THE CLUSTERING OF MASSIVE GALAXIES AT z ∼ 0.5 FROM THE FIRST SEMESTER OF BOSS DATA

We calculate the real-and redshift-space clustering of massive galaxies at z similar to 0.5 using the first semester of data by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey ( BOSS). We study the correlation functions of a sample of 44,000 massive galaxies in the redshift range 0.4 < z < 0.7. We present a halo-occupation distribution modeling of the clustering results and discuss the implications for the manner in which massive galaxies at z similar to 0.5 occupy dark matter halos. The majority of our galaxies are central galaxies living in halos of mass 10(13) h(-1) M-circle dot, but 10% are satellites living in halos 10 times more massive. These results are broadly in agreement with earlier investigations of massive galaxies at z similar to 0.5. The inferred large-scale bias (b similar or equal to 2) and relatively high number density ((n) over bar = 3 x 10(-4) h(3) Mpc(-3)) imply that BOSS galaxies are excellent tracers of large-scale structure, suggesting BOSS will enable a wide range of investigations on the distance scale, the growth of large-scale structure, massive galaxy evolution, and other topics.