Abstract:

The clustering of galaxies encodes a wealth of information on the physical processes that have governed the evolution of the observable Universe from the big bang until today. This includes information on the process by which galaxies begin to and cease forming stars, the sum of neutrino masses, the matter density of the Universe, the expansion history of the Universe (and thus dark energy), and the degree of non-Gaussianity in the primordial matter density field. I will describe how we observe galaxies and make maps of their positions. I will describe how we can then measure clustering statistics using these maps and the relevance of measurements I have made to the science described above. Throughout, I will discuss and compare results obtained using both photometric and spectroscopic redshifts, the care that must be taken in order to ameliorate systematic errors, and the relevance of the results to the science goals of BOSS, DES, and BigBOSS.