The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Joint measurements of the expansion and growth history at z < 1

We perform a joint determination of the distance-redshift relation and cosmic expansion rate at redshifts z = 0.44, 0.6 and 0.73 by combining measurements of the baryon acoustic peak and Alcock-Paczynski distortion from galaxy clustering in the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey, using a large ensemble of mock catalogues to calculate the covariance between the measurements. We find that DA(z) = (1205 ± 114, 1380 ± 95, 1534 ± 107)Mpc and H(z) = (82.6 ± 7.8, 87.9 ± 6.1, 97.3 ± 7.0)kms-1Mpc-1 at these three redshifts. Further combining our results with other baryon acoustic oscillation and distant supernovae data sets, we use a Monte Carlo Markov Chain technique to determine the evolution of the Hubble parameter H(z) as a stepwise function in nine redshift bins of width Δz = 0.1, also marginalizing over the spatial curvature. Our measurements of H(z), which have precision better than 7 per cent in most redshift bins, are consistent with the expansion history predicted by a cosmological constant dark energy model, in which the expansion rate accelerates at redshift z < 0.7. © 2012 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2012 RAS.