Mock Quasar-Lyman-{\alpha} Forest Data-sets for the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

Bibliographic Details
Title: Mock Quasar-Lyman-{\alpha} Forest Data-sets for the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
Authors: Bautista, Julian E., Bailey, Stephen, Font-Ribera, Andreu, Pieri, Matthew M., Busca, Nicolás G., Miralda-Escudé, Jordi, Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie, Rich, James, Dawson, Kyle, Feng, Yu, Ge, Jian, Gontcho, Satya Gontcho A, Ho, Shirley, Goff, Jean Marc Le, Noterdaeme, Pasquier, Pâris, Isabelle, Rossi, Graziano, Schlegel, David
Publication Year: 2014
Collection: Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
More Details: We describe mock data-sets generated to simulate the high-redshift quasar sample in Data Release 11 (DR11) of the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The mock spectra contain Ly{\alpha} forest correlations useful for studying the 3D correlation function including Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). They also include astrophysical effects such as quasar continuum diversity and high-density absorbers, instrumental effects such as noise and spectral resolution, as well as imperfections introduced by the SDSS pipeline treatment of the raw data. The Ly{\alpha} forest BAO analysis of the BOSS collaboration, described in Delubac et al. 2014, has used these mock data-sets to develop and cross-check analysis procedures prior to performing the BAO analysis on real data, and for continued systematic cross checks. Tests presented here show that the simulations reproduce sufficiently well important characteristics of real spectra. These mock data-sets will be made available together with the data at the time of the Data Release 11.
Comment: 35 pages, 19 figures, Accepted by JCAP
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2015/05/060
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0658
Accession Number: edsarx.1412.0658
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1088/1475-7516/2015/05/060