Probing Dark Energy with Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations from Future Large Galaxy Redshift Surveys

We show that the measurement of the baryonic acoustic oscillations in largehigh redshift galaxy surveys offers a precision route to the measurement ofdark energy. The cosmic microwave background provides the scale of theoscillations as a standard ruler that can be measured in the clustering ofgalaxies, thereby yielding the Hubble parameter and angular diameter distanceas a function of redshift. This, in turn, enables one to probe dark energy. Weuse a Fisher matrix formalism to study the statistical errors for redshiftsurveys up to z=3 and report errors on cosmography while marginalizing over alarge number of cosmological parameters including a time-dependent equation ofstate. With redshifts surveys combined with cosmic microwave backgroundsatellite data, we achieve errors of 0.037 on Omega_x, 0.10 on w(z=0.8), and0.28 on dw(z)/dz for cosmological constant model. Models with less negativew(z) permit tighter constraints. We test and discuss the dependence ofperformance on redshift, survey conditions, and fiducial model. We find resultsthat are competitive with the performance of future supernovae Ia surveys. Weconclude that redshift surveys offer a promising independent route to themeasurement of dark energy.Comment: submitted to ApJ, 24 pages, LaTe