Measuring Angular Diameter Distances through Halo Clustering

Current and upcoming wide-field surveys for weak gravitational lensing and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect will generate mass-selected catalogs of dark matter halos with internal or follow-up photometric redshift information. Using the shape of the linear power spectrum as a standard ruler that is calibrated by cosmic microwave background measurements, we find that a survey of 4000 deg^2 and a mass threshold of 10^(14) M_☉ can be used to determine the comoving angular diameter distance as a function of redshift. In principle, this test also allows an absolute calibration of the distance scale and measurement of the Hubble constant. This test is largely insensitive to the details of halo mass measurements, mass function, and halo bias. Determination of these quantities would further allow a measurement of the linear growth rate of fluctuations.

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