On the fairness of the main galaxy sample of SDSS  

作　　者：Ke-Lai Meng Bin Ma Jun Pan Long-Long Feng 

机构地区：[1]Purple Mountain Observatory,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Nanjing 210008,China [2]National Astronomical Observatories,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100012,China

出　　处：《Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics》2011年第6期655-670,共16页天文和天体物理学研究（英文版）

基　　金：funded by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant Nos.10643002,10633040,10621303,10873035,and 10725314;the National Basic Research Program of China (973 program,No. 2007CB815402)

摘　　要：Flux-limited and volume-limited galaxy samples are constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey（SDSS）data releases DR4,DR6 and DR7 for statistical analysis.The two-point correlation functionsξ（s）,monopole of three-point correlation functionsζ0,projected two-point correlation function wp and pairwise velocity dispersionσ12 are measured to test if galaxy samples are fair for these statistics.We find that with the increment of sky coverage of subsequent data releases in SDSS, ξ（s）of the flux-limited sample is extremely robust and insensitive to local structures at low redshift.However,for volume-limited samples fainter than L＊ at large scales s～10 h-1 Mpc,the deviation of ξ（s）from different SDSS data releases（DR7,DR6 and DR4）increases with the increment of absolute magnitude.The case of ζ0（s）is similar to that ofξ（s）.In the weakly nonlinear regime,there is no agreement between ζ0 of different data releases in all luminosity bins.Furthermore,wp of volume-limited samples of DR7 in luminosity bins fainter than -Mr,0.1=[18.5,19.5]are significantly larger and σ12 of the two faintest volume-limited samples of DR7 display a very different scale dependence than results from DR4 and DR6.Our findings call for caution in understanding clustering analysis results of SDSS faint galaxy samples and higher order statistics of SDSS volume-limited samples in the weakly nonlinear regime.The first zero-crossing points of ξ（s）from volume-limited samples are also investigated and discussed.Flux-limited and volume-limited galaxy samples are constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey（SDSS）data releases DR4,DR6 and DR7 for statistical analysis.The two-point correlation functionsξ（s）,monopole of three-point correlation functionsζ0,projected two-point correlation function wp and pairwise velocity dispersionσ12 are measured to test if galaxy samples are fair for these statistics.We find that with the increment of sky coverage of subsequent data releases in SDSS, ξ（s）of the flux-limited sample is extremely robust and insensitive to local structures at low redshift.However,for volume-limited samples fainter than L＊ at large scales s～10 h-1 Mpc,the deviation of ξ（s）from different SDSS data releases（DR7,DR6 and DR4）increases with the increment of absolute magnitude.The case of ζ0（s）is similar to that ofξ（s）.In the weakly nonlinear regime,there is no agreement between ζ0 of different data releases in all luminosity bins.Furthermore,wp of volume-limited samples of DR7 in luminosity bins fainter than -Mr,0.1=[18.5,19.5]are significantly larger and σ12 of the two faintest volume-limited samples of DR7 display a very different scale dependence than results from DR4 and DR6.Our findings call for caution in understanding clustering analysis results of SDSS faint galaxy samples and higher order statistics of SDSS volume-limited samples in the weakly nonlinear regime.The first zero-crossing points of ξ（s）from volume-limited samples are also investigated and discussed.

关 键 词：galaxies：distances and redshifts-galaxies：statistics-cosmology：observation-cosmology：large-scale structure 

分 类 号：P208[天文地球—地图制图学与地理信息工程] TP391.41[天文地球—测绘科学与技术]