Forecasting the dark energy measurement with baryon acoustic oscillations: prospects for the LAMOST surveys

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2009-04, Vol.394 (4), p.1775-1790
• Main Authors: Wang, Xin, Chen, Xuelei, Zheng, Zheng, Wu, Fengquan, Zhang, Pengjie, Zhao, Yongheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Astronomy; Astrophysics; cosmological parameters; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; large-scale structure of Universe; Markov analysis; Red shift; Spectrum analysis
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.14468.x

The Large Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) is a dedicated spectroscopic survey telescope being built in China, with an effective aperture of 4 m and equipped with 4000 fibres. Using the LAMOST telescope, one could make redshift survey of the large-scale structure (LSS). The baryon acoustic oscillation features in the LSS power spectrum provide standard rulers for measuring dark energy and other cosmological parameters. In this paper, we investigate the measurement precision achievable for a few possible surveys: (1) a magnitude-limited survey of all galaxies, (2) a survey of colour-selected luminous red galaxies (LRG) and (3) a magnitude-limited, high-density survey of z < 2 quasars. For each survey, we use the halo model to estimate the bias of the sample, and calculate the effective volume. We then use the Fisher matrix method to forecast the error on the dark energy equation of state and other cosmological parameters for different survey parameters. In a few cases, we also use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to make the same forecast as a comparison. The fibre time required for each of these surveys is also estimated. These results would be useful in designing the surveys for LAMOST.