Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Scale Research Articles

Measurement of the photometric baryon acoustic oscillations with self-calibrated redshift distribution

ABSTRACT We use a galaxy sample derived from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey Data Release 9 to measure the baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO). The magnitude-limited sample consists of 10.6 million galaxies in an area of 4974 deg2 over the redshift range of [0.6, 1]. A key novelty of this work is that the true redshift distribution of the photo-z sample is derived from the self-calibration method, which determines the true redshift distribution using the clustering information of the photometric data alone. Through the angular correlation function in four tomographic bins, we constrain the BAO scale dilation parameter α to be 1.025 ± 0.033, consistent with the fiducial Planck cosmology. Alternatively, the ratio between the comoving angular diameter distance and the sound horizon, DM/rs, is constrained to be 18.94 ± 0.61 at the effective redshift of 0.749. We corroborate our results with the true redshift distribution obtained from a weighted spectroscopic sample, finding very good agreement. We have conducted a series of tests to demonstrate the robustness of the measurement. Our work demonstrates that the self-calibration method can effectively constrain the true redshift distribution in cosmological applications, especially in the context of photometric BAO measurement.

Baryon acoustic scale at zeff = 0.166 with the SDSS blue galaxies

ABSTRACT The baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) phenomenon provides a unique opportunity to establish a standard ruler at any epoch in the history of the evolving universe. The key lies in identifying a suitable cosmological tracer to conduct the measurement. In this study, we focus on quantifying the sound horizon scale of BAO in the Local Universe. Our chosen cosmological tracer is a sample of blue galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), positioned at the effective redshift $z_{{\rm eff}} = 0.166$. Utilizing Planck-CMB input values for redshift-to-distance conversion, we derive the BAO scale $s_{{\rm BAO}} = 100.28 ^{+10.79} _{-22.96}$ Mpc h−1 at the 1$\sigma$ confidence level. Subsequently, we extrapolate the BAO signal scale in redshift space: $\Delta z_{{\rm BAO}}(z_{\rm eff}=0.166)=0.0361^{+0.00262}_ {-0.0055}$. This measurement holds the potential to discriminate among dark energy models within the Local Universe. To validate the robustness of our methodology for BAO scale measurement, we conduct three additional BAO analyses using different cosmographic approaches for distance calculation from redshifts. These tests aim to identify possible biases or systematics in our measurements of $s_{{\rm BAO}}$. Encouragingly, our diverse cosmographic approaches yield results in statistical agreement with the primary measurement, indicating no significant deviations. Conclusively, our study contributes with a novel determination of the BAO scale in the Local Universe, at $z_{{\rm eff}} = 0.166$, achieved through the analysis of the SDSS blue galaxies cosmic tracer.

A cosmic glitch in gravity

We investigate a model that modifies general relativity on cosmological scales, specifically by having a `glitch' in the gravitational constant between the cosmological (super-horizon) and Newtonian (sub-horizon) regimes, as motivated e.g. in the Hořava-Lifshitz proposal or in the Einstein-aether framework. This gives a single-parameter extension to the standard ΛCDM model, which is equivalent to adding a dark energy component, but where the energy density of this component can have either sign. Fitting to data from the Planck satellite, we find that negative contributions are, in fact, preferred. Additionally, we find that roughly one percent weaker superhorizon gravity can somewhat ease the Hubble and clustering tensions in a range of cosmological observations, although at the expense of spoiling fits to the baryonic acoustic oscillation scale in galaxy surveys. Therefore, the extra parametric freedom offered by our model deserves further exploration, and we discuss how future observations may elucidate this potential cosmic glitch in gravity, through a four-fold reduction in statistical uncertainties.

