The Clustering of Massive Galaxies at z ~ 0.5 from the First Semester of BOSS Data

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 728; no. 2; pp. 126 - jQuery1323910966395='48'
• Main Authors: White, Martin, Blanton, M, Bolton, A, Schlegel, D, Tinker, J, Berlind, A, da Costa, L, Kazin, E, Lin, Y.-T, Maia, M, McBride, C. K, Padmanabhan, N, Parejko, J, Percival, W, Prada, F, Ramos, B, Sheldon, E, de Simoni, F, Skibba, R, Thomas, D, Wake, D, Zehavi, I, Zheng, Z, Nichol, R, Schneider, Donald P, Strauss, Michael A, Weaver, B. A, Weinberg, David H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 20.02.2011; IOP
• Subjects: Astronomy; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Galaxy evolution; Galaxy halo; Red shift; Galaxies; High density; Distance scale; Correlation functions; Large-scale structure; Baryons; Dark matter; Modelling; large-scale structure of universe; Tracers
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/728/2/126

We calculate the real- and redshift-space clustering of massive galaxies at z ~ 0.5 using the first semester of data by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). We study the correlation functions of a sample of 44,000 massive galaxies in the redshift range 0.4 < z < 0.7. We present a halo-occupation distribution modeling of the clustering results and discuss the implications for the manner in which massive galaxies at z ~ 0.5 occupy dark matter halos. The majority of our galaxies are central galaxies living in halos of mass 1013 h --1 M , but 10% are satellites living in halos 10 times more massive. These results are broadly in agreement with earlier investigations of massive galaxies at z ~ 0.5. The inferred large-scale bias (b 2) and relatively high number density () imply that BOSS galaxies are excellent tracers of large-scale structure, suggesting BOSS will enable a wide range of investigations on the distance scale, the growth of large-scale structure, massive galaxy evolution, and other topics.