Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Lyforest of BOSS quasars

We report a detection of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature in the three-dimensional correlation function of the transmitted flux fraction in the Lyα forest of high-redshift quasars. The study uses 48,640 quasars in the redshift range 2.1≤ z≤ 3.5 from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III). At a mean redshift z = 2.3, we measure the monopole and quadrupole components of the correlation function for separations in the range 20h −1 Mpc < r < 200h −1 Mpc. A peak in the correlation function is seen at a separation equal to (1.01± 0.03) times the distance ]