Testing CCC+TL Cosmology with Observed Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Features

The primary purpose of this paper is to see how well a recently proposed new model fits (a) the position of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) features observed in the large-scale distribution of galaxies and (b) the angular size measured for the sound horizon due to BAO imprinted in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. The new model is a hybrid model that combines the tired light (TL) theory with a variant of the ΛCDM model in which the cosmological constant is replaced with a covarying coupling constants’ (CCC) parameter α. This model, dubbed the CCC+TL model, can fit the Type Ia supernovae Pantheon+ data as accurately as the ΛCDM model, and also fit the angular size of cosmic dawn galaxies observed by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is in tension with the ΛCDM model. The results we obtained are 151.0 (±5.1) Mpc for the absolute BAO scale at the current epoch, and the angular size of the sound horizon θ sh = 0.°60, matching Planck’s observations at the surface of the last scattering when the baryon density is set to 100% of the matter density and ∣α∣ is increased by 5.6%. It remains to be seen if the new model is consistent with the CMB power spectrum, the Big Bang nucleosynthesis of light elements, and other critical observations.

Optimal data compression for Lyman-α forest cosmology

ABSTRACT The Lyman-α three-dimensional correlation functions have been widely used to perform cosmological inference using the baryon acoustic oscillation scale. While the traditional inference approach employs a data vector with several thousand data points, we apply near-maximal score compression down to tens of compressed data elements. We show that carefully constructed additional data beyond those linked to each inferred model parameter are required to preserve meaningful goodness of fit tests that guard against unknown systematics, and to avoid information loss due to non-linear parameter dependences. We demonstrate, on suites of realistic mocks and Data Release 16 data from the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, that our compression approach is lossless and unbiased, yielding a posterior that is indistinguishable from that of the traditional analysis. As an early application, we investigate the impact of a covariance matrix estimated from a limited number of mocks, which is only well conditioned in compressed space.

The Uchuu–SDSS galaxy light-cones: a clustering, redshift space distortion and baryonic acoustic oscillation study

ABSTRACT We present the data release of the Uchuu–SDSS galaxies: a set of 32 high-fidelity galaxy light-cones constructed from the large Uchuu 2.1 trillion particles N-body simulation using Planck cosmology. We adopt subhalo abundance matching to populate the Uchuu-box halo catalogues with SDSS galaxy luminosities. These box catalogues generated at several redshifts are combined to create a set of light-cones with redshift-evolving galaxy properties. The Uchuu–SDSS galaxy light-cones are built to reproduce the footprint and statistical properties of the SDSS main galaxy survey, along with stellar masses and star formation rates. This facilitates a direct comparison of the observed SDSS and simulated Uchuu–SDSS data. Our light-cones reproduce a large number of observational results, such as the distribution of galaxy properties, galaxy clustering, stellar mass functions, and halo occupation distributions. Using simulated and real data, we select samples of bright red galaxies at zeff = 0.15 to explore redshift space distortions and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) by fitting the full two-point correlation function and the BAO peak. We create a set of 5100 galaxy light-cones using GLAM N-body simulations to compute covariance errors. We report a $\sim 30~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ precision increase on fσ8 and the pre-reconstruction BAO scale, due to our better estimate of the covariance matrix. From our BAO-inferred α∥ and α⊥ parameters, we obtain the first SDSS measurements of the Hubble and angular diameter distances $D_\mathrm{H}(z=0.15) / r_d = 27.9^{+3.1}_{-2.7}$, $D_\mathrm{M}(z=0.15) / r_d = 5.1^{+0.4}_{-0.4}$. Overall, we conclude that the Planck Λ CDM cosmology nicely explains the observed large-scale structure statistics of SDSS. All data sets are made publicly available.

Probing Cosmology with Baryon Acoustic Oscillations Using Gravitational Waves

The third-generation (3G) gravitational wave (GW) detectors such as the Einstein Telescope or Cosmic Explorer are expected to play an important role in cosmology. With the help of 3G detectors, we will be able to probe large-scale structure features such as baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), galaxy bias, etc. We explore the possibility to do precision cosmology, with the 3G GW detectors by measuring the angular BAO scale using localization volumes of compact binary merger events. Through simulations, we show that with a 3G detector network, by probing the angular BAO scale using purely GW observations, we can constrain the Hubble constant for the standard model of cosmology (ΛCDM) with 90% credible regions as . When combined with BAO measurements from galaxy surveys, we show that it can be used to constrain various models of cosmology such as parameterized models for dark energy equations of state. We also show how cosmological constraints using BAO measurements from GW observations in the 3G era will complement the same from spectroscopic surveys.

