Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Cosmic Sound In The Lyman Alpha Forest, Spencer Everett, Matt Kwiecien, Cordell Newmiller

DePaul Discoveries

Using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the authors attempt to detect the baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAOs) using the discrete wavelet transform. The wavelet transform is used to construct the power spectrum of intergalactic clouds of matter at large (Mpc) distance scales. It was found that the wavelet transform used here does not have high enough resolution to detect the BAOs. However, the techniques used in this study allow for future improvements in the transform that could potentially resolve the expected peak in the power spectrum and indicate the existence of BAOs.