Angular Baryon Acoustic Oscillations with DESI DR1

Abstract

We present the angular BAO analysis using DESI DR1 data as a complementary approach to DESI's primary 3D BAO analysis. We perform the analysis using the two-point angular correlation function $w(θ)$ in tomographic redshift shells of $δz = 0.02, 0.05$, spanning the redshift range $0.4 < z < 2.1$ using the DESI tracers: LRG1, LRG2, LRG3+ELG1, ELG2 and QSO. The main benefit is that it requires no fiducial cosmology to convert redshifts into distances and yields a direct measurement of the transverse dilation parameter $α_{\perp}(z)$. We fit each tracer with a single shared $α_{\perp}(z)$ using templates constructed in a fiducial cosmology and a mock-based covariance from 1000 EZmock realisations. We measure $α_\perp$ to $2.5$ -- $4.2\%$ precision in each tracer bin. Compared to the $D_M/r_{\rm d}$ measurements obtained from the DESI DR1 3D analysis for the same tracers, our results are consistent within the statistical precision. We find no evidence for a shift in the transverse BAO scale between the 2D and 3D analyses. Flat $Λ$CDM fits to $α_\perp(z)$ alone give $Ω_{\rm m} = 0.198^{+0.045}_{-0.068}$, $1.6σ$ below the DESI 3D value, and the pull is dominated by the $z =1.49$ QSO bin, whose $α_\perp(z=1.49)=1.058\pm0.028$ sits $\sim 2σ$ above the fiducial. Restricting to LRGs and ELGs only, our $Ω_{\rm m}$ and $H_0 r_{\rm d}$ agree with the 3D transverse-only fit over the same bins to better than $0.1σ$. With an additional BBN prior, the full 2D sample gives $H_0 = 63.9^{+1.9}_{-3.3}\, {\rm km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$. This pipeline is implementable on forthcoming DESI data releases, where the increase in volume and sampling density will determine if the QSO offset persists and will also tighten 2D BAO constraints.