Fisher forecast for the BAO measurements from the CSST spectroscopic and photometric galaxy clustering

ABSTRACT The China Space Station Telescope (CSST) is a forthcoming Stage IV galaxy survey. It will simultaneously undertake the photometric redshift (photo-z) and slitless spectroscopic redshift (spec-z) surveys mainly for weak lensing and galaxy clustering studies. The two surveys cover the same sky area and overlap on the redshift range. At z > 1, due to the sparse number density of the spec-z sample, it limits the constraints on the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). By cross-correlating the spec-z sample with the high density photo-z sample, we can effectively enhance the constraints on the angular diameter distances DA(z) from the BAO measurement. Based on the Fisher matrix, we forecast a >30 per cent improvement on constraining DA(z) from the joint analysis of the spec-z and cross galaxy power spectra at 1.0 < z < 1.2. Such improvement is generally robust against different systematic effects including the systematic noise and the redshift success rate of the spec-z survey, as well as the photo-z error. We also show the BAO constraints from other Stage-IV spectroscopic surveys for the comparison with CSST. Our study can be a reference for the future BAO analysis on real CSST data. The methodology can be applied to other surveys with spec-z and photo-z data in the same survey volume.

Needlet Karhunen–Loève (NKL): a method for cleaning foregrounds from 21 cm intensity maps

ABSTRACT This paper introduces a technique called needlet Karhunen–Loéve (NKL), which cleans both polarized and unpolarized foregrounds from H i intensity maps by applying a Karhunen–Loéve transform on the needlet coefficients. In NKL, one takes advantage of correlations not only along the line of sight, but also between different angular regions, referred to as ‘chunks’. This provides a distinct advantage over many of the standard techniques applied to map space that one finds in the literature, which do not consider such spatial correlations. Moreover, the NKL technique does not require any priors on the nature of the foregrounds, which is important when considering polarized foregrounds. We also introduce a modified version of Generalized Needlet Internal Linear Combination (GNILC), referred to as MGNILC, which incorporates an approximation of the foregrounds to improve performance. The NKL and MGNILC techniques are tested on simulated maps which include polarized foregrounds. Their performance is compared to the GNILC, generalized morphological component analysis, independent component analysis, and principal component analysis techniques. Two separate tests were performed. One at 1.84 < z < 2.55 and the other at 0.31 < z < 0.45. NKL was found to provide the best performance in both tests, providing a factor of 10–50 improvement over GNILC at $k \lt 0.1\, {\rm hMpc^{-1}}$ in the higher redshift case and $k \lt 0.03 \, {\rm hMpc^{-1}}$ in the lower redshift case. However, none of the methods were found to recover the power spectrum satisfactorily at all baryon acoustic oscillations scales.

Constraining cosmology with the Gaia-unWISE Quasar Catalog and CMB lensing: structure growth

We study the angular clustering of Quaia, a Gaia- and unWISE-based catalog of over a million quasars with an exceptionally well-defined selection function. With it, we derive cosmology constraints from the amplitude and growth of structure across cosmic time. We divide the sample into two redshift bins, centered at z = 1.0 and z = 2.1, and measure both overdensity auto-correlations and cross-correlations with maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background convergence measured by Planck. From these data, and including a prior from measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillations scale, we place constraints on the amplitude of the matter power spectrum σ 8 = 0.766 ± 0.034, and on the matter density parameter Ω m = 0.343+0.017 -0.019. These measurements are in reasonable agreement with Planck at the ∼ 1.4σ level, and are found to be robust with respect to observational and theoretical uncertainties. We find that our slightly lower value of σ 8 is driven by the higher-redshift sample, which favours a low amplitude of matter fluctuations. We present plausible arguments showing that this could be driven by contamination of the CMB lensing map by high-redshift extragalactic foregrounds, which should also affect other cross-correlations with tracers of large-scale structure beyond z ∼ 1.5. Our constraints are competitive with those from state-of-the-art 3×2-point analyses, but arise from a range of scales and redshifts that is highly complementary to those covered by cosmic shear data and most galaxy clustering samples. This, coupled with the unprecedented combination of volume and redshift precision achieved by Quaia, allows us to break the usual degeneracy between Ω m and σ 8.

