  We show that the measurement of the baryonic acoustic oscillations in large
high redshift galaxy surveys offers a precision route to the measurement of
dark energy. The cosmic microwave background provides the scale of the
oscillations as a standard ruler that can be measured in the clustering of
galaxies, thereby yielding the Hubble parameter and angular diameter distance
as a function of redshift. This, in turn, enables one to probe dark energy. We
use a Fisher matrix formalism to study the statistical errors for redshift
surveys up to z=3 and report errors on cosmography while marginalizing over a
large number of cosmological parameters including a time-dependent equation of
state. With redshifts surveys combined with cosmic microwave background
satellite data, we achieve errors of 0.037 on Omega_x, 0.10 on w(z=0.8), and
0.28 on dw(z)/dz for cosmological constant model. Models with less negative
w(z) permit tighter constraints. We test and discuss the dependence of
performance on redshift, survey conditions, and fiducial model. We find results
that are competitive with the performance of future supernovae Ia surveys. We
conclude that redshift surveys offer a promising independent route to the
measurement of dark energy.
