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Title

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: hierarchical galaxy clustering

Author(s)

Baugh, Carlton;  Croton, Darren J.;  Gaztanaga, Enrique;  Norberg, Peder;  Colless, Matthew;  Baldry, Ivan K.;  Bland-Hawthorn, Joss;  Bridges, Terry J.;  Cannon, Russell D.;  Cole, Shaun;  Collins, Chris A.;  Couch, Warrick J.;  Dalton, Gavin B.;  De Propris, Roberto;  Driver, Simon P.;  Efstathiou, George P.;  Ellis, Richard S.;  Frenk, Carlos S.;  Glazebrook, Karl;  Jackson, C. A.;  Lahav, Ofer;  Lewis, Ian;  Lumsden, Stuart;  Maddox, Stephen J.;  Madgwick, Darren;  Peacock, John A.;  Peterson, Bruce A.;  Sutherland, William J.;  Taylor, Keith

Abstract

We use the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) to test the hierarchical scaling hypothesis: namely, that the p-point galaxy correlation functions can be written in terms of the two-point correlation function or variance. This scaling is expected if an initially Gaussian distribution of density fluctuations evolves under the action of gravitational instability. We measure the volume-averaged p-point correlation functions using a counts-in-cells technique applied to a volume-limited sample of 44 931 L* galaxies. We demonstrate that L* galaxies display hierarchical clustering up to order p = 6 in redshift space. The variance measured for L* galaxies is in excellent agreement with the predictions from a Λ-cold dark matter N-body simulation. This applies to all cell radii considered, 0.3 < (R/h-1 Mpc) < 30. However, the higher order correlation functions of L* galaxies have a significantly smaller amplitude than is predicted for the dark matter for R < 10 h-1 Mpc. This disagreement implies that a non-linear bias exists between the dark matter and L* galaxies on these scales. We also show that the presence of two rare, massive superclusters in the 2dFGRS has an impact on the higher-order clustering moments measured on large scales.

Publication type

Journal article

Source

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 351, no. 2 (Jun 2004), pp. L44-L49

Publication year

2004

Keyword(s)

APM;  Bias;  Cosmology;  Density;  Evolution;  Fluctuations;  Large-scale structure;  Luminosity dependence;  Observations;  Perturbation-theory;  Simulations;  Statistics;  Universe

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

ISSN

0035-8711

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07962.x

Copyright

Copyright © 2004 Royal Astronomical Society. Accepted manuscript reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. The definitive publication is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.

Full text

Peer reviewed