Large Scale Structure Galaxy Catalogs

The Large Scale Structure (LSS) galaxy catalogs combine the list of cosmological tracer targets (typically galaxies or QSOs) with the results of the spectroscopic data reduction to create data and random catalogs that allow the user to estimate the cosmological tracer density fluctuations at any point within the survey footprint. The random catalogs are designed to randomly sample the survey footprint with a density proportional to the map of the survey completeness. Pairs of data and random catalogues are generated for samples with distinct selection functions. In BOSS, we generated LSS catalogues for the LOWZ and CMASS samples separately (see BOSS galaxy target selection for descriptions of these samples). The LOWZ target class captures objects primarily at z < 0.4, while the CMASS class selects objects at 0.4 < z < 0.8. With DR12 we also provide a combined sample catalogue, where these two samples are optimally combined (details in Reid et al. 2016).