Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Calibration of lens sample redshift distributions using clustering redshifts with BOSS/eBOSS

R. Cawthon, J. Elvin-Poole, A. Porredon, M. Crocce, G. Giannini, M. Gatti, A. J. Ross, E. S. Rykoff, A. Carnero Rosell, J. Derose, S. Lee, M. Rodriguez-Monroy, A. Amon, K. Bechtol, J. De Vicente, D. Gruen, R. Morgan, E. Sanchez, J. Sanchez, I. Sevilla-NoarbeT. M.C. Abbott, M. Aguena, S. Allam, J. Annis, S. Avila, D. Bacon, E. Bertin, D. Brooks, D. L. Burke, M. Carrasco Kind, J. Carretero, F. J. Castander, A. Choi, M. Costanzi, L. N. Da Costa, M. E.S. Pereira, K. Dawson, S. Desai, H. T. Diehl, K. Eckert, S. Everett, I. Ferrero, P. Fosalba, J. Frieman, J. Garciá-Bellido, E. Gaztanaga, R. A. Gruendl, J. Gschwend, G. Gutierrez, S. R. Hinton, D. L. Hollowood, K. Honscheid, D. Huterer, D. J. James, A. G. Kim, J. P. Kneib, K. Kuehn, N. Kuropatkin, O. Lahav, M. Lima, H. Lin, M. A.G. Maia, P. Melchior, F. Menanteau, R. Miquel, J. J. Mohr, J. Muir, J. Myles, A. Palmese, S. Pandey, F. Paz-Chinchón, W. J. Percival, A. A. Plazas, A. Roodman, G. Rossi, V. Scarpine, S. Serrano, M. Smith, M. Soares-Santos, E. Suchyta, M. E.C. Swanson, G. Tarle, C. To, M. A. Troxel, R. D. Wilkinson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present clustering redshift measurements for Dark Energy Survey (DES) lens sample galaxies used in weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering studies. To perform these measurements, we cross-correlate with spectroscopic galaxies from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Survey (BOSS) and its extension, eBOSS. We validate our methodology in simulations, including a new technique to calibrate systematic errors that result from the galaxy clustering bias, and we find that our method is generally unbiased in calibrating the mean redshift. We apply our method to the data, and estimate the redshift distribution for 11 different photometrically selected bins. We find general agreement between clustering redshift and photometric redshift estimates, with differences on the inferred mean redshift found to be below |Δz| = 0.01 in most of the bins. We also test a method to calibrate a width parameter for redshift distributions, which we found necessary to use for some of our samples. Our typical uncertainties on the mean redshift ranged from 0.003 to 0.008, while our uncertainties on the width ranged from 4 to 9 per cent. We discuss how these results calibrate the photometric redshift distributions used in companion papers for DES Year 3 results.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)5517-5539
Number of pages23
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume513
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1 2022

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Keywords

  • cosmology: Observations
  • galaxies: Distances and redshifts
  • large-scale structure of Universe
  • surveys

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