Higher-Order Angular Galaxy Correlations in the SDSS: Redshift and Color Dependence of non-Linear Bias

Abstract

We present estimates of the N-point galaxy, area-averaged, angular correlation functions ${\bar{\omega }}_N$($\theta$) for $N$ = 2,...,7 for galaxies from the fifth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our parent sample is selected from galaxies with $18\le r<21$, and is the largest ever used to study higher-order correlations. We subdivide this parent sample into two volume limited samples using photometric redshifts, and these two samples are further subdivided by magnitude, redshift, and color (producing early- and late-type galaxy samples) to determine the dependence of ${\bar{\omega }}_N$($\theta$) on luminosity, redshift, and galaxy-type. We measure ${\bar{\omega }}_N$($\theta$) using oversampling techniques and use them to calculate the projected, $s_N$. Using models derived from theoretical power-spectra and perturbation theory, we measure the bias parameters $b_1$ and $c_2$, finding that the large differences in both bias parameters ($b_1$ and $c_2$) between early- and late-type galaxies are robust against changes in redshift, luminosity, and ${\sigma }_8$, and that both terms are consistently smaller for late-type galaxies. By directly comparing their higher-order correlation measurements, we find large differences in the clustering of late-type galaxies at redshifts lower than 0.3 and those at redshifts higher than 0.3, both at large scales ($c_2$ is larger by $\sim 0.5$ at $z>0.3$) and small scales (large amplitudes are measured at small scales only for $z>0.3$, suggesting much more merger driven star formation at $z>0.3$). Finally, our measurements of $c_2$ suggest both that ${\sigma }_8<0.8$ and $c_2$ is negative.

46 pages, 19 figures, Accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• AGN Environments in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey I: Dependence on Type, Redshift, and Luminosity