Bhuvnesh Jain

Cosmological Parameters from Galaxy Clustering in the SDSS

We present estimates of cosmological parameters from the application of the Karhunen-Loève transform to the analysis of the 3D power spectrum of density fluctuations using Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxy redshifts. We use Ωmh and fb Ωb Ωm to describe the shape of the power spectrum, σ8g for the (linearly extrapolated) normalization, and β to parametrize linear theory redshift space distortions. On scales k 0 16hMpc 1, our maximum likelihood values are Ωmh 0 264 0 043, fb 0 286 0 065, σ8g 0 966 0 048, and β 0 45 0 12. When we take a prior on Ωb from WMAP, we find Ωmh 0 207 0 030, which is in excellent agreement with WMAP and 2dF. This indicates that we have reasonably measured the gross shape of the power spectrum but we have difficulty breaking the degeneracy between Ωmh and fb because the baryon oscillations are not resolved in the current spectroscopic survey window function.