Bibcode
Ferreras, I.; Trujillo, I.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 825, Issue 2, article id. 115, pp. (2016).
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7
2016
Journal
Citations
6
Refereed citations
5
Description
At the core of the standard cosmological model lies the assumption that
the redshift of distant galaxies is independent of photon wavelength.
This invariance of cosmological redshift with wavelength is routinely
found in all galaxy spectra with a precision of Δz ∼
10‑4. The combined use of approximately half a million
high-quality galaxy spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
allows us to explore this invariance down to a nominal precision in
redshift of 10‑6 (statistical). Our analysis is
performed over the redshift interval 0.02 < z < 0.25. We use the
centroids of spectral lines over the 3700–6800 Å rest-frame
optical window. We do not find any difference in redshift between the
blue and red sides down to a precision of 10‑6 at z
≲ 0.1 and 10‑5 at 0.1 ≲ z ≲ 0.25 (i.e.,
at least an order of magnitude better than with single galaxy spectra).
This is the first time the wavelength-independence of the (1 + z)
redshift law is confirmed over a wide spectral window at this precision
level. This result holds independently of the stellar population of the
galaxies and their kinematical properties. This result is also robust
against wavelength calibration issues. The limited spectral resolution
(R ∼ 2000) of the SDSS data, combined with the asymmetric wavelength
sampling of the spectral features in the observed restframe due to the
(1 + z) stretching of the lines, prevent our methodology from achieving
a precision higher than 10‑5, at z > 0.1. Future
attempts to constrain this law will require high quality galaxy spectra
at higher resolution (R ≳ 10,000).