Modelling the next-to-leading order matter three-point correlation function using FFTLog

The study of higher-order statistics, particularly 3-point statistics, of the Large Scale Structure (LSS) of the Universe provides us with unique information on the biasing relation between luminous and dark matter and on deviations from primordial Gaussianity. As a result, much effort has been put into improving measurement techniques as well as theoretical modelling, especially in Fourier space. Comparatively, little progress has been made, instead, in configuration space analyses. This work represents a first step towards filling this gap by proposing a new strategy for modelling 3-point statistics at higher perturbative orders in configuration space. Starting from the next-to-leading order model for the matter bispectrum, we use 2D-FFTLog to generate its counterpart in configuration space. We calibrate the procedure using the leading order predictions for which an analytic model for the 3-point correlation function (3PCF) already exists. Then we assess the goodness of the 3PCF model by comparing its predictions with measurements performed on the matter distribution in collisionless cosmological N-body simulation (DEMNUni). We focus on two redshifts (z = 0.49 and z = 1.05) in the range spanned by current and future galaxy redshift surveys. The χ 2 analysis reveals that the next-to-leading order 3PCF models significantly improve over the leading order one for all triangle configurations in both redshifts, increasing the number of matched configurations at redshift z = 1.05 and z = 0.49, respectively. In particular, a significant improvement is also seen on the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) scale for triangle configurations whose smallest side length is well into the nonlinear regime. The computational cost of the model proposed here is high but not prohibitively large — order of five hours in a 48-core computation — and represents the first step towards a complete 3PC model for the galaxies.

The MillenniumTNG Project: high-precision predictions for matter clustering and halo statistics

ABSTRACT Cosmological inference with large galaxy surveys requires theoretical models that combine precise predictions for large-scale structure with robust and flexible galaxy formation modelling throughout a sufficiently large cosmic volume. Here, we introduce the millenniumTNG (MTNG) project which combines the hydrodynamical galaxy formation model of illustrisTNG with the large volume of the millennium simulation. Our largest hydrodynamic simulation, covering $(500 \, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc})^3 \simeq (740\, {\rm Mpc})^3$, is complemented by a suite of dark-matter-only simulations with up to 43203 dark matter particles (a mass resolution of $1.32\times 10^8 \, h^{-1}{\rm M}_\odot$) using the fixed-and-paired technique to reduce large-scale cosmic variance. The hydro simulation adds 43203 gas cells, achieving a baryonic mass resolution of $2\times 10^7 \, h^{-1}{\rm M}_\odot$. High time-resolution merger trees and direct light-cone outputs facilitate the construction of a new generation of semi-analytic galaxy formation models that can be calibrated against both the hydro simulation and observation, and then applied to even larger volumes – MTNG includes a flagship simulation with 1.1 trillion dark matter particles and massive neutrinos in a volume of $(3000\, {\rm Mpc})^3$. In this introductory analysis we carry out convergence tests on basic measures of non-linear clustering such as the matter power spectrum, the halo mass function and halo clustering, and we compare simulation predictions to those from current cosmological emulators. We also use our simulations to study matter and halo statistics, such as halo bias and clustering at the baryonic acoustic oscillation scale. Finally we measure the impact of baryonic physics on the matter and halo distributions.

The alignment of galaxies at the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation scale

The alignment of galaxies at the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation scale

Low-redshift estimates of the absolute scale of baryon acoustic oscillations

Measurements of the characteristic length scale r_s of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) provide a robust determination of the distance-redshift relation. Currently, the best (sub-per cent) estimate of r_s at the drag epoch is provided by Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations assuming the validity of the standard Lambda CDM model at z sim 1000. Therefore, inferring r_s from low-z observations in a model-independent way and comparing its value with CMB estimates provides a consistency test of the standard cosmology and its assumptions at high-z. In this paper, we address this question and estimate the absolute BAO scale combining angular BAO measurements and type Ia Supernovae data. Our analysis uses two different methods to connect these data sets and finds a good agreement between the low-z estimates of r_{s} with the CMB sound horizon at drag epoch, regardless of the value of the Hubble constant H_0 considered. These results highlight the robustness of the standard cosmology at the same time that they also reinforce the need for more precise cosmological observations at low-z.

