The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation
  Spectroscopic Survey: Analysis of potential systematics
  We analyze the density field of galaxies observed by the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey (SDSS)-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) included in
the SDSS Data Release Nine (DR9). DR9 includes spectroscopic redshifts for over
400,000 galaxies spread over a footprint of 3,275 deg^2. We identify,
characterize, and mitigate the impact of sources of systematic uncertainty on
large-scale clustering measurements, both for angular moments of the
redshift-space correlation function and the spherically averaged power
spectrum, P(k), in order to ensure that robust cosmological constraints will be
obtained from these data. A correlation between the projected density of stars
and the higher redshift (0.43 < z < 0.7) galaxy sample (the `CMASS' sample) due
to imaging systematics imparts a systematic error that is larger than the
statistical error of the clustering measurements at scales s > 120h^-1Mpc or k
< 0.01hMpc^-1. We find that these errors can be ameliorated by weighting
galaxies based on their surface brightness and the local stellar density. We
use mock galaxy catalogs that simulate the CMASS selection function to
determine that randomly selecting galaxy redshifts in order to simulate the
radial selection function of a random sample imparts the least systematic error
on correlation function measurements and that this systematic error is
negligible for the spherically averaged correlation function. The methods we
recommend for the calculation of clustering measurements using the CMASS sample
are adopted in companion papers that locate the position of the baryon acoustic
oscillation feature (Anderson et al. 2012), constrain cosmological models using
the full shape of the correlation function (Sanchez et al. 2012), and measure
the rate of structure growth (Reid et al. 2012). (abridged)
