereby making our results useful for precision measurements of cosmological parameters in conjunction with data from other experiments such as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite. The power spectrum is not well-characterized by a single power law but unambiguously shows curvature. As a simple characterization of the data, our measurements are well fitted by a flat scale-invariant adiabatic cosmological model with h Ωm = 0.213 ± 0.023 and σ8 = 0.89 ± 0.02 for L* galaxies, when fixing the baryon fraction Ωb/Ωm = 0.17 and the Hubble parameter h = 0.72; cosmological interpretation is given in a companion paper.

/pdf/the-three-dimensional-power-spectrum-of-galaxies-from-the-kvdkq90i59.pdf

The three-dimensional power spectrum of galaxies from the sloan digital sky survey

We measure the large-scale real-space power spectrum P(k) using luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and use this measurement to sharpen constraints on cosmological parameters from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). We employ a matrix-based power spectrum estimation method using Pseudo-Karhunen-Loeve eigenmodes, producing uncorrelated minimum-variance measurements in 20 k-bands of both the clustering power and its anisotropy due to redshift-space distortions, with narrow and well-behaved window functions in the range 0.01h/Mpc 0.1h/Mpc and associated nonlinear complications, yet agree well with more aggressive published analyses where nonlinear modeling is crucial.

/pdf/cosmological-constraints-from-the-sdss-luminous-red-galaxies-6dhfdh65i4.pdf

Cosmological constraints from the SDSS luminous red galaxies

We present the catalogue, mask, redshift data and selection function for the PSCz survey of 15 411 IRAS galaxies across 84 per cent of the sky. Most of the IRAS data are taken from the Point Source Catalog, but this has been supplemented and corrected in various ways to improve the completeness and uniformity. We quantify the known imperfections in the catalogue, and we assess the overall uniformity, completeness and data quality. We find that overall the catalogue is complete and uniform to within a few per cent at high latitudes and 10 per cent at low latitudes. Ancillary information, access details, guidelines and caveats for using the catalogue are given.

W. Saunders

Papers

The PSCz catalogue