The Alcock–Paczyński effect from Lyman-α forest correlations: analysis validation with synthetic data

ABSTRACT The three-dimensional distribution of the Ly α forest has been extensively used to constrain cosmology through measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) scale. However, more cosmological information could be extracted from the full shapes of the Ly α forest correlations through the Alcock–Paczyński (AP) effect. In this work, we prepare for a cosmological analysis of the full shape of the Ly α forest correlations by studying synthetic data of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS). We use a set of 100 eBOSS synthetic data sets in order to validate such an analysis. These mocks undergo the same analysis process as the real data. We perform a full-shape analysis on the mean of the correlation functions measured from the 100 eBOSS realizations, and find that our model of the Ly α correlations performs well on current data sets. We show that we are able to obtain an unbiased full-shape measurement of DM/DH(zeff), where DM is the transverse comoving distance, DH is the Hubble distance, and zeff is the effective redshift of the measurement. We test the fit over a range of scales, and decide to use a minimum separation of rmin = 25 h−1Mpc. We also study and discuss the impact of the main contaminants affecting Ly α forest correlations, and give recommendations on how to perform such analysis with real data. While the final eBOSS Ly α BAO analysis measured DM/DH(zeff = 2.33) with 4 per cent statistical precision, a full-shape fit of the same correlations could provide an $\sim 2~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ measurement.

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillations with three-dimensional clustering

The three-dimensional correlation function offers an effective way to summarize the correlation of the large-scale structure even for imaging galaxy surveys. We have applied the projected three-dimensional correlation function, $\xi_{\rm p}$ to measure the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) scale on the first-three years Dark Energy Survey data. The sample consists of about 7 million galaxies in the redshift range $ 0.6 < z_{\rm p } < 1.1 $ over a footprint of $4108 \, \mathrm{deg}^2 $. Our theory modeling includes the impact of realistic true redshift distributions beyond Gaussian photo-$z$ approximation. To increase the signal-to-noise of the measurements, a Gaussian stacking window function is adopted in place of the commonly used top-hat. Using the full sample, $ D_{\rm M}(z_{\rm eff} ) / r_{\rm s} $, the ratio between the comoving angular diameter distance and the sound horizon, is constrained to be $ 19.00 \pm 0.67 $ (top-hat) and $ 19.15 \pm 0.58 $ (Gaussian) at $z_{\rm eff} = 0.835$. The constraint is weaker than the angular correlation $w$ constraint ($18.84 \pm 0.50$) because the BAO signals are heterogeneous across redshift. When a homogeneous BAO-signal sub-sample in the range $ 0.7 < z_{\rm p } < 1.0 $ ($z_{\rm eff} = 0.845$) is considered, $\xi_{\rm p} $ yields $ 19.80 \pm 0.67 $ (top-hat) and $ 19.84 \pm 0.53 $ (Gaussian). The latter is mildly stronger than the $w$ constraint ($19.86 \pm 0.55 $). We find that the $\xi_{\rm p} $ results are more sensitive to photo-$z$ errors than $w$ because $\xi_{\rm p}$ keeps the three-dimensional clustering information causing it to be more prone to photo-$z$ noise. The Gaussian window gives more robust results than the top-hat as the former is designed to suppress the low signal modes. $\xi_{\rm p}$ and the angular statistics such as $w$ have their own pros and cons, and they serve an important crosscheck with each other.

Accelerating BAO scale fitting using Taylor series

ABSTRACT The Universe is currently undergoing accelerated expansion driven by dark energy. Dark energy’s essential nature remains mysterious: one means of revealing it is by measuring the Universe’s size at different redshifts. This may be done using the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature, a standard ruler in the galaxy two-point correlation function (2PCF). In order to measure the distance scale, one dilates and contracts a template for the 2PCF in a fiducial cosmology, using a scaling factor α. The standard method for finding the best-fitting α is to compute the likelihood over a grid of roughly 100 values of it. This approach is slow; in this work, we propose a significantly faster way. Our method writes the 2PCF as a polynomial in α by Taylor-expanding it about α = 1, exploiting that we know the fiducial cosmology sufficiently well that α is within a few per cent of unity. The likelihood resulting from this expansion may then be analytically solved for the best-fitting α. Our method is 48–85× faster than a directly comparable approach in which we numerically minimize α, and ∼12 000× faster than the standard iterative method. Our work will be highly enabling for upcoming large-scale structure redshift surveys such as that by Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument.

