THE CLUSTERING OF GALAXIES IN THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: LUMINOSITY AND COLOR DEPENDENCE AND REDSHIFT EVOLUTION

Journal Article · Sat Apr 20 04:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/767/2/122· OSTI ID:22126912

Hong, Guo; Zehavi, Idit ^[1]; Zheng, Zheng ^[2]; Weinberg, David H. ^[3]; Berlind, Andreas A. ^[4]; Blanton, Michael ^[5]; Yanmei, Chen ^[6]; Eisenstein, Daniel J.; McBride, Cameron K. ^[7]; Ho, Shirley; Ross, Nicholas P. ^[8]; Kazin, Eyal ^[9]; Manera, Marc; Maraston, Claudia; Percival, Will J.; Ross, Ashley J.; Samushia, Lado ^[10]; Nuza, Sebastian E. ^[11]; Padmanabhan, Nikhil; Parejko, John K. ^[12] ; others, and

---

1. Department of Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University, OH 44106 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, UT 84112 (United States)
3. Department of Astronomy and CCAPP, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 (United States)
5. Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University, New York, NY 10003 (United States)
6. Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093 (China)
7. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
8. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
9. Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, P.O. Box 218, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122 (Australia)
10. Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, Dennis Sciama Building, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 3FX (United Kingdom)
11. Leibniz-Institut fuer Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, D-14482 Potsdam (Germany)
12. Department of Physics, Yale University, 260 Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT 06520 (United States)

We measure the luminosity and color dependence and the redshift evolution of galaxy clustering in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Ninth Data Release. We focus on the projected two-point correlation function (2PCF) of subsets of its CMASS sample, which includes about 260,000 galaxies over {approx}3300 deg{sup 2} in the redshift range 0.43 < z < 0.7. To minimize the selection effect on galaxy clustering, we construct well-defined luminosity and color subsamples by carefully accounting for the CMASS galaxy selection cuts. The 2PCF of the whole CMASS sample, if approximated by a power-law, has a correlation length of r{sub 0} = 7.93 {+-} 0.06 h {sup -1} Mpc and an index of {gamma} = 1.85 {+-} 0.01. Clear dependences on galaxy luminosity and color are found for the projected 2PCF in all redshift bins, with more luminous and redder galaxies generally exhibiting stronger clustering and steeper 2PCF. The color dependence is also clearly seen for galaxies within the red sequence, consistent with the behavior of SDSS-II main sample galaxies at lower redshifts. At a given luminosity (k + e corrected), no significant evolution of the projected 2PCFs with redshift is detected for red sequence galaxies. We also construct galaxy samples of fixed number density at different redshifts, using redshift-dependent magnitude thresholds. The clustering of these galaxies in the CMASS redshift range is found to be consistent with that predicted by passive evolution. Our measurements of the luminosity and color dependence and redshift evolution of galaxy clustering will allow for detailed modeling of the relation between galaxies and dark matter halos and new constraints on galaxy formation and evolution.

• OSTI ID: 22126912
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 767; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
APPROXIMATIONS
BARYONS
CORRELATION FUNCTIONS
CORRELATIONS
COSMOLOGY
GALAXIES
LUMINOSITY
OSCILLATIONS
RED SHIFT