Self Calibration of Galaxy Bias in Spectroscopic Redshift Surveys of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

Baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) is a powerful probe on the expansion of the universe, shedding light on elusive dark energy and gravity at cosmological scales. BAO measurements through biased tracers of the underlying matter density field, as most proposals do, can reach high statistical accuracy. However, possible scale dependence in bias may induce non-negligible systematical errors, especially for the most ambitious spectroscopic surveys proposed. We show that precision spectroscopic redshift information available in these surveys allows for self calibration of the galaxy bias and its stochasticity, as function of scale and redshift. Through the effect of redshift distortion, one can simultaneously measure the real space power spectra of galaxies, galaxy-velocity and velocity, respectively. At relevant scales of BAO, galaxy velocity faithfully traces that of the underlying matter. This valuable feature enables a rather model independent way to measure the galaxy bias and its stochasticity by comparing the three power spectra. For the square kilometer array (SKA), this self calibration is statistically accurate to correct for 1% level shift in BAO peak positions induced by bias scale dependence. Furthermore, we find that SKA is able to detect BAO in the velocity power spectrum, opening a new window for BAO cosmology. Subject headings: cosmology: distance scale–large-scale structure of universe–theory