We present a study of the clustering and halo occupation distribution of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) CMASS galaxies in the redshift range 0.43 < z < 0.7 drawn from the Final SDSS-III Data Release. We compare the BOSS results with the predictions of a halo abundance matching (HAM) clustering model that assigns galaxies to dark matter haloes selected from the large BigMultiDark N-body simulation of a flat Λ cold dark matter Planck cosmology. We compare the observational data with the simulated ones on a light cone constructed from 20 subsequent outputs of the simulation. Observational effects such as incompleteness, geometry, veto masks and fibre collisions are included in the model, which reproduces within 1σ errors the observed monopole of the two-point correlation function at all relevant scales: from the smallest scales, 0.5 h-1 Mpc, up to scales beyond the baryon acoustic oscillation feature. This model also agrees remarkably well with the BOSS galaxy power spectrum (up to k ~ 1 h Mpc-1), and the three-point correlation function. The quadrupole of the correlation function presents some tensions with observations. We discuss possible causes that can explain this disagreement, including target selection effects. Overall, the standard HAM model describes remarkably well the clustering statistics of the CMASS sample. We compare the stellar-to-halo mass relation for the CMASS sample measured using weak lensing in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey with the prediction of our clustering model, and find a good agreement within 1σ. The BigMD-BOSS light cone including properties of BOSS galaxies and halo properties is made publicly available.

We present a fast method for producing mock galaxy catalogues that can be used to compute the covariance of large-scale clustering measurements and test analysis techniques. Our method populates a second-order Lagrangian perturbation theory (2LPT) matter field, where we calibrate masses of dark matter haloes by detailed comparisons with N-body simulations. We demonstrate that the clustering of haloes is recovered at ~10 per cent accuracy. We populate haloes with mock galaxies using a halo occupation distribution (HOD) prescription, which has been calibrated to reproduce the clustering measurements on scales between 30 and 80 h-1 Mpc. We compare the sample covariance matrix from our mocks with analytic estimates, and discuss differences. We have used this method to make catalogues corresponding to Data Release 9 of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), producing 600 mock catalogues of the 'CMASS' galaxy sample. These mocks have enabled detailed tests of methods and errors, and have formed an integral part of companion analyses of these galaxy data. © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.