Early or phantom dark energy, self-interacting, extra, or massive neutrinos, primordial magnetic fields, or a curved universe: An exploration of possible solutions to theH0andσ8problems

In this paper we explore the existing tensions in the local cosmological expansion rate, ${H}_{0}$, and amplitude of the clustering of the large-scale structure at $8{h}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{Mpc}$, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{8}$, as well as models that claim to alleviate these tensions. We consider seven models: evolving dark energy ($w\mathrm{CDM}$), extra radiation (${N}_{\mathrm{eff}}$), massive neutrinos, curvature, primordial magnetic fields (PMF), self-interacting neutrino models, and early dark energy (EDE). We test these models against three datasets that span the full range of measurable cosmological epochs, have significant precision, and are well-tested against systematic effects: the Planck 2018 cosmic microwave background data, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey baryon acoustic oscillation scale measurements, and the Pantheon catalog of type Ia supernovae. We use the recent SH0ES ${H}_{0}$ measurement and several measures of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{8}$ (and its related parameter ${S}_{8}={\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{8}\sqrt{{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3}$). We find that four models are above the ``strong'' threshold in Bayesian model selection, $w\mathrm{CDM}$, ${N}_{\mathrm{eff}}$, PMF, and EDE. However, only EDE also relieves the ${H}_{0}$ tension in the full datasets to below $2\ensuremath{\sigma}$. We discuss how the ${S}_{8}/{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{8}$ tension is reduced in recent observations. However, even when adopting a strong tension dataset, no model alleviates the ${S}_{8}/{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{8}$ tension, nor does better than $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}\mathrm{CDM}$ in the combined case of both ${H}_{0}$ and ${S}_{8}/{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{8}$ tensions.

Living on the Fermi edge: On baryon transport and Fermi condensation

The transfer function of the baryon power spectrum from redshift z≈1100 to today has recently been, for the first time, determined from data by Pardo and Spergel. We observe a remarkable coincidence between this function and the transport function of a cold ideal Fermi gas at different redshifts. Guided by this, we unveil an infinite set of critical temperatures of the relativistic ideal Fermi gas which depend on a very finely quantized long-distance cutoff. The sound horizon scale of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) seems to set such a cutoff, which dials a critical temperature that is subsequently reached during redshift. At the critical point the Fermi gas becomes scale invariant and may condense to subsequently undergo gravitational collapse, seeding small scale structure. We mention some profound implications including the apparent quantization of Fermi momentum conjugate to the cutoff and the corresponding “gapping” of temperature.

BAO scale inference from biased tracers using the EFT likelihood

The physical scale corresponding to baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), the size of the sound horizon at recombination, is precisely determined by CMB experiments. Measuring the apparent size of the BAO scale imprinted in the clustering of galaxies gives us a direct estimate of the angular-diameter distance and the Hubble parameter as a function of redshift. The BAO feature is damped by non-linear structure formation, which reduces the precision with which we can infer the BAO scale from standard galaxy clustering analysis methods. Many methods to undo this damping via the so-called BAO reconstruction have so far been proposed; however, they all rely on backward modeling. In this paper, we present the first results of isotropic BAO inference from rest-frame halo catalogs using forward modeling combined with the EFT likelihood, in the case where the initial phases of the density field are fixed. We show that the remaining systematic bias is less than 2% when we consider cutoff values of Λ ≤ 0.25 h Mpc-1 for all halo samples considered, and below 1% and consistent with zero for all but the most highly biased samples. We also demonstrate that, when compared to the standard power spectrum likelihood approach under the same assumption of fixed phases, the 1σ errors associated to the field level inference of the BAO scale are 1.1 to 3.3 times smaller, depending on the value of the cutoff and the halo sample. Our analysis therefore unveils another promising feature of using field-level inference for high-precision cosmology.