PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The imprint of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in large-scale structurecan be used as a standard ruler for mapping out the cosmic expansion history,and hence for testing cosmological models. In this article we briefly describethe scientific background to the BAO technique, and forecast the potential ofthe Phase 1 and 2 SKA telescopes to perform BAO surveys using both galaxycatalogues and intensity mapping, assessing their competitiveness with currentand future optical galaxy surveys. We find that a 25,000 sq. deg. intensitymapping survey on a Phase 1 array will preferentially constrain the radial BAO,providing a highly competitive 2% constraint on the expansion rate at z ~ 2. A30,000 sq. deg. galaxy redshift survey on SKA2 will outperform all otherplanned experiments for z < 1.4.